Women and Images of War

This entry details the traditional gendering of war imagery, focusing on photojournalism but with the recognition that other media genres play a role in visualizing war experience. War images tend to focus on male participation, but where women do become visible, they are likely to be cast in familiar roles as mourning mothers, refugees and peacemakers. The representation of women’s suffering in war photography comes to symbolize the collective sorrow of the nation. Likewise, where women appear as soldiers, their military identity is put to political use in the news media. Summarizing the ways in which familiar tropes reproduce gender ideologies and norms, the entry examines images of war under the broad categories of women as soldiers and women as victims. Whilst women as the subjects of war images are the primary focus here, the role of women as producers of images is also considered alongside forms of spectatorship and witnessing. Photography projects by women offer just one way to destabilize the hegemonic ways of seeing war and to engage seriously with women’s experiences of war, violence and peace.