‘Starting with a Prayer’: Women, Faith, and Security in Fiji

Abstract

Scholars of global security have recently been captured by the idea that there is a link between 'sex and world peace'. They argue that the security of states and the international system should be understood as conditional upon the social, economic, and political standing of women. Accordingly, they contend that societies and states that display chauvinistic and discriminatory sociocultural influences are more tolerant of high levels of gender disadvantage and violence towards women, and more likely to be marked by general levels of belligerence, violence, and insecurity. Ideologies of faith are identified as helping to fuel this scenario. Hence, proponents of the 'sex and world peace' thesis construct a strongly oppositional relationship between gender and faith on the one hand, and gender and security on the other. In this paper, I challenge the idea that efforts to build security, gendered or otherwise, are only effective if they are secularised. I draw on examples from the Pacific Islands to defend my case. While I concede that faith can be a source of insecurity in many parts of the Pacific Islands region, and is often invoked in ways that legitimise violence, I also discuss important examples that illustrate where and how faith is a resource for the region's women peacebuilders who have resisted violence in interpersonal, intercommunal, and interregional contexts.

Gender Equality Theology and Essentialism: Catholic Responses to Gender‐Based Violence and Inequality in Papua New Guinea

“…At the same time, laypeople have also interpreted Catholicism in progressive and, or egalitarian ways (see for example Fedele 2013; Hermkens et al 2009). These and other examples show that faith can open up opportunities for both women and men activists aiming to promote transformational gender politics (Carroll 2021; Douglas 2003; George 2015). This is an important and productive counter‐argument to adjudications that depict religious and cultural ideologies as broadly constraining for women.…”

Institutionalising Women, Peace and Security in the Pacific Islands: Gendering the ‘architecture of entitlements’?

“…References to Christian faith have also been an important component of this work. Women from the conflict-affected countries of the region have regularly invoked ideas about their sacred and spiritual responsibilities for peace promotion, and the need for combatants, who are also believers, to respect that responsibility (George, 2015;Hermkens, 2011). In this way, women peace activists have worked within an informal 'architecture of entitlements', grounded in institutions of faith and culture, to establish their 'entitlement' to act as peacebuilders within communities afflicted by conflict.…”