Circle of peace

Today, millions of women will celebrate International Women's Day. Millions more will not even notice; they will be struggling for survival. International statistics show us that women constitute 70 per cent of those living in poverty and two thirds of the illiterate. The focus this year will be on war, with the now-cliched rhetoric of "war on terrorism" as a backdrop.

A call for action has been issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross's special report on women and war, released to mark International Women's Day: "women must be more closely involved in all measures taken on their behalf".

A number of women will be "celebrating" women's day by forming a "circle of peace" around the White House in an activity organised by the US National Organisation for Women (Now).

The emphasis will be on the impact of war on women at home, women and men in the military, and on the people of Iraq. The devastation of cities and villages in Iraq, the loss of lives, the effect on the environment, on the infrastructure of Iraq and the region and the threats of increased terrorist activities will be highlighted. The idea is to strengthen and mobilise women's tradition for peacefulness for the public good and to get the attention of the media.

Amid this "with us or against us" feeding frenzy, poll stories proliferate. Americans were "unswerving" in their support for war and unified in their "demand for a full-scale response" we have been told.

But were they, really? Buried at the end of the story would be the noteworthy information that women were "significantly less likely to support a long and costly war" then were men and their hesitant support might develop into "hardened opposition" over time.

Women were also much less likely than men to support war if it would bring about an economic recession, or provoke further terrorist attacks at home.

With the "war on terrorism" agenda firmly set, there were those who were quick to claim that the traditional gender gap resulting from the Persian Gulf and Kosovo crises had disintegrated with the Twin Towers. In an article titled In this war, American women shed role as doves, it was "revealed" that "women's voices are resonating across the country and doing away - for the first time in recent history - with the gender gap on many military issues". This, in spite of the fact that separate data for the same period showed that women were more than twice as likely as men to opt for the olive branch.

Of course, the opponents of the war are both male and female. And, conversely, supporters of the war are not exclusively male. Yet, there is a clear difference between the sexes. In an ICM poll, 80 per cent of men agreed that bombing was a reasonable response to the September 11 attacks, compared with 68 per cent of women. Forty-four per cent of men, as opposed to 28 per cent of women, thought bombing should be extended to Iraq.

Here, gender, more than age, social class and political orientation, was the most significant factor determining whether a person approved of the military strikes.

Is all fair in love and war? While polls are covered selectively, news content about women and war becomes often opportunistic.

In some instances women's dissent might seem conveniently inconsequential to some of the most powerful - and pro-war - journalists. It is telling to observe how easily women become sidelined in times of war. That Liberal Democrat woman making her point about bombarding Afghanistan with food and aid looked like a lone voice in the wilderness, trying in vain to influence those ranks of bellicose men with their missiles ready. On the other hand, women like Condoleeza Rice (an exception in this area of policy) seem to flourish in situations like this.

This perpetuates one of journalism's entrenched conventions that news is what the powerful say and do and not what the public experiences and, thus, change is prevented by the news-follows-power principle. Ask most of the NGOs here and they will tell you that to make sure the media cover their event they invite a minister to deliver a speech.

What the polls really show is a gender gap which seems to bear out some of the oldest gender stereotypes about women's tendency to nurture life rather than destroy it.

As Sara Ruddick of Maternal Thinking fame puts it: "Out of maternal practice, a distinctive kind of thinking arises that is incompatible with military strategy but consonant with pacifist commitment to non-violence".

Sure, there is Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands war. But exceptions prove the rule. Various psychological studies show that one persistent difference between the genders across cultures is attitudes towards violence. Women are less interested in it and less likely to be violent.

For instance, while young women have caught up with their male counterparts on a range of behaviour from drug-taking to cigarette-smoking, they are less violent. In women, anger is internalised in depression, from which we are twice as likely as men to suffer.

Then there are the social and economic aspects. They highlight the fact today that military spending is increased at the expense of domestic social services - many of which assist women and low-income families. Every $100 billion spent on this war is three times what the federal government spends on education or enough money to provide health care to all uninsured children in the US for five years.

On an international level, military expenditure today is estimated to be in the region of $1 trillion. Just imagine what a fraction of that sum could do to eliminate starvation, malnutrition, illiteracy, to cancel the debt of developing nations...

But then maybe that is a woman's way of thinking.

Columnist and prize-winning writer Judy Mann retired her column in the Washington Post by calling for more women in news and media commentary. In her column A farewell wish: That women will be heard, she declared that "...a society in which women are invisible in the media is one in which they are invisible, period... Women are a majority in the US. By right, in a democracy... we should occupy top editorships in newspapers.

"We should be allowed to bring what interests us - as women and mothers and wives - to the table... I mean taking apart the federal budget and seeing if it is benefiting families or the munitions millionaires. I mean looking at the enormous amount of money we've squandered on the 'war on drugs' and asking the obvious question: Why are we building more prisons instead of rebuilding broken lives? I mean challenging the miserly foreign-aid budget and raising hell because we are not doing our share to educate women and girls in emerging countries. The Taliban could never have taken root in a society that educated and empowered females."

Judy Mann was one of the first journalists to use the term "gender gap" in the press. She has retired at a time when there is a particularly strong need for more women to heard. For her wish to come true more, many more women need to force the issue.

Forming a circle of peace on International Women's Day is a good way of passing on the message that harder work has to be done all year round.

Mrs Dalli is a Labour member of parliament