"Women's Wars are not Men's Wars" - Prof Cynthia Enloe and Feminist Curiosity in Times of Militarisation

How do women and men suffer in different ways in wartime? How are distorted ideas about masculinity and femininity manipulated to promote and justify wars and recruit men to fight? What can be done to counter a return to patriarchal societies post-conflict? How are feminists responding to increasing militarisation in these dark times? 

Over many years, Cynthia Enloe has drawn on women’s first-hand experiences of war to show how patriarchy and militarism have become embedded in institutions and personal lives. Her analysis highlights how wartime shapes the gendered politics of issues such as marriage, family, work, childcare, food, income, prostitution, domestic violence and rape. She criticises the notion of a hierarchy of wartime suffering between women and men and draws attention to how men are coerced into being soldiers, framed as protectors of women, conscripted into militaries, and suffer death, injury and trauma in large numbers from direct wartime violence. She also shows how women’s emotional and physical labour is exploited by governments to support war-waging policies, and how different groups of women and men have tried to resist these efforts. 

In this episode, Cynthia reflects on these issues in particular in relation to the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the underlying patriarchal ideas and processes that perpetuate the conflict. Echoing a perceptive and long-standing theme in her work, she brings a feminist curiosity to what she sees, and encourages observers to remain attentive to the full range of questions that should be asked, rather than narrowing focus and leaping to easy assumptions.  

Cynthia Enloe is an activist, researcher and teacher, and still engaged - in her words - in the lifetime process of ‘becoming a feminist’. She is Research Professor at Clark University in Massachusetts and internationally renowned for her work on the interactions of feminism, women, militarised culture, war, politics, and globalised economics in countries such as Japan, Iraq, the US, Britain, the Philippines, Canada, Chile, and Turkey. She’s written 15 ground-breaking books, including her latest Twelve Feminist Lessons of War, 2023 (Footnote Press/University of California Press), for which she reads the audiobook. Among many accolades, in 2018 she was selected to be named on the Gender Justice Legacy Wall at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

• Cynthia’s profile
• ‘Twelve Feminist Lessons of War’ (UK, US, Australia)

Episode timeline

• Intro
• Learning from Ukrainian feminists (01:38-10:18)
• The multiple roles women are expected to play during war (10:18-15:52)
• How even insurgent movements can foster post-war patriarchy (15:52-16:57)
• The insidiousness of ‘returning to normal’ (16:57-17:32)
• The return of the Taliban and the MAGA movement (17:32-19:25)
• Why women’s wars are not men’s wars (19:25-28:43)
• How masculinity and femininity are used to justify war (28:43-36:53)
• Break
• Putin’s strategies to recruit Russian men to fight (37:05-43:15)
• Nurturing feminist curiosity (43:15-48:45)
• The surge in militarisation across the world (48:45-56:21)
• Why we need to look beyond the big leaders (56:21-01:02:33)
• How Cynthia became the feminist she is today (01:02:33-01:05:45)
• What men can do to support struggles against militarism (01:05:45-01:06:33)
• Conclusion (01:06:42)

More info

• Women’s Perspectives in Lviv
• Marta Chumalo
• Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War, by Cynthia
• Putin’s payments to Russian soldiers, New York Times
• The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy, by Cynthia
• Seriously! Investigating Crashes and Crises as If Women Mattered, by Cynthia

Music 'Now is time' courtesy of Chaps' Choir and Dom Stichbury.