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6 - Women and Antiwar Protest: Rearticulating Gender and Citizenship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

By
Kathryn Abrams
Edited by
Linda C. McClain  and
Joanna L. Grossman
Linda C. McClain
Affiliation:
Boston University
Joanna L. Grossman
Affiliation:
Hofstra University, New York
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Summary

Introduction

Law, like many other disciplines, has seen a recent rekindling of interest in questions of citizenship. Debates about immigration, about the meaning and obligations of American citizenship post-9/11, and about the domain of citizenship in a world shaped by both ethnic nationalism and the forces of globalization have given this familiar topic new salience. Yet paradoxically, protest – a dimension of citizenship that these debates have inspired – has not been systematically revisited. In this chapter, I consider protest as an activity of citizenship by analyzing its practice in a particular context: the waging of war. I also analyze such protest, as it has been undertaken by women, acting as women. This focus holds intrinsic interest to me, as a feminist scholar. However, focusing on the activity of a specific group of citizens – particularly one that has historically sustained a vexed relationship to citizenship – is consistent with the emerging theoretical framing of citizenship as a status and activity that is both differentiated and differentiating.

I will examine these questions through the lens of three recent antiwar movements led by women: Cindy Sheehan's Camp Casey vigil and related activism, CODEPINK for Peace, and Women in Black. Each of these groups has mobilized aspects of gender that have historically been offered as justifications for resisting war. Yet they have rearticulated these dimensions of gender to respond to a context in which the stakes are simultaneously lower and higher than in previous periods and few women subscribe to simple, unitary conceptions of motherhood or the relationship between women and peace.

Type
Chapter
Information
Gender Equality
Dimensions of Women's Equal Citizenship
 , pp. 131 - 153
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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