Peace: Meaning, Politics, Strategies

by Linda Rennie Forcey; Praeger, 1989

It is common to think of women as being pro-peace. Women are highly visible in such peace activist groups as the Greens, Women's Pentagon Action, Greenham Common, The Women for Peace Movement and the Peace People. Polls show that Western women oppose increases in military expenditures and deployment of new weapons more frequently than men.

Some feminist literature even suggests women may not be prone to warlike abstractions or soldierly expressions of power, as dominance. Yet, among the Women of The Year for 1986, designated by Ms. Magazine, are Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly, who play sometimes-armed cops on the television series Cagney and Lacey. Lauded for building characters who are good female buddies, these actresses have also molded those characters either to like fighting in a man's world (Gless), or to have a closer relationship with a man than with her children (Daly).