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About Cynthia Cockburn

Cynthia Cockburn, a feminist researcher and writer, is Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at City University London, and Honorary Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick. Her most recent book is From Where We Stand: War, Women's Activism and Feminist Analysis (Zed, 2007). She is active in the international anti-militarist network Women in Black. Read Cynthia's weblog No To War, at www.cynthiacockburn.org.

 

Articles by Cynthia Cockburn

Friday 25th November

“Don’t talk to me about war. My life’s a battlefield.”

Cynthia Cockburn, 25 November 2011
When we’re looking for the links between war violence and male violence against women in peace time, we need to look for causality and influence, flowing in both directions, says Cynthia Cockburn.
Thursday 19th May

Who do they think they are? War rapists as people

Cynthia Cockburn, 19 May 2011
War is social, and examining soldier identity and male bonding may give us insight into how the incidence of sexual violence in war might be reduced, says Cynthia Cockburn
Tuesday 8th March

Guns, war and the domestic battlefield

Cynthia Cockburn, 8 March 2011
As guns proliferate in a worldwide market with few controls, many get diverted from state and rebel armies to petty criminals and 'the man in the street'. Sexual and domestic violence is becoming more deadly, reports Cynthia Cockburn
Wednesday 24th November

‘N-A-T-O? What’s that stand for?’

Cynthia Cockburn, 24 November 2010
How can we cheer NATO for promising equality for women in an institution we deplore? We are saying: ‘military security’ is an oxymoron. Women ascribe a totally different meaning to the word security
Monday 18th October

Making women's opposition visible to NATO

Cynthia Cockburn, 18 October 2010
NATO's continued 'mission creep' demands a degree of militarization that masculinizes and deforms everyday life. The forthcoming NATO Summit in Lisbon will launch a new Strategic Concept. Cynthia Cockburn says we need to be alert
Wednesday 25th August

What kind of feminism does war provoke?

Cynthia Cockburn, 25 August 2010
The to-ing and fro-ing about ‘women’s peaceful natures’ is no more than an excitable bubble of argument out of touch with facts on the ground. Antiwar feminism is a pretty holistic feminism that is forged in the crucible of war.
Monday 19th April

Getting to peace: what kind of movement?

Cynthia Cockburn, 19 April 2010
Today’s antiwar movements could become wider and deeper and more united if they took the critique of gender properly to heart
Monday 4th December

Outing the -M word

Cynthia Cockburn, 4 December 2006

(part of openDemocracy's '16 days against gender violence' blog series)

by Cynthia Cockburn

Of all the many women around the world organising this week for “16 days”, some will be focusing on violence in everyday life, while others will be focusing on violence in war. They are two sides of a single coin. In Guatemala for instance (as Yolanda Aguilar described for oD Today) women are still struggling to emerge from the trauma of three decades of appalling sexual violence in a genocidal war. At the same time, they’re being driven off the ‘peacetime’ streets by an epidemic of femicide.

My research over the last three years has taken me to countries like Colombia, Sierra Leone, Israel/Palestine and Serbia to learn from women who have experienced war at first hand and are speaking out boldly against the militarists.

What I’ve found is that there are two widely touted understandings of war that simply don’t connect up. Women war survivors, for their part, say what stares them in the face: men, masculinity and misogyny have something to do with every war, from bush raids to nuclear rivalry.

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