War and Women across Continents

Drawing on family materials, historical records, and eyewitness accounts, this book shows the impact of war on individual women caught up in diverse and often treacherous situations. It relates stories of partisans in Holland, an Italian woman carrying guns and provisions in the face of hostile soldiers, and Kikuyu women involved in the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya. A woman displaced from Silesia recalls fleeing with children across war-torn Germany, and women caught up in conflicts in Burma and in Rwanda share their tales. War''s aftermath can be traumatic, as shown by journalists in Libya and by a midwife on the Cambodian border who helps refugees to give birth and regain hope. Finally, British women on active service in Afghanistan and at NATO headquarters also speak.

Drawing on family materials, historical records, and eyewitness accounts, this book shows the impact of war on individual women caught up in diverse and often treacherous situations. It relates stories of partisans in Holland, an Italian woman carrying guns and provisions in the face of hostile soldiers, and Kikuyu women involved in the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya. A woman displaced from Silesia recalls fleeing with children across war-torn Germany, and women caught up in conflicts in Burma and in Rwanda share their tales. War's aftermath can be traumatic, as shown by journalists in Libya and by a midwife on the Cambodian border who helps refugees to give birth and regain hope. Finally, British women on active service in Afghanistan and at NATO headquarters also speak.

Introduction: Women’s Autobiographical and Biographical Experiences of War across Continents: An Introduction
Shirley Ardener

Chapter 1. The Resistance of Francesca Tonetti in German-Occupied Venice 1943-1945
Lidia Dina Sciama

Chapter 2. Ank Faber-Chabot, A Dutchwoman who Sheltered Jews in World War II
Marieke Faber Clarke

Chapter 3. Hildegard Jaschok’s Testimony: Expulsion and Hope in World War II
Maria Jaschok

Chapter 4. Mau Mau Women: Sixty Years Later
Tabitha Kanogo

Chapter 5. Women and Conflict in Burma’s Borderlands
Mandy Sadan

Chapter 6. Rebuilding Family, Body and Soul: New Life on the Cambodian Border
Janette Davies

Chapter 7. Rwandan Women at War: Fighting for the Rwandan Patriotic Front (1990-1994)
Hannah Spens-Black

Chapter 8. Women War Correspondents in 2013
Glenda Cooper

Chapter 9. Talking Gender, War & Security at NATO
Matthew Hurley

Chapter 10. Military Masculinities and Counterinsurgency Theory in Afghanistan: An Uneasy Relationship?
Rachel Grimes