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ON THE BIAS

Warring on Women: Understanding Complex Inequalities of Gender, Race, Class, and Nation

Margo Okazawa-Rey

Military violence is an extreme form of state violence against women. For example, in war, rape is perpetrated to humiliate women. It is also perpetrated to humiliate men who, in their patriarchal roles, are presumed to be able to “protect” women but cannot in situations of armed conflict.

GENDERED MILITARISM

Since the start of World War II, military violence has included the sexual enslavement of poor women, primarily from Korea, the Philippines, China, and Indonesia, the so-called comfort women, by the Japanese Imperial army; the rape and murder of

Author’s Note: This article is based on a plenary speech given at the con- ference, “The Color of Violence: Violence Against Women of Color,” Univer- sity of California, Santa Cruz, April 4-6, 2000. The author gratefully thanks the students in SW 835 (fall 2001) for the “Call to Act” segment of the article and Gwyn Kirk for her editorial comments. AFFILIA, Vol. 17 No. 3, Fall 2002 371-383 © 2002 Sage Publications

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Vietnamese women by U.S. military personnel during the U.S. war in Vietnam; the rape of Muslim women in Bosnia and eth- nic Albanian women in Kosova by Serbian military personnel and United Nations “peacekeeping” forces; brutality against women in Rwanda, Sudan, and Sierra Leone by their African brother soldiers; the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three U.S. servicemen; and the abuse of Mexican women at the U.S.-Mexico border by agents of the U.S. Immigration and Nat- uralization Service. In the history of European colonization, colonial militaries have perpetrated genocidal attacks on indig- enous women worldwide, such as in North America by British, Spanish, French, and U.S. troops.

In light of evidence of rape perpetrated on a massive scale in Bosnia and strong lobbying by international feminist organiza- tions, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution placing rape clearly within the framework of war crimes and called for an international tribunal to prose- cute these crimes (United Nations, 1993). In 2001, the Yugosla- via War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague ruled that “mass rape and sexual enslavement in time of war will for the first time be regarded as a crime against humanity, a charge second in grav- ity only to genocide” (Osborn, 2001).

Patriarchy and militarism are two interconnected systems of domination that are central to virtually every society in the world. Patriarchy is the dominance of men as a group over women as a group—in the family; in local communities; and in national institutions such as government, law, medicine, and religion. Patriarchal values are promoted by militarism, partic- ularly the social construction of masculinity, with an emphasis on emotional detachment, the false notion of invincibility, rela- tionships of domination and subordination, and the eroticization of domination. These idealized male qualities are pushed fur- ther during military training as part of what Enloe (1990) called “the construction of militarized masculinity” (p. 25). Women support military men in many ways as well: as proud mothers who encourage their sons to go to war, as wives who wait patiently for their husbands’ return, as brave nurses who make soldiers fit to fight again, and as bar women who prove “rest

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and recreation.” In short, militarism is a male-dominated, misogynist system, even when women are involved in it.

Militarism is also a system of dominance based on force and weapons. This system includes all the money, natural resources, brainpower, and creativity devoted to the produc- tion of weapons, military training, and war and the land taken from civilians for military maneuvers, bases, and bombing ranges. Military training dehumanizes people. It includes the dehumanization of “others” and the creation of enemies, as has happened in the United States with Arab and Muslim people. Militarism also generates and feeds on a culture of violence in the wider society—especially on television and in movies, video games, and children’s games and toys.

Although military personnel fight the battles, most casual- ties of modern high-tech warfare are civilians, especially women and children, who also constitute the majority of those in refugee camps. As Swiss and Giller (1993) noted,

Conventional estimates identify a 5% civilian casualty rate in World War I, compared to 90% of war casualties in 1990 being civilians, many of whom were women and children. This dra- matic change is in part the result of deliberate and systematic violence against whole populations. Violent less directly, though equally devastatingly, approximately 13 million women and girls have officially been documented by the UN as dis- placed persons, and it is estimated that there are millions more undocumented. Much of this displacement is due to armed con- flict. Women bear the heaviest burden stemming from displace- ment because they necessarily assume the role of head of house- hold and sustainer of whatever community ties may be left. (p. 612)

Although a full discussion is beyond the scope of this article, it is important to understand that militarism is integrally tied to economic globalization. According to Staples (2000), “Global- ization fuels the unrest, inequality, conflict, and ultimately, war . . . [and] the means to wage war by promoting and protect- ing industries neede to produce sophisticated weaponry” (p. 18). Staples further argues that globalization is “driving a global war economy and creating conditions for tremendous

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loss of human life” (p. 22) as well as a decline in human rights, social justice, environmental standards, and democracy (see also, Kirk & Okazawa-Rey, 2000). Energy industry interests, particularly the need to secure supplies of oil, have been the fundamental reason for the last three major U.S. military inter- ventions in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan (Talbot, 2000; Tanter, 2001).

At the root of military violence against women are the com- plex inequalities of gender, race and ethnicity, and class; impe- rialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism; and the central role of the military in the operations of those systems. In understand- ing military violence as well as other forms of state violence, U.S.-based antiviolence and peace activists must incorporate the concept of nation and national privilege into our analyses. There are power relations, inequalities, and privileges rooted in the interrelationship among countries and the relationship of countries to all First Nations or indigenous peoples. This inter- relationship is based on the oppression and exploitation of countries of the south by countries of the north.

A major contradiction we face as progressive activists is that we do not, perhaps cannot yet, fully acknowledge the privilege of being connected to the most economically and militarily powerful nation in the world because many of us do not iden- tify with the United States as a nation and its international poli- cies. When President Bush speaks of fighting the war in Afghanistan on behalf of “the American people,” we do not see ourselves included in that group but counter instead with “Not in our name.” We may believe that we are simply progressive people, anti-imperialists, the “good Americans,” just like antiracist White people sometimes think of themselves as the “good White people.” Both groups fail to recognize and acknowledge the ways in which the structures of power privi- lege us, irrespective of our consciousness about or personal identification with those structures. I present a personal exam- ple of this lack of consciousness about the concept of nation and what I came to understand about it.

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In 1994, when I went to South Korea as a Fulbright scholar to do research, I was shocked by the widespread U.S. military presence there. In a nation about one fourth the size of Califor- nia, there were more than 100 bases and installations with 37,000 personnel. As a result of this presence and the underly- ing unequal political relationship between the United States and the Republic of Korea, the U.S. military is viewed by many Koreans as an occupation force that limits Korean people’s sov- ereignty and that perpetrates crimes against local people, such as rapes, assaults, and burglaries (Okazawa-Rey, 1997). Because I have a U.S. passport, was affiliated with the Fulbright Program (a quasi-governmental entity), and was spending U.S. dollars, I was allowed to move about freely on and off the bases and to gain entry to many places, including the demilitarized zone between South Korea and North Korea, where no Kore- ans, except military personnel, are allowed. The other eye- opening experience was seeing the remnants of the Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945, particularly the earlier institutionalization of Japanese as the official language. My rudimentary Japanese language ability enabled me to talk with older Korean people who had been forced to speak Japanese. As I experienced various situations related to nation-state poli- tics, I began to ask myself, for example, Why I had not known about the history of U.S.-Korean and Japanese-Korean relations?

My experiences in Korea made me aware of a particular poli- tics of identity that I had never been forced to confront: my con- nection to two imperialist nations, Japan and the United States, because I am both Japanese—by parentage, culture, and language—and American—by parentage, culture, language, and citizenship. Becoming aware of these features of my iden- tity and the structural power of nation underlying it helped me begin to understand nation as an important analytical tool. The analytical lens of nation helps illuminate certain power dynam- ics between nations that are often invisible to, or simply taken for granted by, those in powerful countries but obvious to citi- zens of countries that are in the subordinate position.

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Another phenomenon I witnessed in South Korea is the operation of the politics of intersectionality. Intersectionality refers to the dynamic interaction and interrelatedness of social ascription, such as gender, class, race, and nation, and the power, privilege, and disadvantage they entail, often in contra- dictory ways, depending on the context. The dynamics of intersectionality are similar to a kaleidoscope: As one shifts the lens (context), the colors and shapes of the image (power, privi- lege, and disadvantage) change. I observed working-class enlisted men of color—African American and Latino—come face to face with poor Korean women (bar women) in social interactions in the entertainment establishments, usually bars, located outside U.S. bases. The class positions of the men and women in their respective countries were similar—poor and working class. But when the men’s gender and their connec- tions to the U.S. government, particularly the military, are con- sidered in understanding the interaction, the inequalities between the men and the women become stark. By virtue of being U.S. service personnel, the men have enormous status and privilege in Korea, including immunity from local laws if they commit crimes against local people.

Regardless of whether they acknowledge it or not, most peo- ple who live in the United States benefit enormously from national privilege, which stems from U.S. imperialism and the dominance of this nation in economic and political relations worldwide. Although the benefits accrue relative to class posi- tion, ironically even people who are marginalized in the United States benefit from national privilege. For example, everyone’s consumption of consumer goods and energy comes at the price of the poverty of people in southern countries. This dominance has a significant impact on both foreign and domestic policies. As progressive social workers who are concerned about the plight of oppressed peoples everywhere, we must actively hold this country—its government and corporations—accountable for their actions, domestically as well as globally. Race, class, gender, and nation are all necessary analytic lenses for explain- ing and understanding the effects on women of both economic globalization and military and other forms of state violence.

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EPILOGUE

This article was developed from a talk I gave in spring 2000, but it is difficult to end it without discussing the war in Afghani- stan. The gender, race, class, and nation framework I discussed earlier is particularly useful in understanding the current crisis and figuring out how to position oneself in it.

According to many people in the United States, “the world changed” as a result of the horrific, September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that resulted in the death and injury of thousands of people. While I was writing this article, the United States and Britain were waging a “war on terrorism” and “bombing them [Afghanistan] back to the Stone Age,” ostensibly in response to the September 11 attacks and to protect “national security.” Daily bombings included the extensive use of cluster bombs, which many argue are the most horrific weapons next to nuclear weapons (see, e.g., “Ticking Time Bombs,” 1999).

In preparing people in the United States and the world for “the inevitability of war,” both the Bush administration and the mainstream media reported the extreme forms of violence and human rights abuses perpetrated by the Taliban government of Afghanistan against Afghani women and used the oppression of Afghani women as one justification for starting the war. This is hypocrisy beyond belief because the U.S. government aided in the formation of the Taliban to overthrow a secular govern- ment that had improved conditions for women in Afghanistan somewhat (see, e.g., Ahmed, 2001; Digital National Security Archive, 2001). According to Pratt (2001),

In 1978 a secular government came to power in Afghanistan. This government immediately moved to improve the terrible feudal conditions of women. It set up literacy programs espe- cially for women, whose illiteracy rate was 96%. It trained more teachers and published textbooks in local languages. It trained brigades of women to go into the countryside to provide medi- cal services and by 1985 increased hospital beds by 80%. It pro- hibited the brideprice and gave women freedom to choose their marriages. It prohibited punishment of women for losing their

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virginity before marriage. It made it possible for women to train and then work as doctors, teachers, and lawyers. The govern- ment also canceled mortgage debts of laborers and tenants; these debts had been inherited over generations so that feudal warlords held landworkers as virtual serfs. (p. 1)

Furthermore, feminists globally, most notably the Revolu- tionary Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA) and the Fund for a Feminist Majority, had been lobbying the U.S. gov- ernment for several years, urging it to address the extreme human rights violations committed against women in Afghani- stan, but they were met with indifference and resistance. On March 2, 1998, Mavis Leno, a national board member of the Feminist Majority; Theresa Loar, senior coordinator for Inter- national Women’s Issues at the State Department; Lea Browning, of We Are for Human Rights and the Working Group; Zieba Shorish-Shamley, of the Women’s Alliance for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan; and T. Kumar, of Amnesty International, among others, testified on Capitol Hill to mem- bers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to draw formal attention to the problem. At that time, Leno also

expressed grave concerns about the planned building of a multi- billion dollar gas and oil pipeline from energy-rich Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan to Pakistan. California-based UNOCAL, an U.S. energy company, holds the largest stake in a consortium to build the pipeline. An Argentinian company, Bridas, which is in part owned by Amoco, is also vying for the pipeline. Accord- ing to some estimates, the Taliban stands to gain as much as $100 million a year from the pipeline. (Feminist Majority News Wire, 1998)

The testimonies concerned violations against women as well as the connection between militarism and economic interests, in this case, energy industry interests. They were met with deaf- ening silence and inaction.

The war in Afghanistan will not correct the human rights violations against women; it will only worsen their plight. The Northern Alliance, the main U.S. ally in Afghanistan and the presumed successor to the Taliban, is reputed to be no better

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than the Taliban. Thus, the women of RAWA (2001) have denounced the installation of the Northern Alliance as the new governing body of Afghanistan.

The retreat of the terrorist Taliban from Kabul is a positive devel- opment, but [the entrance] of the rapist and looter NA [National Alliance] in the city is nothing but dreadful and shocking news for about 2 million residents of Kabul. . . .

The Taliban and Al-Quaeda will be eliminated, but the exis- tence of the NA as a military force would shatter the joyful dream of the majority for an Afghanistan free from the odious chains of barbaric Taliban. The NA will horribly intensify the ethnic endless civil war in order to retain power. The terrible news of looting and inhuman massacre of the captured Taliban or their foreign accomplices in Mazar-e-Sharif in the past few days speaks for itself.

Though the NA has learned how to pose sometimes before the West as “democratic” and even [as a] supporter of women’s rights, but in fact they have not at all changed, as a leopard can- not change its spots.

Moreover, the bombings are further devastating a country that has already been ravaged by decades of war and is one of the poorest of the world. Because of decades of armed conflict, severe drought since 1998 (the worst in 30 years), and crop fail- ure, millions of people, mainly women and children, have been forced to flee their homes. Ford and Davis (2001) state that “by late spring 2001, more than 4 million Afghans had taken refuge in neighboring countries, and several hundred thousand more were displaced within Afghanistan” (p. 1543). According to the Afghan Women’s Mission (2001), ”maternal mortality rates in Afghanistan are among the highest in the world; one quarter of Afghan children do not survive their fifth birthday; literacy rates are extremely low, barely above 4% for women”; and the average life expectancy is 43 years. On the basis of these and other indicators, “Afghanistan has the lowest UN gender development ranking in the world” (Afghan Women’s Mis- sion, 2001).

Furthermore, according to Rothschild (2001), the Pentagon has given pilots the freedom to fire at will in Afghanistan,

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instead of targeting predetermined sites. With such free reign, civilian casualties are bound to mount. Herold’s (2001) report documented that after 2 months of bombings, there were more than 3,700 civilian casualties, although this figure has not been widely reported in the U.S. media. Clearly, the course of action the United States has undertaken will only exacerbate the human rights and humanitarian crises facing the women, chil- dren, and men of Afghanistan.

There are implications of the war on terrorism for women and children in the United States as well. Most concretely, the money spent on the war will be siphoned off from money spent on human services. At the start of the war, Congress allocated $40 billion to finance the war and $15 billion to bail out the air- line industry. It is estimated that the United States is spending $1 billion per month on the war. This $1 billion could instead provide, for example, Head Start services to 1,786,991 children or pay for 374,588 students for 4 full academic years at public 4- year colleges (Women’s Actions for New Directions, 2001). Even before the war, 54% of the discretionary budget for fiscal year 2002—or $343 billion—was allocated to the Pentagon; the proposed budget for fiscal year 2003 exceeds $400 billion (Women’s Action for New Directions, 2001). Globally, total mil- itary spending by all governments is more than $2 billion a day. In 2000, the U.S. proportion was 37% of the total amount, which topped the combined spending of the next nine biggest spend- ers (Stockholm Peace Research Institute, 2000).

If the national polls are correct and the display of flags sig- nals “patriotism,” the nationalism used to “manufacture con- sent” (Herman & Chomsky, 1988) to wage war has overridden other identities. This seems to be the case even among people in historically marginalized communities, such as communities of color, where opposition to the state has been the foundation of important political struggles. The war on terrorism and the related media propaganda war have resulted in nation trump- ing gender, race, and class. People who otherwise may oppose the U.S. government’s domestic policies because of their injuri- ous effects on communities of color and women, for example, seem to back the current war effort. Much of the populace has

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stood by while, in the name of national security and patriotism and through the use of executive and legislative powers, Presi- dent Bush and the U.S. Congress are implementing laws, such as the USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act of 2001. This legislation severely cur- tails civil liberties, especially those of immigrant peoples, and opens the door for official violations of human rights. What, then, should be our response as feminist social workers and social work educators who understand the meaning and impli- cations of armed conflict? of nationalism? who are dedicated to improving the lives of women and children?

CALL TO ACT

As U.S.-based feminist social workers and social work educa- tors, we must raise our voices and act, following the legacy of activist social workers such as Jane Addams, Bertha Capen Reynolds, Winnie Mandela, former Congressman Ronald Dellums, and Congresswoman Barbara Lee, to call for

• an end to the war in Afghanistan and aid in rebuilding that coun- try, including establishing a truly democratic peace process that involves women in every aspect of decision making;

• a repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, which has opened the door for profoundly disturbing violations of civil liberties and human rights;

• the release of the hundreds of suspected “terrorists” being held in custody around the country; and

• U.S. participation in established international courts and tribu- nals to resolve conflicts, including International Criminal Court.

We must struggle with others to demilitarize our nation and culture, including the demilitarization of masculinity. We must demand that our government invest the money being spent on military expenditures in rebuilding this country’s inadequate infrastructure (school buildings, public transportation, roads,

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railways, and bridges), cleaning up the environment, beautify- ing the land, guaranteeing livelihoods for all, and providing the best resources—material and nonmaterial—for children and young people. We must also work to ensure that all indi- viduals’ and communities’ cultural and religious backgrounds are honored. We must dedicate ourselves in the struggle to reduce inequalities of all kinds, both in the United States and worldwide. These are the conditions that will provide genuine security for women, children, and men.

REFERENCES

Afghan Women’s Mission. (2001). Background. Retrieved from http:// www.afghanwomensmission.org/background

Ahmed, N. M. (2001). Afghanistan, the Taliban and the United States: The role of human rights in Western foreign policy. Retrieved from http://www. mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq2.html#1

Digital National Security Archive. (2001). Afghanistan: The making of US Policy: 1973-1990. Retrieved from http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com.afintro.htm

Enloe, C. (1990). Bananas, beaches, and bases: Making feminist sense of interna- tional politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Feminist Majority News Wire. (1998, March 2). Leno testifies against gender apartheid in Afghanistan. Retrieved from http://www.feminist.org/news/ newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=3178

Ford, N., & Davis, A. (2001, November 3). Chaos in Afghanistan: Famine, aid, and bombs. The Lancet, 358, 1543-1544.

Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent: Political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon.

Herold, M. (2001). A dossier on civilian victims of United States’ aerial bombing of Afghanistan: A comprehensive accounting. Unpublished manuscript, Univer- sity of New Hampshire, Durham.

Kirk, G., & Okazawa-Rey, M. (Eds.). (2000) Neo-liberalism, militarism, and armed conflict [Special issue]. Social Justice, 27(4).

Okazawa-Rey, M. (1997). Children of GI town: A legacy of militarized prosti- tution in South Korea. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 3, 73-102.

Osborn, A. (2001, February 23). Mass rape ruled a war crime. Guardian of Lon- don. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/ 0,4273,4140914,00.html

Pratt, M. B. (2001). Women’s liberation and the “new war.” Unpublished manu- script. (Available from the author at [email protected])

Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan. (2001, November 13). RAWA’s appeal to the UN and world community. Retrieved from http:// www.rawa.org/na-appeal.htm

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Rothschild, M. (2001, October 27). The sick logic of war. The Progressive Retrieved from http://www.progressive.org/webex/wx102701.html

Staples, S. (2000). The relationship between globalization and militarism. Social Justice, 27, 18-22.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. (2000). The fifteen major spenders in 2000, 1995-2000. Retrieved from http://projects.sipri.se/ milex/mex_major_spenders.html

Swiss, S., & Giller, J. (1993, August 4). Rape as a crime of war: A medical per- spective. Journal of the American Medical Association, 270, 612-615.

Talbot, K. (2000). The real reasons for war in Yugoslavia: Backing up global- ization with military might. Social Justice, 27, 94-116.

Tanter, R. (2001). Pipeline politics: Oil, gas and the US interest in Afghanistan. Retrieved from http://www.zmag.org/znet.htm/tanteroil

Ticking time bombs: NATO’s use of cluster munitions. (1999). Human Rights Watch, 11(6).

United Nations. (1993). Rape and abuse of women in the territory of the former Yugoslavia (UN document E/CN.4/1993/L.21). Geneva: Author.

Women’s Action for New Directions. (2001, August). The American pie exercise. (Available from WAND, 691 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington, MA 02476)

Margo Okazawa-Rey, MSSS, Ed.D., is a professor in the School of Social Work, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Fran- cisco, CA 94132; e-mail: [email protected].

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