By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

THERE are many kinds of war that women fight. There are silent wars that seek liberation from patriarchy, gut wars that has something to do with the eradication of poverty and hunger and so many others that impact on human lives in general, particularly women’s lives. All wars have devastating impact on women, especially the war that “pertain to a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state.”

During World War II, Soviet women fought in the front lines as pilots, snipers and assumed other jobs usually assigned to men. It was anathema to Germans to capture Soviet women, as they were not used to confronting women in battle, and spared most of the nurses captured from punishment. At the end of the war, a total of one million Soviet women were listed as having participated, 200,000 of them were decorated, and 89 received the highest award for gallantry.

In the Pacific (1941-1945), about 50,000- 200,000 women were part of “provisions” in the war composed of women from Japan, Korea, China and the Philippines. They were called comfort women, a euphemism for women held captive to provide sex. They were not only part of supplies, they were also raped, as part of the weapons of war, and became part of the loot and bounty of the conflict.

In all wars, most women took care of hearth and home, as the men were fielded to fight. Women had to use their imagination to produce food from the concomitant destruction of food sources. They were, for the most part, most vulnerable to the impact of the war on the environment owing to their social, economic and cultural status.

Today, in a world almost close to the brink of war, “seventy per cent of the 1.3 billion people living in conditions of poverty are women. In urban areas, 40 per cent of the poorest households are headed by women. Women predominate in the world’s food production (50-80 per cent), but they own less than 10 per cent of the land.” This socio-economic and cultural inequality has pestered across generations, a condition that women activists claim to be a more important war, as it creeps subtly and sustained by society’s dominant institutions.

In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, entitled, “Women…In The Shadow of Climate Change”, Balgis Osman-Elasha, Principal Investigator of the Climate Change Unit, Higher Council for Environment & Natural Resources, wrote:

“Women have limited access to and control of environmental goods and services; they have negligible participation in decision-making, and are not involved in the distribution of environment management benefits. Consequently, women are less able to confront climate change.”

War, Women and Climate Change was my assigned topic during the Women, Environment and Poetry II held 26 March 2022 to celebrate the Women’s Month, where the following subjects were also discussed: Ecofeminism in the Philippines (Sr. Mary John Mananzan) and Affirmative Environmental Advocacy of the University Library (Elin Anisha Guro). Ecowarriors from the Asia-Pacific EcoPoetree Festival gave their reactions and shared their poetry: Luz María López (Puerto Rico), Molly Joseph (India) and Rani Binoy (India). The event was hosted by the American Corner (Marawi) in collaboration with the Mindanao State University (Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research, Extension and Development and the University Library), the International Visitor Leadership Program-Philippines (IVLP-PH) and the Women in Development (WID) Foundation.

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