Description
Building on feminist scholarship on women's work in war and conflict, the panel focuses on ‘female engagement’ and the role of women in the armed forces in the contexts of the United Nations, Ukrainian, US, British, and Israeli militaries. Exploring the ways in which gender has been constructed and deployed by militaries in situations of war and conflict such as US and UK Female Engagement Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan and their influence on contemporary UN Engagement Teams and Platoons; conscription in Israel; and as representative of commitment to Western liberal values in Ukraine; there remain complex and unequal dynamics regarding the experience of women within the armed forces. The panel seeks to explore, from different perspectives and across different historical cases, the ways in which women’s work has been made (in)visible in war, conflict, and counterinsurgency, how women are constructed as subjects of affective and embodied knowledge that is ‘useful’ in war, and the ways in which gender is integrated into changing military cultures.
