Reweaving the New World Order: An Ecofeminist Analysis
Examines women's changing roles in the military in the wake of the Persian Gulf War & the potential impact of these changes for activist-based theories of feminist antimilitarism, including ecofeminism. Conventional theories of feminist antimilitarism have typically endorsed the notion of women as peacekeepers. But as the Persian Gulf War demonstrates, women are beginning to occupy important combat positions in ways that upset the equation of women with peace. This has generated a larger social debate on the place of women in combat, & on women's gender identity in general. It is suggested that this war was framed in the mainstream media as a rebirth of masculinity in the wake of the Vietnam War & as a technicization & domestication of notions of mother & nature. To combat this frame, it is argued that socialist ecofeminist must develop an alternative vision that works from the personal to the international & derives strategies closely connected to the context of their generation. D. M. Smith