ABSTRACT
The relationship between gender and war can be described in at least two contrasting ways. It is often represented as a somewhat casual, contingent, kind of relationship, in which ‘men and women’ stand in for ‘gender’, and signifi cance is accorded to ‘who does what’ in war. Alternatively the gender/war relation may be given much more explanatory importance, to the extent of positing a two-way causality. War may be seen as actually shaping the gender relations of a given society, while in turn a certain gender order may be seen as predisposing a society to war (Reardon 1996; Goldstein 2001; Cockburn 2007).
