Feminist nationalists : A Gender Perspective in Nationalism and Warfare

Abstract: Using a method of qualitative interviewing I have studied women?s place in two nationalist movements from without a gender perspective. My main objective has been to scrutinize the relationship between nationalism and feminism as well as investigate the interaction between men and women in the context of war and war-training.In addition to this, I have sought to review the various ways in which the women have attempted to change the gender system and analyzed the outcome of these attempts.I argue that the will and ability to change the gender system partly comes from the original reason for the women in question to connect with the nationalist movement and partly from their ability to organize the female group and form a common agenda.Consequently, the woman who originated from a mutual background with her fellow female fighters showed a stronger ability of implementing changes in the gender system and improving the situation for the female fighters. On the other hand, the woman who was in a context where each female came from different places experienced difficulties doing the same thing. Furthermore, it is evident that the woman whose female group succeeded in changing the gender system had been involved in a non-party woman?s foundation with feminist aims, thus being aware of the feminist cause, which is in contrast to the other female group, which contained women who were uneducated and analphabetic.