Three years of research work about the relationship between peace and women from the beginning of western history have become condensed in the book ”Women and peace: genesis and evolution of conceptualizations, symbols and practice”, published by the Institute of Women’s Affairs of the Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs. The volume, written by the professors of the University of Granada, Dolores Mirón Pérez, Cándida Martínez López, Elena Díez Jorge, Margarita Sánchez Romero and Aurelia Martín Casares includes, in 520 pages, the theoretical and methodological premises about women, sex, peace and conflicts; concepts, symbols (from the origins of the representation of “the feminine” in prehistory, to the feminine divinities and allegories of peace), attributes, rituals, Antiquity’s legacy, feminine models, the osmosis between the feminine and the masculine, between peace and war, etc.
According to the authors of this research work, “we intended to do research from the perspective of sex the mechanisms that have historically led to connect sexes with certain concepts and behaviour models related to peace and violence, analysing the social implications of these repercussions in the public and private sphere. As regards chronology, we intended to study the genesis and evolution of the subject from Prehistory and during the ancient world, a historical period when many of the ideological basis of western civilization were constructed, as well as during the Middle Ages, when this legacy finds its filter to contemporaneity, reinterpreting the symbols and practices of women with regard to peace. This is, we have analysed these concepts and practices from its genesis, which can help us to explain and understand the conceptualizations, representations and mechanisms of peace at the present world”.
In the course of western history, peace has been represented as a woman. According to the authors of the book “peace was born with feminine body and attributes in ancient Greece, personified by goddess Eirene and her figure, always connected with prosperity and welfare, has remained under different forms and abstractions throughout the centuries. The image of peace and its attributes have been part of a complex symbolic world that highlights how the different historic societies have also conceived peace from the particular construction of sex relationships. It has been connected with virtues, potentialities and symbols considered essentially feminine from the Ancient World, which have remained almost up to now with the adaptations and incorporations typical of the evolution of the notion of peaces and the changes regarding the consideration of the feminine”.
Reference
Professor Elena Díez Jorge. Dpt. of Art History. Tel. 958 240 685 / 958 240 617.
E-mail. mdiez@ugr.es
Professor Margarita Sánchez Romero. Department of Prehistory y Archaeology. Tel. 958 244 091.
E-mail. marsanch@ugr.es
Professor Aurelia Martín Casares. Department of Anthropology and Social Work
Tel. 958 242 321.
E-mail: gblanca@ugr.es
