Women in the Gulf War

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Women were active in a number of roles during the Gulf War.

Contents

Women in the military

The Gulf War marked the first conflict in which women officially took on combat roles in the Canadian Armed Forces. [1] Almost all combat positions had been opened up to women in Canada a couple of years earlier, in 1989, except for submarine service, which was only opened to women in 2001. [2]

The war also marked the then-single largest deployment of women to a combat zone in American military history, with over 40 000 female American soldiers deployed. [3] [4] In 1991, the United States Congress lifted the country's prohibition on women flying warplanes in combat. [5]

Women soldiers who were taken prisoner by Iraqi forces faced torture and sexual assault. [6] Women soldiers also sometimes faced sexual assault from male soldiers who were fighting alongside them. [7]

A number of studies have been conducted on the health of women veterans from the war. A 1997 American study found that "women's health care needs during the Persian Gulf War were reported to be very similar to those of men, with the exception of gynecologic problems, which generally were not serious and did not require hospitalization." [8] A 2006 American study found that "deployed women were more often in the Army, single, without children, college educated, and reported fewer vaccinations." [9] A 2020 American study on Gulf War syndrome found that "the way the Gulf War illness manifests itself may be different in female than male veterans." [10]

Women civilians

According to Human Rights Watch: "in the years following the 1991 Gulf War, many of the positive steps that had been taken to advance women's and girls' status in Iraqi society were reversed due to a combination of legal, economic, and political factors. The most significant political factor was Saddam Hussein's decision to embrace Islamic and tribal traditions as a political tool in order to consolidate power. In addition, the U.N. sanctions imposed after the war have had a disproportionate impact on women and children (especially girls)." [11]

The circumstances resulting from the Gulf War and then the Kurdish uprising in Iraq in 1991, gave the Kurdish region of Iraq an essentially autonomous situation for a period, despite the conflicts between zones controlled by the largest nationalist parties. [12] [13] This allowed the development of some claims to women's rights, which in turn influenced some of the women who would become active in founding the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq. [14] [15]

Carrie Crenshaw of the University of Alabama has argued that "print media reports about 'women in the Gulf War' reveal the privileging of heterosexual, white U.S. women as the cultural norm." [16] [17] American journalist Naomi Wolf applauded the role of American women soldiers in the war, arguing that they advanced women's rights. [18]

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References

  1. ↑ "Gulf War - Veterans Affairs Canada". 23 January 2020.
  2. ↑ "Canadian Women and War | The Canadian Encyclopedia". www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca.
  3. ↑ "Women's Role in Combat: The War Resumes".
  4. ↑ "Sen. John McCain Remembers the Female Vets of the Gulf War".
  5. ↑ "How This Female Gulf War Veteran Champions the Next Generation of Women in Aviation".
  6. ↑ "Pentagon Details Abuse of American POWs in Iraq: Gulf War: Broken bones, torture, sexual threats are reported. It could spur further calls for war crimes trial". 2 August 1991.
  7. ↑ "Rape in the military". May 25, 1998.
  8. ↑ Murphy, F; Browne, D; Mather, S; Scheele, H; Hyams, KC (October 1997). "Women in the Persian Gulf War: health care implications for active duty troops and veterans". Military Medicine. 162 (10): 656–660. doi: 10.1093/milmed/162.10.656 . PMID   9339076.
  9. ↑ Carney, CP; Sampson, TR; Voelker, M; Woolson, R; Thorne, P; Doebbeling, BN (August 2003). "Women in the Gulf War: combat experience, exposures, and subsequent health care use". Military Medicine. 168 (8): 654–661. doi: 10.1093/milmed/168.8.654 . PMID   12943043.
  10. ↑ Sullivan, Kimberly; Krengel, Maxine; Heboyan, Vahé; Schildroth, Samantha; Wilson, Col Candy; Iobst, Stacey; Klimas, Nancy; Coughlin, Steven S. (1 June 2020). "Prevalence and Patterns of Symptoms Among Female Veterans of the 1991 Gulf War Era: 25 Years Later". Journal of Women's Health. 29 (6): 819–826. doi: 10.1089/jwh.2019.7705 . PMID   32250195.
  11. ↑ "Background on Women's Status in Iraq Prior to the Fall of the Saddam Hussein Government (November 2003)".
  12. ↑ Mojab, Shahrzad; Gorman, Rachel (2007). "Dispersed Nationalism: War, Diaspora And Kurdish Women's Organizing". Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. 3 (1): 58–85. doi:10.2979/mew.2007.3.1.58. JSTOR   10.2979/mew.2007.3.1.58. S2CID   144958845.
  13. ↑ Voller, Yaniv (May 2014). "Countering Violence Against Women in Iraqi Kurdistan: State-Building and Transnational Advocacy". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 46 (2): 351–372. doi: 10.1017/S0020743814000142 . S2CID   145396896.
  14. ↑ "Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) Founding Statement". Worker-communist Party of Iran. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
  15. ↑ "Revenge spurs Kurdish women's army". 26 November 2002.
  16. ↑ Crenshaw, Carrie (July 1997). "Women in the Gulf War: Toward an intersectional feminist rhetorical cristicism". Howard Journal of Communications. 8 (3): 219–235. doi:10.1080/10646179709361756.
  17. ↑ Sjoberg, Laura (2006). Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq: A Feminist Reformulation of Just War Theory. Lexington Books. ISBN   978-0-7391-1610-4.[ page needed ]
  18. ↑ "Imperialist feminism and liberalism". openDemocracy.
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