ABSTRACT
Though women have often manufactured weapons and serviced armies — and in an age of nuclear weapons are equally targeted — it is historically rare for women to be in combat. Cross-cultural studies of masculinities reveal a diversity that is impossible to reconcile with a biologically-fixed master pattern of masculinity. In recent years there has been a great flowering of research on the nature and forms of social masculinities. The variety of masculinities that are documented in research can provide examples and materials for peace education. Masculinities are the forms in which many dynamics of violence take shape. Evidently, then, a strategy for demilitarization and peace must include a strategy of change in masculinities. This is the new dimension in peace work which studies of men suggest: contesting the hegemony of masculinities which emphasize violence, confrontation and domination, and replacing them with patterns of masculinity more open to negotiation, cooperation and equality.
