ABSTRACT
This chapter calls for feminist appreciation of the contribution of an essentialist standpoint to peace research, activism, and pedagogy. It also calls for feminist appreciation of the importance of the poststructuralist critique of essentialism. The chapter calls for the need to move beyond the debate with a finely tuned appreciation of a variety of approaches, a tolerance for ambiguity, and more than a little theoretical untidiness. For readers unfamiliar with the fields of either women's or peace studies, definitions of mothering, feminism, and peace studies as used in this discussion are in order. The chapter focuses on the contributions of the essentialist standpoint that holds that women are essentially different from men, and should be so regarded in analyses of peace, power, and gender. Its feminist critics argues that essentialists have been oblivious to the social construction of language itself, leaving women resistant to change and insensitive to the diverse experiences among women.
