NEWS FOCUS: International Women's Day for Peace & Disarmament

THE WORDS ‘women’ and ‘peace’ taken together have a certain resonance, as though it is only natural for men to be the makers of war and women the peace-makers.

And while UK Defence secretary Michael Fallon claims 'women can fight just as effectively as men’, and hopes to see women in close combat roles by 2016, the members of the Women Peacemakers Program (WPP) aim, in the words of their mission statement, “to transform conflict through gender-sensitive active nonviolence”.

On Sunday, May 24, WPP along with many affiliated groups will once again celebrate International Women's Day for Peace and Disarmament – an annual event which began in Europe in the 1980s.

The early 1980s, too, saw the founding of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, protesting against the deployment of American nuclear weapons at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire.

As depicted in the image above, tens of thousands of women held hands around the perimeter of the base in a widely reported protest in December 1982.

Women

Why women?

In the background of many religions the notion of women as the ‘chattels’ of their menfolk has a long history which is now being replaced by an egalitarian reading.

A foundational text for gender equality in both Judaism and Christianity is found in Genesis 1:27: 'God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.'

Similarly, the Qur’an 49.13 states, ‘O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise (each other). Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things).’

Difference?

But is there a ‘difference’ (between the genders) that ‘makes a difference’, as Gregory Bateson might ask?

It is at least arguable that the nurturing role of women stems from their involvement in carrying children in the womb, child-bearing and -rearing, leaving them with a powerful concern for the future of their offspring – while the men’s role of protector leaves men with an instinct more suited for present combat.

When biologically-empowered drives coincide with religious teachings, it is only too easy for those drives, which may differ enormously among individuals, to turn into strict and regimented rules, offering little room for the exceptional females who are warriors by nature – Deborah and Jael in Jewish scripture, Joan of Arc the Christian saint, Nasibah bint Ka'b who notably protected the prophet at the battle of Uhud in Islam, the Hindu Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi, who fought the British in the nineteenth century.

Analogously, for a man to be a man of peace -- as recommended to those who would follow him by Christ, and as was the Hindu Gandhi, his Muslim friend Badsahah Khan, and their Christian colleague, Martin Luther King – must require the courage to buck an idea of masculinity whose extreme expression is the testosterone-fueled violence of the Islamic State and Boko Haram.

Change

Female and male roles, then, are not predetermined nor set in stone, and religions swayed by cultural changes can adapt to new understandings.

It is against this background of concern for children, grandchildren and future generations that the Greenham Common protest became, and remained, an all-female protest, and International Women's Day for Peace and Disarmament a key event for peace movement activists and friends.

The appeal of the event is that of motherhood concerned to protect the world’s future – a concern with deep religious roots and significance.