WOMEN FOR PEACE

EDITORIAL

"We are gathered because life on the precipice is intolerable." Taken from the Unity Statement of the Women's Pentagon Action Group (USA), these words describe the motivation of the hundreds of thousands of women actively involved in working for peace.

But the threat of nuclear annihilation is not the only reason why peace has become a women's issue. Many women see in the "nuclear/war mentality" the same lust for power that characterizes the oppression of women. It is no accident, say the women of Comiso (Sicily) "that war goes through the same stages as traditional relationships between the two sexes — invasion, conquest, colonization."

Within the peace movement as a whole, however, opposition to violence has not included violence against women. Indeed, women working in mixed (women and men) peace groups have found their energy, commitment, and skills trivialized or ignored. Women have responded — whether they continue to work within mixed groups or whether they form women-only groups — by bringing attention to the sexism within the peace movement and by forcing recognition that "raped, battered, a daily war is waged against us."

Nor Is the struggle for demilitarization only a European one. Women in Pacific and Indian Oceans — sites of nuclear testing, nuclear arms stockpiling, and superpower rivalry — are also organizing. (More on this in the next ISIS Bulletin.)

The articles that are included in this special section on "Women for Peace" treat these themes. Also included are articles which describe the groups and actions of women working for peace, as well as resource lists of groups and books.

"There is only one place, this one living earth, where we can make our feminist world."