Women's Action for Peace
Organization profile published 1983

Year Published:  1983
Resource Type:  Organization
Cx Number:  CX2742

Abstract: 
WOMEN'S ACTION FOR PEACE is a group of women of many ages, experinces, skills, interests and backgrounds who "percieve the undeniably clear connection between the bomb-making militarism of this male-dominated society and the oppression of women everywhere." The groups sees nuclear weapons as the inevitable manifestation of a patriarchal society which believes that "might is right."

"On a daily basis, it is the same male-controlled power structure which controls all women's lives by the ever-present threat of rape in the same way as it controls 'weaker' nations by threatening to drop the bomb. In both cases the act does not always have to be carried out in order for the threat to be effective in intimidating and controlling the movement and the choices of the victim.

"It is this same male-controlled power structure which spends approximately $11/2 billion every day on military expenditures to cause death and destruction while it denies women, children and poor people, both in North America and the Third World, adequate access to basic life-giving surival tools such as food, education, housing control of our reproductive rights, good child care so that we can work, and equal pay for work of equal value.

"It is this same male-controlled power structure which sees the natural resources of the world as theirs to dominate and waste just as they exploit women's energy and skills both in the home and in the workplace.

"Because we see the nuclear threat to world survival and the oppression of women as rooted in the politics of domination, we also see that world nuclear disarmament would be only a partial step toward a lasting world peace. We must challenge not only the arms build-up but also all the props that support militarism as the characertistic solution to problems between individuals or nations, in society and the world. We must consciously seek out non-hierarchial alternatives which enable us to live in a healthy, senisible and loveing workld."

This abstract was published in the Connexions Digest in 1983.