Women and war

As the turn of the millennium in 2000 approached, a newspaper asked several leading thinkers what they would change to make the world a better place. The renowned Colombian author and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez said that he would have women rule the world because men had made such a mess of it. Around the same time, Mary Caprioli of the University of Minnesota was publishing the first of a series of studies showing a correlation between the status of women in a country and war: the lower the status of women the greater the likelihood of civil war or conflict with other countries. Erik Mellander from the University of Uppsala was sceptical but decided to test Caprioli’s hypothesis. He used measures of the status of women, including the gender of the country’s leader and the proportion of women who received higher education and the proportion of women in the legislature, and his findings supported Caprioli’s findings. Furthermore, states that oppressed women had more political imprisonments, killings and disappearances. This research is open to methodological criticism as using observational data and being potentially confounded by other factors. For example, countries that allow women to become leaders are often richer and may, therefore, have better social supports for families and may have more of a vested interest in avoiding conflict. We can all think of examples of women in power who have matched or exceeded men for aggression. The fierceness with which Margaret Thatcher fought the Falklands War against Argentina springs to mind, although Boadicea’s defence of Britain against the invading Romans is a nobler example. Mellander’s findings, however, suggest that Marquez’ suggestion should not be dismissed lightly. Research suggests that women are more empathic than men, although no more likely to forgive wrongs. It is plausible that the involvement of women in decision-making may have a moderating effect on male aggression. Women in government may be more likely to pursue peaceful solutions to conflict. War is one of the most puzzling of human pursuits. Not only does it cost the lives of men, women and children, but it exacts a fearsome toll in terms of the long-term mental health of soldiers and civilians. It is virtually impossible to conceive of any evolutionary advantage for warfare. As Martin Luther King said, ‘wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows’. While religion is a frequent basis for wars, many wars are fought where differing tribal ethnicity rather than differing religion is the major point of dispute. Einstein and Freud argued that war is an integral part of human nature, and Freud thought that humans have a death instinct that could only be countered by encouraging its opposite, love of our fellow men. However, archaeological evidence favours a relatively recent onset of warfare. The ancient Greeks certainly fought major wars and indeed Sophocles gave what was probably the first description of post-traumatic stress disorder, in depicting how Ajax suffered ‘divine madness’. However, there is no archaeological evidence that warfare occurred before the Agricultural Revolution, approximately 12 000 years ago. Aggression, however, has an important role in Nature. Biologist David Lack closely observed red-breasted robins, so often depicted romantically on Christmas cards, and described how male robins aggressively defended their territory from other males. When Lack tied a tuft of red feathers onto a stick, the resident male would peck at it fiercely. In his famously controversial book, the ethologist Konrad Lorenz described how animal aggression was important to gain and secure territory and sexual partners. However, the beaten male generally adopts a submissive posture and is permitted by the victor to escape without further injury. Animals and birds almost never battle to the death over territory or females. Humans are the only species to fight to the death on a regular basis. Lorenz has been criticised for overemphasising animal aggression and underplaying the highly empathic behaviour of many animals. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, often kiss and embrace soon after a fierce fight, showing the importance of conflict resolution. Even rats show empathy and will opt to liberate a trapped fellow rat rather than eat chocolate. Empathy is more evident within groups. Xenophobia, the basis for human warfare, is characterised by lack of empathy of the in-group for the out-group. Xenophobic warfare is only possible by emphasising differences between populations and thrives on dehumanising and demonising the enemy. Although most modern warfare is fought at a distance, the anonymity of distance alone cannot explain human warfare, because hand-to-hand combat was certainly a feature of war in the past and torture and face-to-face killings are still common in modern warfare. Conflict resolution is complex and approaches vary between cultures. Girls and boys resolve conflict in different ways, with girls more likely than boys to focus on language. Many theories of conflict resolution consider that empathy is an important factor. Empathy is our strongest antidote to dehumanisation and research suggests that women are generally more empathic than men. We all need to foster empathy in children, boys and girls, and to encourage it in adults. In addition, promoting female education worldwide to enable women to hold positions of power in government may be our greatest hope of tempering masculine aggression and trying to persuade humans not to go to war.