Militarization and War

Abstract

This chapter explores two major feminist questions about war and militarization and makes use of five key concepts to address those questions. The first question concerns how we frame our questions: are feminists primarily asking “where are the women?” in war and in militarized societies or are we primarily asking, “how is war gendered?” The second question concerns feminists’ political goals: are we trying to reform militaries in order to achieve fairness and equality for women, or are we working to transform societies so that they are less militaristic? We argue that both sets of questions and goals are important, even though they stand in tension with one another. We make use of, and interrogate, the concepts of gender, intersectionality, war, militarization, and securitization to guide our inquiry, and we make several suggestions to guide future feminist research and teaching on militarization and war.