This slogan, taken from a British poster during World War I, was one representation of "Gender, War and Revolution in Global Perspective" at IROW's Spring Symposium last April. Drawing their examples from Britain, Sri Lanka, Central America, the United States and Grenada, speakers discussed women's roles in revolution and peace-making and the images of gender that have sustained modern warfare. Their varied disciplinary perspectives enriched the discussion.
In the opening talk Melissa Hall, an art historian from SUNY-Binghamton, explored the relationship between gender and military ideologies in British and United States pictorial propaganda during the First World War. Using a fascinating collection of slides, she analyzed the ways that wartime posters, cartoons and paintings manipulated images of both masculinity and femininity to further the military effort.
Two other speakers emphasized similar themes in very different contexts. Sitralega Maunaguru, Associate Professor of Tamil Studies at the University of Jaffna, showed how Tamil organizations in Sri Lanka have used conflicting ideologies of women as both mothers and fighters to furthers nationalist aims.
Discussing the recent Persian Gulf War, Linda Pershing, a folklorist in the Department of Women's Studies at the University at Albany, analyzed the strong images of male sexuality in much of the language used to discuss the war, while the omnipresent display of yellow ribbons represented femininity and women awaiting men's return.
Turning the discussion to women's role in situations of war and revolution, Ana C. Escalante, a Professor of Sociology from the University of Costa Rica, reviewed the consequences of war for Central American women and their participation in popular liberation movements. Looking to the future, she called for a feminist response to these conditions, arguing, "Central American women are, most of the time without knowing it, feminists because from their own living and daily experiences they are constructing `antimachistas' values."
Tying together the two intellectual strands of the conference, Dessima Williams, a Williams College faculty member in Political Science and a former diplomat from Grenada, examined the issues surrounding the mobilization of women during the revolution in Grenada and the gendered images that were integral to the United States invasion of the country.