Maternal Work and the Practice of Peace

Abstract

There is a real basis for the conventional and symbolic association between women and peace. Women have distinctive motives for rejecting war, distinctive abilities to engage in nonviolent action, and distinctive intellectual perspectives from which to criticize militaristic thinking. These distinctive motives, abilities, and perspectives derive from maternal work although they are shared to differing degrees and for different reasons by all women and by men who are mothers or identify with their work. The peacefulness of women could become of use in peace politics. Although neither mothers nor women are now, as a group, antimilitarist, the peacefulness which derives from maternal work could become a resource for peace.

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