I
found the most critical moment of Amy Swerdlow’s book, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in
the 1960s, to be in the conclusion. While she discussed members of WSP
using their status as mothers, either of their own literal children or their
figurative children existing within the nation, Swerdlow attempts to wrap up by
analyzing WSP, what it intended to do, and what it did not intend to do but it
did anyway, she poses another question. “The question that WSP asks of women’s
history is, Can an organization that builds on traditional female culture, even
when effective in achieving some reforms, actually contribute to world peace if,
in stressing mothers’ roles and rights, it reinforces female marginality?”
(Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace,
234). Can WSP truly achieve peace if they are using the same rhetoric of women
as mothers that oppresses them? At first, of course I thought that no, of
course women could not truly achieve world peace unless their equality was part
of that world peace, and that by playing up their gendered roles as a tactic of
this world peace they were playing into the system of world war that they were
struggling against. But, then I realized that it all depends on how the
concepts within this question are defined. What did world peace mean to the
women in WSP? What did "traditional female culture" and "female
marginality" mean to these women?
Swerdlow does
define "traditional female culture" as "the consciousness, moral
values, relationships, and networks and networks of support among women that
grow out of their maternal and domestic practice" (Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, 234). In other
words, Swerdlow defines feminine norms for women through their roles as mothers
and homemakers. Swerdlow also hints at what "female marginality"
might mean for the female members of WSP. She states that "they key women
of WSP maintained that they had left their homes only to save the children and
that when the political emergencies, such as the nuclear threat and the Vietnam
war, were resolved they would return to full time homemaking. Yet most of the
women of WSP never did go home, because when the Vietnam War was over they no
longer perceived the home as the center of their lives or
responsibilities" (Swerdlow, Women
Strike for Peace, 239). Thus, to the women of WSP, the oppression of women
might have centered on not being able to struggle for the causes that they
believed in by being kept within their homes, and through their peace work with
WSP had come to realize that they can occupy spaces outside of their homes.
Additionally, Swerdlow has also mentioned that these same women were white,
with the "middle-class privileges of discretionary time and money"
(Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace,
76). As most of the women were not working while they were focused on their
work with WSP, we can assume (and Swerdlow confirms) that these women are being
financially supported by their husbands. I think that this may also shape the
WSP members’ ideas of women’s oppression, as white middle-class women they have
not experienced the oppressions of poor women of color. Finally, what did peace
mean for these women? No nuclear testing, no nuclear war, and uncontaminated
milk, all so that their children could grow up healthy (Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, 83). Additionally,
WSP fought for women in leadership positions (Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace,
157), as well as an end to the drafting of their fathers, brothers, husbands,
and sons (Swerdlow, Women Strike for
Peace, 134). Thus, the WSP’s goals of world peace did not recognize women’s
oppression as a factor of that peace.
For the members of
WSP, world peace only impacted women's oppression in terms of male military
control and disregard for the safety and growth of children. Swerdlow states:
Having no feminist
history and theory to build on, WSP was unable to offer a gendered critique of
the nuclear arms race and the Vietnam War. The women of WSP, and I include
myself, had neither the language nor the analytical tools to make a connection
from women's secondary status in the family and the economy to her political
powerlessness, or to understand the relationship between military aggression
and domestic violence. All WSP could do in the early 1960s was to forward women
into the political arena to cry out against male abuse of power and nuclear
brinkmanship. (Swerdlow, Women Strike for
Peace, 238)
It seems to me that Swerdlow and
the women of WSP would most likely agree that it was not that women's
oppression did not exist, but they did not have the background knowledge or support
to recognize it, name it, and discuss it, let alone fight against it. Also,
they might not have had the ability to fight for both a safe, healthy world for
their children and themselves. As such, actions to fight against the oppression
of women were not undertaken by WSP. The only way in which these women knew how
to take a stand against male domination was in protesting against their
military power through the peace movement.
To answer Swerdlow’s
original question, WSP definitely did contribute to world peace even though it
could be argued that how they did so may have also contributed to the
oppression of women. However, WSP did not center women’s liberation as one of
their goals for world peace, and as Swerdlow mentioned they did not have
knowledge or skills to combat it, so while I do not think that their
contribution to women’s oppression can be justified I do think that it is an understandable
side effect of their original goals. For the women of WSP, women’s liberation
did not matter as much as ending the nuclear arms race and the Vietnam War did.
From this perspective, WSP was able to contribute to world peace. However, some
questions still remain for me: also Swerdlow comments that most of the women in
WSP were white and middle-class, so it seems to me that WSP lacked information
regarding any type of economic, social, or racial diversity. Might this
knowledge have changed WSP’s methods for world peace? With this knowledge,
might there have been another tactic that they could have used and achieved similar
or equitable success? Even without this knowledge, would another tactic exist,
other than positioning themselves as fulfilling the role of traditional white
middle-class motherhood?
You speak in your second to last paragraph about how women didn't have the language to speak about their own oppression during the WSP time period. I think this is a valuable insight, especially after viewing the "duck and cover" video that implicitly rendered women/girls unimportant, passive, and not able to protect themselves. After watching this video, it became clear that during this time period women were continually and constantly constructed as subordinate and less than, and in so many ways were fed this identity over and over that I can't imagine they could really acknowledge it. It almost seems like brainwashing! Once the WSP women really started publicly fighting and speaking and facing that gender oppression, though, is when Swerdlow points us to the fact that women did start developing the seeds of a language to describe and fight against their own oppression. This is complicated, though, because at the end of the day if they actually outrightly linked their oppression to their motherhood, they would have cracked the entire foundation on which their movement rhetoric rested. So, although women started developing a language to talk about their oppression, I think they kept it much more hidden/underground than Swerdlow lets us know, especially out of safety and security of the movement.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that Black women had a language for articulating oppression--both gender and race--from past readings that we've read. Does the fact that white women were mostly part of the peace movement contribute to the lack of acknowledgment of oppression?