Article from ROAPE Volume 16 Number 45/46
Militarisation and Politics of Gender in SA

This article focuses on the connection between women and militarisation. It is a connection which is obscured by analyses which conceptualise war as a male affair and the military as a patriarchal institution from which women are excluded and by whom they are often victimised. White women contribute to the militarisation of SA society in both material and ideological terms. At the same time a minority of white women are a source of resistance to the system of apartheid which militarism defends. The ‘politics of gender’ , the power relations between men and women which are structured around opposing notions of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ , shape both these processes of incorporation and challenge.