In addition to this chapter, the entire book from which it was excerpted (‘Women, War and Violence’) is available for purchase.

Recent scholarship has revealed contributions of women throughout the ages to the development of nonviolent methods for waging conflicts. The findings are unearthing a version of history in which women’s involvement has been conducive to the use and expansion of civil resistance and nonviolent struggle. With women, until recently, customarily excluded from the jurisdictions in which societies decide to exercise political violence, because they were considered inadequate for military service, and as they were generally untrained in the use of weaponry, it should come as no surprise that women’s choice of action strategies has been concentrated in waging conficts through means other than armed confrontation. Women have tended by necessity and choice to explore the vast area of strategic nonviolent action, and did so centuries before the terminology was coined and its study and building of theory and practice had commenced.

Anne-Marie Codur and Dr. Mary Elizabeth King