The Gender Imperative

Betty A. Reardon is Founding Director Emeritus of the International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE), a global consortium for continuing education on issues of peace, and a feminist peace educator. Her work with IIPE and as a theorist and designer of pedagogic materials and processes in peace education was recognized by the special Honourable Mention Award from UNESCO at the Peace Education Prize Ceremonies of 2001. She was the initiator and the first academic coordinator of The Hague Appeal for Peace Global Campaign for Peace Education launched in 1999. She is the recipient of the 2009 Sean MacBride Peace Prize awarded by the International Peace Bureau. Her published and unpublished professional papers are archived in the Ward M. Canaday Special Collections at the University of Toledo Library in Ohio.

This collection of essays by feminist scholar-activists addresses the crucial problem of human security in a world of heavily armed, militarized states. It describes the gendered aspects of human security, integral to the realist militarism that dominates current security policy in most nation states.

List of Contributors. Foreword. Introduction: Challenging Patriarchal Violence Section 1. Confronting the Militarized State Security Paradigm: Human Security from a Feminist Perspective 1. Women and Human Security: A Feminist Framework and Critique of the Prevailing Patriarchal Security System 2. Gendered Insecurity under Long-term Military Presence: The Case of Okinawa 3. Human Security and Layers of Oppression: Women in South Africa Section 2. Patriarchal Conditioning to Violence and Human Insecurity 4. Challenging the Patriarchal National Security Paradigm: The Role of Ethiopian Women in Peace and Security 5. War and Armed Conflict: Threat to African Women's Human Security 6. Sexual Violence and Genocide, the Greatest Violation of Human Security: Responses to the Case of Darfur 7. Security Discourses: A Gender Perspective Section 3. Militarization/Demilitarization: Eroding and Promoting Human Security 8. Seeking Human Security in a Militarized Pacific: Struggles for Peace and Security by Pacific Island Women 9. Education, Violence and Schools: The Human Security of Girls in Afghanistan 10. Opposing Militarism: Soldiers' Mothers in Russia Section 4. Alternative and Transitional Approaches to Human Security 11. Security Council Resolution 1325: Toward Gender Equality in Peace and Security Policy Making 12. Jordanian Women's Concepts of Human Security 13. Gender, Health, Peace and Security 14. An Experiment in Transition from Military to Human Security 15. Patriarchy and the Bomb: Banning Nuclear Weapons Against the Opposition of Militarist Masculinities. Conclusion: Framing a Gender and Human Security Discourse: Initiating the Inquiry Annexure: Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820. Index