Nationalism and gender : a study of war-related violence against women

Abstract

This thesis represents a feminist interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between nationalism, war, gender and violence against women. Using the conflicts in Former Yugoslavia (1991-1995) as a case-study of recent societies at war, this thesis critiques current readings of why overt nationalisms took a hold in these societies in the late 1980s, and how these led to the conflicts of 1991 and 1992 in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Drawing on data from fieldwork undertaken with NGO groups in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina (and correspondence with groups in Serbia), it argues that although the existing literature represents a body of knowledge on the religious, economic and political background to these wars, and the types of gendered violences that took place whilst these wars were being fought, the literature fails to examine why women experienced war-related sexual and domestic violence during these conflicts.

Whilst arguing for a change to the focus in the debate on women and war, this thesis suggests that the timing for a change to the debate is right. Attitudes to the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, when the fieldwork for this project was carried out in 1998 and early 1999, identified a shift in the way in which individuals were remembering war. The issue of war-related violence against women had become less important to many of the groups formerly working with survivors of violence than the problems associated with post-war society: the returning of displaced and refugee women and their families' reconstruction; and the inherent poverty of post-war Bosnian and Croatian society. This social phenomenon, accompanied by a growing historicisation of the war, provides a potential void/gap in the local and global debates on violence against women in war, allowing new debates and new forums to be explored.

In response to this gap in the debate, this research project breaks new ground in the literature on women and war. It argues against the continued use of survivor testimonies of violence in the analysis of sexual violence against women in the Former Yugoslavian wars.

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