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From Warriors to Wives: Contradictions of Liberation and Development in Eritrea
- Northeast African Studies
- Michigan State University Press
- Volume 8, Number 3, 2001 (New Series)
- pp. 129-154
- 10.1353/nas.2006.0001
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Northeast African Studies 8.3 (2001) 129-154
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From Warriors to Wives:
Contradictions of Liberation and Development in Eritrea
Victoria Bernal
Any "peace" involves a reworking of power relations, not just between nations or parts of nations, but between women and men.
During nearly three decades of struggle, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) appeared to represent a model of a new kind of nationalism that was built from the bottom up by women and men together. EPLF was exemplary in terms of breaking down gender barriers in a number of key respects. For one thing, while women in many other social movements participated as supporters, auxiliaries, or irregulars, in EPLF, women were integrated into the ranks as bona fide fighters in their own right. Thus, Eritrean women, perhaps as none others before them, participated extensively and intensively in the armed struggle alongside Eritrean men. EPLF fighters appeared to transcend gender, as men and women performed the same tasks and lived communally as comrades in mixed units. EPLF, moreover, was far more than simply a military organization; it was an incipient state, organized into various departments that carried out numerous functions aside from that of waging war.2 The extent of women's integration into EPLF thus seemed to prefigure a new kind of national integration for women once Eritrea gained independence and EPLF assumed control of the state.3
EPLF was successful in liberating Eritrea from Ethiopian rule, and women fighters contributed significantly to that achievement. Eritrean [End Page 129] women, thus, liberated a nation. But women's participation in the nationalist struggle and the achievement of independence for Eritrea did not necessarily liberate them.
Analyses of gender in the aftermath of revolutionary and national liberation struggles generally have shown the results to be disappointing in terms of gender equity.4 Nicaragua and South Africa are two notable examples where women's participation in the struggle did not garner them equality with men once victory was achieved.5 It is thus by now commonplace to lament the fate of women in the wake of liberation struggles and nationalist revolutions. While these struggles seemed to draw women into the public life of the nation as full participants, in the end, the promise of equality was left unfulfilled once victory was realized. However, feminist analysis requires us to look at the subordination of women as more than simply a historical inevitability. We must seek to understand the mechanisms of power involved and the relationships among constructions of gender, citizenship, and societal transformations. As Berte Siim has suggested, we need to shift "the focus of attention in feminist scholarship from a theoretical figure of patriarchy and exclusion to an analysis of the dynamic processes of women's participation in civil society and in public political life."6 This essay explores the experiences of women ex-guerilla fighters in Eritrea in light of questions about gender, citizenship, and nationhood that have preoccupied feminist scholars over the past decade.
This essay addresses one central question: why were the advances toward gender equality achieved within the Eritrean People's Liberation Front so difficult to maintain once EPLF achieved victory and assumed control of Eritrea's state? The search for answers to this question requires analyzing the policies and practices of EPLF regarding gender equality during the struggle for independence, and assessing the social changes associated with the end of the liberation struggle and the transformation of EPLF from a guerilla movement to a state power.
Thirty years of war have left, among other things, many gaps in research and documentation on Eritrea. Although there is a growing body of work on Eritrean nationalism,7 this scholarship largely ignores gender despite the significant roles played by women in Eritrea's nationalist struggle. This essay cannot promise definitive answers. Rather, it aims to lay important groundwork by using the uneven and fragmentary [End Page 130] data available to develop theoretical frameworks and advance arguments that will help set agendas for future research on gender and citizenship in...