Joshua S. Goldstein
Cambridge
University Press, 2001
Reviews
by Silja J.A. Talvi
What
accounts for the cross-cultural consistency of gender roles in war?
What theory best explains the fact that war is nearly always waged
by men? And how should we explain the fact that women, despite intermittent
yet proven historical success as ‘warriors,’ are largely
excluded from modern-day combat?
Joshua
S. Goldstein, professor of International Relations at American University,
sets out to answer this complex set of questions in his new work,
War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice
Versa.
“War
is a tremendously diverse enterprise, operating in many contexts
with many purposes, rules and meanings,” writes Goldstein in
his introduction. “Gender norms outside war show similar diversity.
The puzzle…is why that diversity disappears when it comes to the
connection of war with gender.”
A
self-described anti-war feminist and accomplished scholar, Goldstein
brings a timely, well-versed, cross-discipline analysis to this
multifaceted topic.
As
Goldstein explains categorically, the “gendering” of war—defined
as lethal intergroup violence—is both stark and alarming. In
Rwanda, Burundi, and Algeria (among many other locales), women across
the world have increasingly been the primary targets of massacres,
mass-orchestrated rapes, and organized sale into sexual servitude.
All the while, an overwhelming 97 percent of the 23 million soldiers
serving in today’s standing, uniformed armies are men. Where
combat forces are concerned, 99.9 percent are male.
Yet
the important and ever-present intersections of war and gender are
typically ignored in both academic and political discourse—with
the notable exception of the work of such critical feminist thinkers
as Cynthia Enloe. But overall, lacking answers from any one academic
field, Goldstein takes on the ambitious task of turning to six academic
disciplines to test a host of scientific and cultural hypotheses.
In
the process, Goldstein turns War and Gender into a fascinating
(albeit occasionally oversimplified) survey of the history, sociology,
anthropology, psychology, biology, and political science of war.
Are
gender roles in war, for instance, explained largely by anatomy
and physiology, including the role of testosterone? Should we look
toward innate gender differences in group dynamics, which might
have their roots in childhood gender segregation? Borrowing a page
from feminist critical theory, are the answers more likely to lie
in the cultural construction of “tough men” and “tender
women?” Could the sharply defined roles of men and women in
war be largely explained by men’s sexual and economic domination
of women and the accompanying “feminization” of enemies?
In
testing those hypotheses, Goldstein surveys an impressive range
of material, sharing sometimes familiar, occasionally surprising
and even startling conclusions along the way.
The
actual practice of war, writes Goldstein, is more important to some
societies than others. It is neither necessary nor preordained for
human beings to wage war against one another, he affirms, but when
war does occur, it is almost an entirely male enterprise where combat
is concerned: “Killing in war does not come naturally for either
gender, yet the potential for war has been universal in human societies.
To help overcome soldiers’ reluctance to fight, cultures develop
gender roles that equate ‘manhood’ with toughness under
fire. Across cultures and through time, the selection of men as
potential combatants (and of women for feminine war support roles)
has helped shape the war system. In turn, the pervasiveness of war
in history has influenced gender profoundly—especially gender
norms in child-rearing.”
In
child-rearing, Goldstein points toward the ways in which parents
unwittingly enforce gender norms with their offspring. From his
careful survey of existing research on the topic, Goldstein concludes
fathers are typically the most significant players in reinforcing
gender roles.
In
a 1993 study, for instance, fathers were five times more likely
to show a negative reaction to a preschool-aged son playing with
feminine materials than to a daughter playing with masculine ones,
whereas mothers reacted equally to children of both genders. (According
to other recent research, fathers also tend to use disparaging remarks
and name-calling more often than mothers, and seem to direct such
language more to sons than daughters.)
Proscribed
childhood gender roles and gender segregation are actually the “first
step” in preparing children for war, asserts Goldstein. “All-boy
groups in middle childhood develop the social interaction scripts
used later in armies,” he writes. “The characteristic
boys’ play styles and themes are very often tied directly to
the boys’ future roles in wartime (play-fighting, dominance,
heroic themes, and specific war scripts). If ‘boys’ culture’
is seen as functional in socializing males for adult roles, it surely
does so most efficiently with regard to war roles.”
While
not denying an interrelationship between biology and culture, Goldstein
dismisses ideas of biological determinism where the shaping of gender
roles are concerned. After surveying existing research, Goldstein
posits that high testosterone does seem to amplify existing patterns
of aggression, but the hormone does not appear to cause such patterns.
While
it is true that the average man is taller and stronger than the
average woman, says Goldstein, women have proven themselves to be
fierce, skilled warriors throughout history. (To prove this point,
the author devotes an entire chapter to “Women Warriors,”
detailing the exploits of the African Dahomey, female Soviet bombers
during WWII, and women fighters in the Sandanistas and the FMLN.)
The
idea that war comes naturally to men—and that this “natural”
inclination is why men are almost exclusively the combatants in
warfare—is not supported by the reality of veterans’ experiences
and the depth of their traumas. As Goldstein writes: “People
who might be considered mentally ill in another context—soldiers
who participate in combat find it extremely unnatural and horrible.
Any sane person, male or female, who is surrounded by the terrifying
and surreal sights and sounds of battle, instinctually wants to
run away, or hunker down and freeze up, and certainly not to charge
into even greater danger to kill and maim other people. Contrary
to the idea that war thrills men, expresses innate masculinity,
or gives men a fulfilling occupation, all evidence indicates that
war is something societies impose on men, who most often need to
be dragged kicking and screaming into it, constantly brainwashed
and disciplined once there, and rewarded and honored afterwards.
War is hell.”
Ultimately,
Goldstein finds strongest support for the gendered nature of war
in a trio of interrelated hypotheses: that societies across the
world ‘toughen’ up boy children (who do possess, on average,
greater size and strength than their girl counterparts) and link
bravery in war to manhood; that many women in societies are conditioned
to actively reinforce men’s toughness and societally- defined
masculinity; and that male soldiers use gender to “encode”
domination and feminize their enemies.
It’s
this trio of hypotheses that contain some of Goldsmith’s most
interesting findings. “Boys have to be trained and conditioned
for a warrior role,” he writes, “something that is accomplished
differently in each society.”
In
some, drugs and alcohol, religious rites, and the social rewards
of honor, prestige, or even political influence or leadership act
as incentives. Other common themes in the preparation of males for
combat range from the infliction of shame (by society, by other
men, and by women) toward men who demonstrate “weakness,”
and through the learned suppression of emotions.
Goldstein’s
insights regarding women’s reinforcement of soldiers’
masculinity are particularly notable. In pushing men toward the
horror of combat, a militaristic-minded society must also construct
a nurturing “feminine” realm, which is largely incompatible
with women’s participation in active combat. The net effect,
explains Goldstein, is to make combat tolerable.
“Male
soldiers can better motivate themselves for combat if they can compartmentalize
combat in their belief systems and identities,” he writes.
“They can endure, and commit terrible acts, because the context
is exceptional and temporary. They have a place to return to, or
at least to die trying to protect—a place called home or normal
or peacetime. In drawing this sharp dichotomy of hellish combat
from normal life, cultures find categories readily available as
an organizing device. Normal life becomes feminized and combat masculinized.”
In
this way, women participate actively as “codependents,”
even to the point of publicly shaming men into fighting wars. (In
Britain and the U.S. in World War I, for instance, women went so
far as organize campaigns to goad men into serving in the army by
handing out symbolic white feathers to able-bodied men.)
In
asserting this codependent relationship between men and women in
a militarized society, Goldstein never downplays the extent to which
women have been central organizers in peace and anti-nuclear movements.
(For all the women with white feathers during WWI, for instance,
many others were agitating to prevent conscription.) But, to his
credit, Goldstein does not shy away from analysis of the ways in
which gender roles are used and manipulated by societies to serve
the purpose of warfare.
As
has been well-documented by feminist authors for the last several
decades, military occupations and invasions have traditionally created
a temporary—and sometimes permanent—market for prostitution
and the sex trafficking of poor and vulnerable girls and women.
“Military
commanders have often encouraged, or directly organized, prostitution
to service their armies,” he writes, citing Enloe’s groundbreaking
work on the militarization of women’s lives.
The
rape of women is now seen as a sickeningly “normal” accompaniment
to war, tied integrally to warfare as yet another form of effective
domination. As precisely this kind of instrument of control and
terror, rape in wartime seems to have spread in the 1990s, asserts
Goldstein, having occurred in the context of countless numbers of
violent conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Liberia, Sierra
Leone, Burundi, Algeria, and Indonesia, among many other countries.
As
an academically-oriented text, War and Gender lacks the kind
of lyrical grace and creativity that a work encompassing such a
broad range of subtopics could have benefited from. But as a tool
for understanding the weight, complexity and magnitude of the role
of gender in perpetuating and feeding the existence of war, Goldstein’s
work is no less worthy of attention.
Silja
J.A. Talvi is a Seattle-based freelance journalist. She is a regular
contributor to publications ranging from the Christian
Science Monitor to In These Times,
and is co-editor of LiP Magazine.