Sex and World Peace

Kiyan Alexander is a Senior at Dominican Academy in New York City. This year she is part of a group working on the issue of domestic violence as a civic engagement project. Read her response to the book "Sex and World Peace" below:

Sex and World Peace Book Cover

 

The authors in Sex and World Peace dissect the true necessity of women within a communal and global setting by stripping a multitude of societal beliefs regarding women and revealing the crucial need to have gender equity to sustain peace within a nation. Using facts, maps, and anecdotes the authors show that change needs to start with children so that change could extend to their adulthood and ultimately transform this prominent issue.

 

Sex and gender play a big role in world affairs. By overlooking sex and gender, we limit the policy alternatives that we see in the quest to find solutions to world problems.

Sex and World Peace, 1

On its own, this quote reiterates that gender is a vital part of world matters. When one disregards the importance of gender in attempting to search for ways to end world problems, they restrict themselves from seeing the perspective of the other half of the nation. Therefore,  they limit and hinder their ability to find the authentic resolution for everyone. The authors say, “States that are uninterested in enforcing laws that protect women will be less compliant with international norms”1. This shows that the lack of understanding of the female perspective will decrease the peacefulness when dealing with international affairs.

In relation to the whole, this quotes sums up the basic point of the book, which is women are vital to all aspects of the world. Women need to be respected and empowered to participate in the same things as men to produce a peaceful and efficient nation. “ When women are visibly making a contribution in public and on the ground, the culture beings to change”2. When the culture beings to change, a global solution will be able to be found and applied to the world for peace.

Sex and World Peace diminishes traditional assumptions and factually breaks them down showing that they hinder the progression of the state or nation. At the same time, it provides a multitude of ways to make small-scale differences to impact the world and enforce peace globally.

1. Valerie M. Hudson, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli, and Chad F. Emmett, Sex and World Peace, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, 108

2. Ibid., 149.