So here we are again, faced with the question, “Does a female perspective in the government lean towards peace when contemplating military action?” In class we have reflected on whether men are more violent than women. We have also looked at peace movements as related to gender. Going back to the question I posed, I have come to the conclusion that given the patriarchal society we live in, women who do make it to a top position in government have traits associated with masculinity, thus I’m not sure that we can conclude that a female perspective would lean towards peace. Moreover, women have been part of military forces for years now and many female leaders have actually led their people to war such as Joan of Arc, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher. I don’t think that we can confidently say that women are more peaceful than men because that only enforces a stereotype and locks people into gender roles.
In a recent article published by the Christian Science Monitor, there has been an observed gender gap in the debate of Obama’s administration to go to war in Libya. Contrary to what might be easy to believe, men in the administration like Defense Secretary Robert Gates and White House chief of staff William Daley argued against a no-fly zone in Libya, whereas several prominent women, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice, pushed for military action.
According to a New York Times article on the news, the women who are in favor of US military intervention, “were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Libya” by preventing the Libyan dictator from killing more of his own people. An opinion piece published in the Washington Post by retired US Army Gen. Wesley Clark on the other hand, argued that the US should not intervene because there is no, “clearly stated objective, legal authority, committed international support or adequate on-the-scene military capabilities, and Libya’s politics hardly foreshadow a clear outcome.”
The two opinions are intriguing because on the one hand, the women are looking to intervene in order to prevent mass murder in the country. On the other hand, Wesley sites the principles of just theory and opines that going to war would be out of line for the US to do. I agree with Wesley on this point. We should not be intervening because it is not our place to do so. If the humanitarian argument were really of concern, the US would have intervened in Sudan and even Bosnia and Rwanda.
The counter point to Wesley’s argument is that now the US can support Middle Eastern governments and provide services that decrease support of terrorist groups, which definitely is in our interest to do so. Still, I am not convinced by this argument because I think it is an extension of American imperialism. Who are we to force democracy on other nations, even if it is done in the name of defeating terrorism? If the call for democracy doesn’t come from within the nation, then the results are often unstable governments headed by dictators as we have seen with US interventions in Latin America. That in itself is a humanitarian crisis.
To conclude, I believe that these arguments dispel the notion that women in government will bring the “feminine” perspective of peace to the table. We should not assign the preference of peace towards a specific gender because I think men and women are equally capable of supporting a war.