When Malala Yousafzai received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, she was only the 16th woman to be awarded what has been called the world’s most prestigious prize. And yet, there is a clear trajectory from the origins of the award and its first female recipient in 1905 to the female laureates over time since, and to the young woman honoured this year. That trajectory involves women’s active engagement with issues of peace, independent from men’s activities.
The link between women and peace is not a new concept. In 1820, American women formed the Female Peace Society, and in 1854, the European Women’s Peace League, the first transnational peace group, was founded by Swedish feminist Frederika Bremer. By the 1890s, as European nationalism and armament grew, and as many thought war not only inevitable but a form of patriotism, women more and more connected their political activism – for the right to vote – to the need for an organized peacekeeping system. No vote meant no say in the matter of war while having to suffer its consequences, so suffrage and peace were quite naturally linked. Two of Canada’s foremost suffragists, Nellie McClung and Flora MacDonald Denison, were also long-time pacifists.
At the same time, women and especially mothers were regarded as “innately” drawn to pacifism due to “typically feminine” or “maternal” qualities such as nurture and care. The idea, however simplified, that women have a moral investment in peace because mothers’ duty is to protect life – not to send sons off to fight – often is an established component of gender ideologies.
In 1889, the women’s international peace movement received a tremendous boost with the publication of the anti-war novel, Lay Down Your Arms!, by Austrian peace activist Bertha von Suttner. Among those impressed was Alfred Nobel, whom von Suttner had met in 1876, when she went to work as his secretary. Her influence led Nobel to include the peace prize category in his will. Her tireless international peace activism over decades won her the award as the first woman in 1905, although it was not enough to stop the escalating militarism in Europe. She died 100 years ago, on June 21, 1914, one week before the assassination in Sarajevo that led to the outbreak of World War I.
Even so, von Suttner’s engagement ensured that the Nobel Peace Prize would have a distinctly female dimension and that women – not just statesmen – could work to bring about the conditions for a more peaceful world. In 1915, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom grew out of the Hague Congress; it still exists today. Since then, women as diverse as Mairead Corrigan of Northern Ireland, Mother Teresa, Aung San Suu Kyi, Iranian Shirin Ebadi, and others have followed the trail that links women and peace.
A First World War/von Suttner memorial event took place in late November at the Conflict Research Centre at St. Paul’s University. The highlight was a passionate solo performance, Soul of Fire, by Austrian actress Maxi Blaha as von Suttner. Blaha said that slipping into the pacifist’s role has become her life’s work, and that she wanted to follow in the trail laid internationally by von Suttner, as an envoy for the “fraternity between nations” that Nobel mentioned in his will and that von Suttner sought. The performance showed a determined, disappointed, fierce, vulnerable, occasionally angry, and profoundly womanly peace activist.
As such, it served as a timely reminder of the human effort behind the Nobel Peace Prize and the long tradition of women fighting for peace – all the way into the present to this year’s courageous recipient.
Christa Thomas is a university lecturer and writer. She blogs about Canada’s Women of Confederation at http://women-of-confederation.ca.