Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom

4. Gender and International Relations: A Comparison of Citizen Attitudes in Israel and Egypt

4 Gender and International Relations: A Comparison of Citizen Attitudes in Israel and Egypt Mark Tessler and Ina Warriner This chapter presents and analyzes original public opinion data from Israel and Egypt against the background of growing analytical interest in the connections between gender and international relations. More specifically , it asks (1) whether there is a relationship between gender and attitudes toward issues of war and peace; (2) whether attitudes about the status and role of women are related to attitudes toward issues of war and peace; (3) whether gender, education, religiosity, and several other personal status attributes affect the nature of the relationship between these two sets of attitudes; and (4) whether patterns observed in Israel are similar to, or different from, those found in Egypt. Before presenting and analyzing survey data in an attempt to answer to these questions, the chapter offers a theoretical introduction informed by scholarly literature in the field of gender and international relations, followed by an account of the Israeli case and a discussion of the analytical implications of comparing citizen attitudes in Israel and Egypt. Theoretical Issues Two overlapping sets of theoretical issues provide the analytical context for this comparative investigation of citizen attitudes. First, a number of recent studies advance the hypothesis that women are more pacific than men in their approach to international relations, being more accepting of compromise to resolve interstate disputes and less likely to believe that war is necessary or appropriate in particular conflict situations. Although the 85 86 Mark Tessler and Ina Warriner empirical evidence supporting these propositions is thus far limited, the literature in this field asserts that violence, intransigence, and territoriality are associated with a "male" approach to human relations, including relations among sovereign states, whereas pacifism, compromise, and tolerance are indicative of a "female" perspective on world affairs. The theoretical foundations of such "separatist" arguments are to a significant degree rooted in the uniquely female experience of motherhood .1 Two interrelated visions are present in those feminist discourses that seek to establish a link between women, motherhood, and peace. The first celebrates a cultural feminism, in which attributes generally considered "female," such as caring and nurturance, are emphasized over such traditionally "male" concepts as power and hegemony.2 The caregiver's approach to international relations stresses empathy and compromise, notions that are often in sharp contrast to a "male" preoccupation with justice and hierarchy. In most societies, women have traditionally been the primary caregivers, attending to the needs of children, ailing friends, and parents. The ethic of care approach advanced by cultural feminism extends this paradigm to the international arena. Emphasizing the universal applicability of a predisposition toward nurturance, it links women's roles as domestic caregivers to a more tolerant approach to conflict resolution. A second and closely related feminist discourse emphasizes the concept of "moral motherhood," which asserts that women as mothers have a responsibility to eliminate violence as a means for the resolution of conflicts and to put in its place an orientation toward "maternal thinking" and "preservative love."3 This assertion, based on the proposition that maternal thinking derives from the social practice of mothering, reflects an effort to supplement or counterbalance theories of international relations derived from the "male" experience. The theoretical implications of the moral motherhood discourse are similar to those of the caregiver paradigm. Obscuring the distinction between private and public forms of violent conflict, and viewing both as equally abhorrent, material thinking places emphasis on an empathetic and loving conception of human relations, including those in the arena of world affairs.4 Elshtain describes this as "social feminism," arguing that conceptions of citizenship and community based on maternal thinking are significantly more tolerant and pacific than those founded on "bureaucraticadministrative abstractionism" and superior-subordinate relationships in the domain of national and international politics. Critics of the caregiver and moral motherhood approaches to social relations assert that there are flaws in the arguments these discourses advance about the origins of tolerance and pacifism. For one thing, critics charge, they emphasize the central experience of motherhood in the forma- Gender and International Relations 87 tion of normative predispositions and conceptions of citizenship, but then fail to differentiate between women who do and do not have children. Equally important, they ignore the fact, or at least the possibility, that men as well as women are capable of nurturing behavior and maternal thinking. A different kind of criticism...