War and Gender

I have to say, today's class was pretty interesting.  We broke into groups and discussed "how masculinity and femininity re-defined in processes of conflict and in ways which serve state military and nationalist objectives".  We can up with this: Women are seen as the care takers... so they are expected to stay home and take care of all the household chores, bills, and maintaining an easy living environment for the children.  If a woman does decide to enlist, then she is more than likely to be a nurse, not apart of the front line.  Women are pretty much just the background of the situation. Fair? No.... Definitely not.  Men on the other hand are to one's to do all the fighting. They are the responsible party for defending their country. But they also have a double wammy for war. If they do not enlist then they are looked down upon and then shunned for not defending their country along with being called names like chicken,  wussie, or unpatriotic.  So then men are forced to make a decision of defending their humility and possibly die or risk being shunned and removed from society.... I personally like being alive and dont really care what people say about me soooooooo I pass on war.

Conflicts of Women

In Wednesdays class, we talked a lot about aggression and Burton's model of conflict.  We learned there are 3 pieces to the conflict puzzle: issues, attributes, and behaviors all of which feed and build off each other. If a woman was driven by her career then decided to stat a family, she would encounter some MAJOR conflicts within her job and at home. Her boss could persuade her to rethink her decision and her husband could be pushing for having children.  The woman is stuck in the middle and her arms are being pulled in opposite directions and she has to decide because in the business world its all about making choices (especially for women). You cannot have your cake and eat it too. It's messed up if I say so my self.  Women have to conform themselves into men once they hit the CEO, Director, President, Vice President position because of the expectations set upon us. We can't have children, must work late nights, hardly ever see our husbands, get calls from coworkers and such throughout all hours of the day, we would miss all the soccer, basketball, football and baseball games of our children and best of all.... WORK COMES FIRST. Fair... no not really.

Peace and Women's Rights

Before reading "Women and Peace: The Meaning of Peace for Women," I took a moment to jot down some things that came to mind when I think about the word peace. I came up with getting along, without problems, calm, no conflict, and not at war. This reading showed me that my definition does not come close to describing the complexity of this term. First of all, I have never heard of negative peace and positive peace before. This reading not only explained these terms but it proved to me that the distinction is necessary when researching peace. The discussion of the word negative and positive peace is clearly summarized in a table that breaks it down into negative peace, two levels of positive peace (indirect violence leading to a shorter life vs. reduced quality of life), unorganized violence and organized violence. These conditions form six boxes that the author claims are independent from one another meaning that it is possible to have one of the boxes occurring or multiple in various combinations. The author says that it is possible for connections to exist between the boxes. I think it would be interesting to explore that idea further however it would require some extensive research.

Reading "Women's Rights Are Human Rights" reminded me how fortunate I have been in my life to not have experienced any violence and hardly any inequality. Even during my short lifespan there have been major changes to women's rights. The reading discusses how in 1993 women's rights were brought to focus due to the Global Campaign for Women's Rights. The conference lead to some important changes. States were required "to prevent violations where possible, investigate them when they occur and punish perpetrators." Not only has there been great progress in addressing violence against women in the US but internationally as well. In the last decade, international treaties have provided governments with guidelines on how to deal with the problem of violence against women. Although I know there are still places in the world where women's rights are not what we would consider just, the progress that has occurred internationally thus far gives me hope for these places.

Question for the Females

I was reading the Odyssey of Pat Tillman yesterday and it made me think of a question. (For those of you that don't know, after 9/11 he gave up a multi million dollar NFL contract and signed up for the US Army and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan) Personal feelings aside from the war and everything, if all the women in our class/society (a generalization, yes, but come on..lol) want to be treated equally to men, how many of you girls would be willing to get entered into and drafted into the US Armed Forces if a draft  were to ever happen?? Again, I'm not looking for any kind of views on war or anything of that nature, but it is always a possibility for a man, regardless of their views, in the US between ages (I think) 18-26 and I just wanted some female input on this subject.