Anti-Militarist Feminist Approaches to Researching Gender and the Military

Abstract

Rather than accept at face value the assumption that militaries exist to protect the borders of states and the citizens within them, anti-militarist feminists see militaries as part of a system which threatens us all. As such, they are sceptical that the integration of women into militaries will challenge this war system. This chapter details the twin themes of much anti-militarist feminist research – militarism’s destructive power and militaries as misogynist institutions – and shows how they generate a feminist analysis of war as a system. It then examines the place of anti-militarist feminist scholarship on gender and the military today.