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Is The Motherist Approach More Helpful In Obtaining Women's Rights Than A Feminist Approach? A Comparative Study Of Lebanon And Liberia, Crystal Marie Whetstone

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The theory that women gain rights during the social upheaval of war has not held universally. While the debate has traditionally centered over women's participation in fighting and entry into the workforce this paper explores the topic from the form of mobilization, motherist or feminist, that women's organizing takes during war through the use of a longitudinal, comparative study of Lebanon and Liberia. Lebanese women's organizations overwhelmingly employed motherist mobilization and tackled practical gender interests that made no attempt to end women's subordination. In contrast, during the Liberian civil war women's groups were more apt to focus on strategic gender …