It's a struggle to be heard above the male-driven din of conflict
Yvonne Roberts Sunday March 23, 2003 The Observer
A placard in Whitehall last Thursday read 'Blondes Against The Dumb War'. A neat twist of self-parody since, irrespective of the diverse opinions among women on the war - pro, anti, confused and constantly changing - at first sight this appears a man's war, dominated in all arenas by male voices, using hi-tech video war games and traditional macho imagery, a kind of war tools porn.
Acres of news pages offer pictures of bombs and tanks and planes, spawning an army of acronyms, Moab, JDAMs, discussed in the now customary depersonalised language of conflict: 'Let's rock 'n' roll', a hip euphemism for killing. 'Our boys open fire' read Friday's headline in the Daily Express.
Women are not just marginalised, they are also rendered invisible. Once upon a time, women were denied the vote on the grounds that they would not make the ultimate sacrifice. Now, they are prepared to do so. In the 1991 Gulf war, 34,000 women fought - the majority American, 1,000 British. In this war, the Ministry of Defence is bizarrely coy, refusing to divulge numbers. Still, we know they are there. We have seen a couple, photographed as perfect propaganda tools, not as serving soldiers but as soldiers' sweethearts.
An American female pilot of a B-52 bomber was also mentioned in the media, mocked because she requested that her plane provide more than a men's urinal.
John Keegan, defence editor of the Daily Telegraph, has a use for women in the combat zone. He writes that far from reducing the effectiveness of men under fire, making them 'over-protective', their presence encourages men to 'perform better... as if to emphasise their masculinity... '. He does not expand on the effect males have on the behaviour of their female colleagues.
It does not say much for democracy or the principle of citizenship or the pace of social change.
Still, why expect it to be any different? Perhaps because we have been fed the propaganda that every corner of society has allegedly been saturated in emotions and 'feminised'. Yet, like a corpse freed from its anchor at the bottom of the pond, traditional machismo surfaces, whole and intact because the war machine requires it.
Forget the debates about who 'we' are, (divided and troubled is the most accurate answer). Chuck out those mostly male driven dialogues about 'new' nationalism, 'new' patriotism, a 'new' Britain ('...open and personal... less macho and miserable... a more feminised place...' wrote commentator Jonathan Freedland in 1997.) War reduces the turmoil to the dimensions of a dreadful old-fashioned western. Who are we? The good guys, and the women are expected to stay mum.
Except, of course, that many are not. Dorothy Sheridan, author of Wartime Women, is also the head of special collections at the University of Sussex. Since December, under her direction, more than 350 individuals, mainly women, have kept diaries detailing their reaction to events. She says these documents reveal a highly informed, sophisticated reasoning for opposition and a profound anger against Tony Blair.
Twenty years ago, at Greenham Common, female dissent was often fundamentalist. Wendy Webster, lecturer at the University of Lancaster, now writing a book on Englishness and empire, describes how women opposed to American cruise missiles argued that they were nurturers, carers and therefore more peace-loving than men.
Now, new lines of communication, such as access to the internet, mean that the dangerous essentialism is easily rivalled by opinions based on hard facts, such as the impact of sanctions - the history of covert American intervention. Promises of reconstruction are treated warily. The Taliban may have been removed but in the 'new' Afghanistan, only two women have been appointed to the government, and the country remains in rubble.
'I'm not opposed because I'm nicer,' said one woman marching in London yesterday. 'I'm opposed because I'm informed.'
According to a survey by YouGov, published in the Telegraph on Friday, 85 per cent of women are 'very' or 'fairly' worried about the war's possible consequences, compared with 65 per cent of men. Academic Hilary Foottit, author of Women, Europe and the New Language of Politics, says females see conflicts as 'more up close and personal... ' And probably with justification. The UN estimates that 70 per cent of displaced people in wars are women and children.
Women can be bellicose. Cultural historian Lucy Noakes, now writing a book on women and the military in twentieth-century Britain, points out that while war causes loss and destruction, it also delivers change and challenges. In the First World War, for instance, women who had been domestic servants on £18 a year took men's jobs - relabelled as munitionettes - and made bullets for the fortune of £5 a week. Margaret Thatcher was a military drag act; an imitation Churchill dressed as Britannia, 'mothering' our troops facing the Argentines.
No matter how horrific the images of Iraqi civilian casualties, at least some dissenting female voices are bound to be won over by the fighting presence of 'our' lads. 'I don't feel I can object to the war any more,' one protester said. 'Not now the boys are fighting on our behalf.'
Working-class lads have temporary respite from the so-called 'crisis in masculinity', more accurately analysed as bad schooling leading to no qualifications, no jobs, no sustainable relationships and no-hope addictions. They may have joined up expecting a wage but they've been handed a war. Suddenly, they are 'real' men, (at least, until they return damaged heroes, as some did after Kuwait, and no one wants to know), brave battlers like their fathers and grandfathers before them, protectors and defenders of hearth, home and womanhood.
In Iraq, the legitimisation of war, for all its hi-tech wizardry, represents that traditional paradox - innocent women and children killed to save innocent women and children. Of course, in modern times, women - as they were in the Twin Towers - are earning a living, so hearth and home is often deserted, or occupied by the househusband. Still, men sacrificing themselves has a potent pull as the opinion polls will soon show.
Perhaps, however, battle camouflage (matched with dreadful irony, by the high street where consumerism is making a killing, flogging silk combat trousers), has also disguised clear signs that the pursuit of war is undergoing some change.
On the anti-war demonstrations, men and boys have been making the arguments which once would have been seen as the preserve of women. 'Anything war can do, peace can do better - not always, but more often than the politicians think,' said a 15-year-old boy.
On television, the individual safe in studio with bouffant hairdo and tailored suit is just as likely to be male, while the 'man' on the ground can be female.
Does it make a difference? Yes. A different style of war reporting, among men too, has emerged in the past few days; it links political manoeuvring and the terrible machinery of war with the human cost paid by ordinary people.
David Chater's reports on Sky TV of the bombardment of Baghdad on Friday night, when he highlighted the families living under the firestorm, was one example. And Channel 4's award-winning correspondent Lindsey Hilsum described one kind of courage when she talked about one Baghdad family last week: 'No bravado, no rhetoric. Through no fault of their own, they just happen to live here.'
Do women approach war differently? Email debate at observer.co.uk www.observer.co.uk/iraq