Feminism isn't about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It's about changing the way the world perceives that strength. G.D. Anderson
We live in a globalized world that equates making good use of time with a concept of "productivity" forged without a gender perspective.
A world built on a labor market, designed in the masculine, that has historically disregarded the time dedicated to family care, denying it social, economic, and curricular value, despite being an essential job for the economy, society, and life itself. A job as hard as it is invisible, sustained on the backs of women around the world, who also top the poverty statistics. Women who massively joined a hostile labor market that discriminates against them precisely for not ceasing to care. A recent study conducted in OECD countries shows the chronification of gender gaps in domestic work. Women spend, on average, twice as much time as men on household chores.[1]
But the practice of care is not only essential for sustaining daily life but also for the values and capacities it fosters in those who develop it because it entails the development of skills such as respect, understanding, tolerance, empathy, patience, commitment, or responsibility, which are a highly useful contribution to human development and the peaceful management of conflicts.
Precisely for this reason, the fear of values associated with femininity has been essential in military socialization, based on the principle of authoritarianism, obedience, and discipline that clash head-on with all those emotions that pose a threat to the ferocity demanded in armed professions. Affection, tenderness, or care are a challenge to the unconditional acceptance of authority, and therefore those values were eradicated and confined to private and feminine spheres. Women were not considered fit for wars, and therefore they have also been historically denied their participation in the resolution of armed conflicts, despite the various UN Resolutions to the contrary.[2]
This is the testimony of a Vietnam War veteran, a member of an American long-range reconnaissance patrol who, due to an intelligence error, perpetrated a massacre of innocent civilians, mostly children and fishermen:
The colonel said, "It's okay. We'll take care of it.
We have the body count!" "We have
the body count!". And you start turning it over in your head.
Deep down you know it's wrong, but at that moment your superiors
are telling you it's okay. So, well, it's okay, right?
That's war, isn't it?...
They wanted to give us a fucking honorary mention, those assholes. They handed out a bunch of medals. They gave medals to the lieutenants
and I know the colonel got his fucking medal. And with their award
ceremonies and everything, you know? And me standing there like an idiot while
they handed out the fucking medals for killing civilians.[3]
The above has a lot to do with sexist stereotypes and the social assignment of gender roles that predetermine men for authority and responsibility and women for submission and dependence, which is why men are more likely to combat fear with aggression and women with obedience. Stereotypes are irrational cognitive illusions that determine how we should be instead of recognizing how we are, but over time they are assumed as absolute truths. The statistical data of the prison population in any penitentiary in the world shows that women commit disproportionately fewer crimes in relation to men. In European prisons, for example, the average female prison population does not exceed 5.3%.[4]
Patriarchy and stereotyping suffocate women, but also oppress men.
Care as an Ally of Justice and a Preventive Anti-Violence Tool
The research of psychologist Carol Gilligan showed that women have a different moral development than men as a result of their socialization[5]. They are more apt for care, but not for biological reasons but through social learning. It is a gender construct, not a gender trait, linked to the role of mothers and caregivers that is assigned to them for being born women. Therefore, the category of gender in this case can be very useful in understanding conflicts.
According to Professor Irene Comins, the strategies traditionally used by women in conflict resolution are non-violent and are based on three substantial axes:
Attention to multiplicity, taking into account the specificities of each conflict and the needs of each party.
The non-existence of winners or losers. All parties must be satisfied to avoid new conflicts.
The priority is in attending to needs and not in applying punishments[6].
Bellicose violence and sexist violence have much in common, they are an automatism in the face of fear of diversity. The pattern of violence works similarly in wars, in society, and in the family environment, with gender violence being one of the most aberrant expressions of the fear of men's loss of power in relation to women. With each blow to a woman, a social pattern of exclusion is given prevalence, and this is reproduced in the future.
Therefore, care must be universalized as a preventive tool against social and intrafamily violence. Investment must be made in the infrastructure of care. A real change of social paradigms must be promoted where the practice of care becomes the center of social policies, making it extendable to the other half of the population, to make co-responsibility and equality real.
The feminized ethics of care must be changed to the humanized ethics of care to move towards a more peaceful and egalitarian society.
Care and assistance are not women's issues but universal human interests. The ideal is not to militarize women but to build a world without wars, a less mercantilist planet where the safety of people prevails over the security of States, and human rights do not bow to economic powers. Fear of the human capacity to care must be lost. Violence generates violence. Care generates Care.
By Gloria Poyatos, Judge of the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands
[1] http://www.eldiario.es/nidos/brecha-domesticas-mujeres-dedican-hombres_0_691181621.html
[2] http://www.un.org/es/peacekeeping/issues/women/wps.shtml
[3] Shay, Jonathan. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of
Character . New York: Scribner, 1994.
[4] http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/2057658/0/mujeres/prision/espana/
[5] Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice Psychological Theory and Women's Development.Harvard University press, 1982.
[6] Comins Mingol, Irene., Philosophy of care: a co-educational proposal for peace. Barcelona: Icaria, 2009.
