Above Photo: From Medium.com
Note: The Women’s March on the Pentagon being organized by Cindy Sheehan is an example of women who are organizing to show women oppose war.
War ruins the life of anyone it comes into contact with. But on International Women’s Day, it is important that we remember that for every harm visited upon men by war, women suffer a disproportionate amount of cruelty.
Women are systematically shunned from institutions of power around the world, the same institutions who decide to engage in the conflicts that will destroy the lives of women. Women then also struggle to have their voices heard by the powers who try to help in conflict zones, so often the issues that only affect women go unnoticed.
The most basic needs of women in conflict zones are often a revelation to men. There is always a presumption of gender neutrality (read, maleness) when large groups of people are discussed. This means the concept of displaced people needing sanitary products in refugee camps is never considered because gender neutral (read, male) people don’t have periods. This may seem flippant, but the reality is women in refugee camps, in pain, unable to get clean, and humiliated, especially in areas where there is still a big stigma around menstruation.
Here are three more ways in which conflict disproportionately harms women.
1. Rape and sexual violence within war zones are at their “worst ever”
Rape as a weapon of war has always been used against women. Rape is used to humiliate and demoralise civilians, force women from their homes, as a method of torture, to punish women and their families and, at the most extreme, is used as a tool of genocide. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of the UN organisation dedicated to gender equality and empowerment, said “new types of violence and torture, worse than anything we’ve ever seen before” have been used against Rohingya women.
Sexual violence is not just the tool of the enemy. In South Sudan, many refugee women are coerced or trafficked into sex work in order to feed themselves and their families. With a break down of law and order, and an understanding amongst displaced civilians that work is scarce, Sudanese men with any amount of remaining power use it against the vulnerable women left behind.
Even worse are the reports that UN Peace Keeping forces have been reported engaging in “transactional sex” with women in a civilian protection camp.
All of this happens in an environment where women and girls have no recourse to justice and they have to leave with the knowledge that not one of their many abusers may see punishment.
2. Harmful Traditional Practices, such a FGM, child marriage and female infanticide, dramatically increase in conflict areas
In wars against ethnic communities, those communities are facing destruction through the death of their population or through concerted efforts to displace and disperse those groups.
In order to make sure their culture survives, harmful traditional practices then happen at a higher rate, without dissension amongst that community. It is globally recognised by anti-FGM campaigners that the best people to stop such practices are vocal, high status members of communities who stand up for their women and girls. When these people have died through war, are lost when fleeing their homes, or even now support FGM to bring cohesion to their community, these voices are gone for generations.
“Male Power” is also further cemented by the increased presence of militarised men. This then becomes the standard of power broken comm strive towards, where the remaining men over compensate with traditional practices of male dominance towards the women in their communities to counter the humiliations done to them.
Displacement can even cause a resurgence in FGM and other harmful practices in communities who don’t usually inflict them on their girls. In Mali, refugees from areas who did not traditionally practice FGM where being ostracised by the community they found themselves living with for not mutilating their daughters. In order to protect themselves, FGM spread through the pressure to perform it on the daughters of refugees.
In order to protect their daughters, many parents in conflict zones try to marry them off, to create stability and safety for them. This results in early, forced marriages. Compounding the issue is that often marriage can only happen once a girl has undergone FGM. This increases the need to perform FGM on ever younger girls as volatile situations remain unsolved.
3. Half of all global maternal deaths happen in conflict zones and fragile states
Rape and FGM can have disastrous long term effects on women’s ability to safely have children — often one of the main factors in the systematic rape of minority women is to destroy their reproductive health. “Transactional” sex and other forms of coercion and trafficking lead to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
This is then coupled with the lack of health infrastructure in war zones, which leads to many women giving birth in unsanitary conditions without any access to health care professionals should there be any complications. In South Sudan, 1 in 28 women will die of pregnancy related causes.
War is destructive in all its forms, whoever is being caught up in it. When Governments, especially Western Governments who make a big show of their support for women, want to start wars they need to know of the specific and catastrophic impacts conflict has on women. This is pressure we have an obligation to keep on them and aid agencies, not just on March 8th, but every day.