ABSTRACT
To foreground the importance of care work at wartime, this chapter examines the overlooked gendered everyday roles and lived experiences of five Kosovar women, survivors of the Serbian genocide, political violence and oppression, and also examines their unpaid labour of care during the Kosovo War. It details the ways in which Kosovar women’s performances of care were vital to not only the well-being and survival of their families, communities, and larger networks but also to the resistance against systematic cultural erasure at the hands of the Serbian regime. In acknowledging women’s plurality of experiences and perspectives as caregivers, the chapter aims to challenge the currently pervasive and monolithic narrative of women as passive victims of war present in scholarship on peacebuilding and women during conflict and instead makes overt the narrative of women as critical agents that sustain lives during and after the war. Employing the feminist ethics of care framework, the chapter emphasises the value of unpaid care work during the Kosovo War and recognises its impact on Kosovar women.
