Woman and War

Woman and War

1990 1 January 7-8 Woman and War (450) When Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, the Soviet government made emotional appeals to its citizens to treat the saving of their motherland as a sacred duty. Of those who joined the military in response to these appeals, 800,000 were girls between the ages of 15 and 16.

A book has now been published in the USSR by S. Alexiyerich, entitled, War’s Unwomanly Face (Progress Publisher, Moscow), which deals with the experiences of these girls. During her four years of research, the authoress travelled to one hundred cities and interviewed 200 women who had participated in the war.

The book reveals many hitherto unknown facts about women’s participation in the war, one of which is that many women began to conceal the fact that they had ever had anything to do with the war. “We wanted to become ordinary girls again. Marriageable girls.”

One of the interviewees, an educated woman by the name of Vera Safronova Davdova said, “I believe that the women reacted to the war in a completely different way from the men. The men were more matter-of-fact and casual about the experience, whereas the women reacted in an overwhelmingly emotional manner.”

In recent times, a great deal of research has been done to discover the true nature of women and their inborn aptitudes. An attempt has been made to understand the female species scientifically, Astonishingly enough, the findings of these researches and investigations corroborate the view of women taken by Islam,

Modern research has shown that woman is sensitive by nature and is more emotional than man. This discovery makes it clear that it is not proper to have women enter those areas where cool and objective decision-making is required irrespective of the circumstances, and where “manliness” rather than “femininity” is a basic prerequisite.

In the departments of politics, war, international relations, large-scale industrial planning and, not the least important, in the law-courts, mental discipline and dispassionate decision-making are of the utmost importance. In such fields, the decision–makers have to be able to rise above the pressures of the immediate environment. Women, because of their inborn emotionalism, are unsuited to such tasks. Men, on the other hand, being relatively less emotional, are better able to deal with the contingencies of their position.

It is because of this biological difference between men and women that Islam has assigned them to separate spheres of influence. This is not a matter of gradation, but of a difference of workplace or field of action. This difference is supported in every way by scientific research. The truth is that it is the champions of feminism who are unscientific by the standards of today, and not the upholders of traditional Islamic attitudes.