Women, War, and the Economy
To say women are more affected by war than men is a gross understatement. The truth is so much deeper and depressing, due in large part to the nature of women’s social roles and economic activities.
To talk about war without pointedly talking about the experiences of women and the harm they endure is negligent. As 51% of the global population, women are bound to be affected by war yet their stories are not told as frequently due to their disproportionately low representation in formal institutions like government, banking, and trade.
To discuss rebuilding and peace without women at the table is unconscionable. The unique suffering of women in war is a topic we must address globally and any conversations or efforts to rebuild must center the experiences of women.
Today, on International Women’s Day, I hope all of us can shrug off the comfort of distance and disinterest and talk responsibly and conscientiously about the realities of women and war, specifically as it relates to the economy.
Women Are More Vulnerable in War
Women are more likely to experience sexual violence in a time of war. Be it rape, the weaponization of sexually transmitted disease, or violence in the home, women’s bodies are an unrecognized front line in battle. And while we often note sexual violence as a cursory feature of war, we need to start spotlighting it for what it is: a mechanism of terror enacted systematically on the bodies of women. War does not get much more personal than rape.
Women are more likely to be displaced as a result of war and fare much worse as refugees than men. Former UN Secretary-Anon noted in his 1998 report to the Security Council, “the forced displacement of civilian populations is now often a direct objective, rather than a byproduct of war.” In Ukraine, for example, martial law prohibits men between the ages of 16 and 60 from leaving the country; the number of women and children fleeing is over 1 million. Women and the children who usually accompany them are left to fend for themselves, often without a plan or any means of support. For women refugees, personal safety is precarious. Poverty is a likely outcome.
Women Are Key to Rebuilding
The only labor or economic activity recognized by governments (think: GDP) and tracked with data is the activity within the formal economy. This is all the activities operating within a specified legal framework, accounted for by taxes, and subject to protection and regulation by the state. Most of the world’s women do not work in the formal economy but instead participate in what is called the informal economy or the extralegal economy.
The extralegal/informal economy includes all of the activities that fall outside of government-grounded definitions of what is legal or considered “true work.” Examples include everything from community markets to the illegal sale of diamonds to prostitution to caregiving. Naila Kabeer, Professor at the London School of Economics likens the formal and informal economies to an iceberg: the formal economy is what we see above water--a small portion of the enormous, unseen mass hidden below the surface that is the informal economy. During wartime, informal economies surge in response to disruptions in infrastructure, support systems, and trade routes. The UN estimates 90% of Angola’s economy operated extralegally in the early 2000s, in the country’s final years of war.
Informal economies are also necessary for rebuilding after war as structures and systems regenerate or are created anew. In fact, international, community-level research demonstrates that it is women who most often rebuild local economies after war. They reassemble families and networks of kinship, set up money-making endeavors, and secure necessary goods for meeting family needs. As researcher and professor Carolyn Nordstrom put it in her analysis of Women, Economy, and War for the 2010 International Review of the Red Cross, “while men move more fluidly, women are families, in times when men are there and whey they are not. As such, they forge the basic links of society; producing food, daily necessities, communal networks, market systems. Where families are centered, infrastructure, health, education, and trade emerge.”
Noting the role women play in economic activity--in peacetime, wartime, and after war--is necessary to understand how we can extend our traditional conceptions of the economy so policies and systems may recognize and protect all players. Further, our understandings of the cost of war do not usually take into account the extralegal/informal economy, the violence women experience, or the ramifications of displacement. When we refer to the economic impact of war, we generally consider things like inflation, a rise in national debt, and a decline in the working population, all components of the formal economy. To talk about the cost of war only as it relates to the formal economy is to deny the very real workings of daily life and reduce half the population to an afterthought, adding severe insult to widespread injury and harm.
Women Are Essential to Peace
In 2000, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1325. This landmark resolution makes gender equity a central consideration of peacekeeping operations, peace agreement negotiations, and refugee camp planning. Women must be included in all peacekeeping efforts to ensure their safety through ongoing tumult, to represent women’s interests and needs (including their economic interests and needs) during rebuilding, to acknowledge and address the outsize effect of war on women, and to capitalize on the role women play in keeping families together and building communities.
Despite the UN’s resolution, women’s role in peacekeeping isn’t what we need it to be. Women were only 11% of all peacekeeping mediators from 2015-2011. An analysis of over 1,500 peace agreements from 1990-2019 found only 20% include references to women, girls, and gender and only 6% contain at least one provision specifically addressing violence against women. A bright spot is the number of women officers who currently serve as justice and correction government-provided personnel. As of May 2021, women were 36% of justice and correction officers deployed in UN peace operations.
Increasing the role women play in peacekeeping transforms women from the victims of war to agents in war’s elimination. It also acknowledges the outsize effect of war on women and seeks to repair the damage women experience.
War is a perversion of human dignity and the sanctity of life. All people suffer in war but to deny the unique and extreme suffering of women is itself a threat to human dignity, extending the harm we cause them and doubling down on their suffering. Recognizing the economic contribution women make becomes another lens through which we can accurately see not only the cost of war for women but the promise they hold in restoring peace.