Gender, War, and Conflict

From Pakistan to Chechnya, Sri Lanka to Canada, pioneering women are taking their places in formal and informal military structures previously reserved for, and assumed appropriate only for men. Women have fought in wars, either as women or covertly dressed as men, throughout the history of warfare, but only recently have they been allowed to join state militaries, insurgent groups, and terrorist organizations in unprecedented numbers.

This begs the question - how useful are traditional gendered categories in understanding the dynamics of war and conflict? And why are our stories of gender roles in war typically so narrow? Who benefits from them? In this illuminating book, Laura Sjoberg explores how gender matters in war-making and war-fighting today. Drawing on a rich range of examples from conflicts around the world, she shows that both women and men play many more diverse roles in wars than either media or scholarly accounts convey. Gender, she argues, can be found at every turn in the practice of war; it is crucial to understanding not only ‘what war is’, but equally how it is caused, fought and experienced.

With end of chapter questions for discussion and guides to further reading, this book provides the perfect introduction for students keen to understand the multi-faceted role of gender in warfare. Gender, War and Conflict will challenge and change the way we think about war and conflict in the modern world.

• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Introducing Gender, War, and Conflict
• Chapter 2. Where are the Women?
• Chapter 3. Where are the Men?
• Chapter 4. Why Men and Women Are Not Enough
• Chapter 5. Redefining War, Understanding Gender
• Chapter 6. War(s) as if Gender Mattered
• References

''Laura Sjoberg has written a valuable, teachable and up-to-the-minute gender-smart book about war. With its mix of gritty case studies and Big Questions, Gender, War and Conflict offers lucky readers the tools to reassess mainstream International Relations' theories and to start fashioning explanations of their own.''
Cynthia Enloe, Clark University

"Laura Sjoberg's book is a feminist international relations primer for the real world. She shows that we can’t understand - let alone end - wars and conflicts if we don’t understand the masculinities and femininities that fuel them. This is the book that everyone - students, academics, and policy-makers - needs to read."
Jacqui True, Monash University

"Gender, War, and Conflict provides a solid analysis about women and gender in conflict and war by highlighting gendered assumptions, experiences and values. An extremely useful study that examines conflict from a feminist perspective, Sjoberg makes an important contribution to the fields of international relations and political science to think in new ways about war."
Terrorism and Political Violence Laura Sjoberg is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.