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Human Security, Armed Conflict and Religion: The Role of Gender
Professor Barbara EinhornGender Institute
LSE31 October 2012
Barbara Einhorn 2012
Lecture Sections
• Human Security and Gender• Gender in National Identity• Gender and Armed Conflict• The Role of Religion• Conclusions
Barbara Einhorn 2012
Human Security
• New theories of ‘human security’
– economic and social ‘wellbeing’
– safe and secure living environments
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Human Security
• ‘The ultimate weapon is no weapon’ (Beebe and Kaldor, 2010)
– violence prevention – focus on civilians and human rights – political and development processes
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Human Security and Gender
• Need for gender lens
– ‘people’ don’t always have common interests
– violence as gendered
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The Role of Gender
• Gender as a key variable
– analytical and empirical category necessary for understanding conflict
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Gender and Feminism
• Gender without feminist lens insufficient
– Gender not about men and women, or even just masculinity and femininity
– Issue of politics and power
– Structurally unequal power relations
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Is a Gender Lens Helpful?
• Gender as part of problem– Essentialist dichotomous role definitions
• Gender as part of solution– Understanding how gender integral to politics – First step to overcoming social divisions which
lead to exclusions and ultimately conflict
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Gender in National Identity
• Gender and Militarism as twin stabilising factors in national identity
– Traditional gendered stereotypes of (heterosexual) masculinity and femininity
– Militarism in national identity
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Royal Wedding 2011
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Luxembourg Crown Prince Weds Belgian Countess
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Changing Nature of Armed Conflict
• Inter-state to intra-state conflict with non-state actors
• Distinction frontline/civilian space blurred• Differentation between combatant/civilian as
gendered male/female respectively confused• Humanitarian, ‘secure’ space lost
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Gender and Conflict
• Conflict derives from a process of Othering
– Gendered/raced and classed national/religious identities essential to conflict
– Liberal multiculturalism sees its Other as ‘essentialist and thereby false’ (Zizek, 2008/9: 125)
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Afghan Women in Burkas
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Rationalising/Legitimating Conflict
• Men as participants and perpetrators
• Women as victims, not political agents
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Kosovan Refugees
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2003 RAWA Demonstration in Islamabad
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Gender and Armed Conflict
• The gendered ‘Other’ – Hyper-masculinised, brutal ‘terrorists’ – Helpless, oppressed female victims of violence
• ‘Our’ men and women– ‘Our (brave) boys’ as defenders of the nation– ‘Our’ women as supporting wives
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Taliban Fighters
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Heroic Firefighters at Ground Zero
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Militarised Gender
• Militarised women as anti-essentialist fig leaf• Non-conformist men
• Conformist vs transgressive femininity– Jessica Lynch vs. Lynndie England
• ‘Failed’masculinity – Serbian prisoners; male victims of torture in Abu
Ghraib, prison run by woman generalBarbara Einhorn 2012
Private Jessica Lynch
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Lynndie England in Abu Ghraib Prison
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The Role of Religion
• Force for peace or cause of conflict?
• Are religions inherently patriarchal?
• Fundamentalism/essentialism?
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Religion and Conflict
• Religion: cause of conflict? – Geo-political or economic causes– Colonial heritage
• Religion instrumentalised – Religion projected onto actual causes– Forces of (secular, Western) modernity ‘saving’ primitive
backward (religious, read: Islamic) cultures
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Religion in Crisis
• The crisis of organised religions – Not theology – Gender and sexuality
• The headscarf debate – Gender as political accelerator– What is the debate really about?
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Turkish Students in Istanbul 2007
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Conclusions
• Transcending narrow nationalisms– Communication with/compassion towards the ‘Other’– ‘Other’ within diverse societies
• ‘Human’ security paradox– Needs to be gender-disaggregated– Essentialist gender binaries need to be overcome
• Gender equitable societies– Prerequisite for peaceful and socially just world
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