Women’s War: Gender Activism in the Vietnam War and in the Wars for Kurdish Autonomy

Abstract

This paper debates women’s activism in two events: the Vietnam War (1954-1975) and the historical Kurdish struggle for autonomy (known as “Kurdish question”). We hypothesize that the reorganization of gender roles during the conflicts marks the meanings of wars and configures what we call a woman for the times of war, that is, a woman who transits across the spaces of public confrontation, armed conflict and domesticity. The approach outlined here is structured into three parts: the first and the second ones present aspects of both conflicts by pointing to possible convergences and differences between them; we also present the variety of networks of participation and activism of women in both cases. In the third and final part, we discuss the interfaces among the production of gender, war, and ideas, crossing a manifold of narratives, experiences, and stories that reveal different dimensions of wars and nations, and the diversity of the regimes of ideas that attached to them.

Kurdish gender politics: Funeral ceremonies of female fighters

“…Initially, the YJWK prioritized national liberation over women's rights, considering national oppression the main reason behind women's oppression (Basch‐Harod, 2014). Later, unlike the claim that the politicization and mobilization of Kurdish women unintentionally led them to question sexism in the Kurdish organization and to develop a feminist consciousness (Yüksel, 2006), Kurdish women benefited from the women's rights movement that internationally gained momentum in the 1980s and 1990s (Chaguri & Paniz, 2019; Kisanak, 2016). With the support of Abdullah Ocalan, who framed the party's ideology based on gender emancipation (Basch‐Harod, 2014), women organized their political activism in the mid‐1990s, achieving growing recognition in the party (Merdjanova, 2021).…”