What are we to do about men's enthusiasm for warfare? If all the world's women went on strike, withholding sex until men quit fighting, would the men relent? In fact, women fed up with the wars of men adopted this very tactic in the 2000-year-old Greek comedy Lysistrata. Similarly, in the present day, women tired of unending global conflict are taking up the cause of peace in ever greater numbers.

Surprisingly, the first of the major Asian nations to give birth to a women's peace movement was South Korea, where women have long had little social standing. Today, South Korea is home to Asia's largest women's peace movement.

"The women's peace movement got under way in Korea in the 1970s," says Hanyang University sociologist Shim Young-hee. "In its earliest days, it was connected to the gender movement and other types of social activism." According to Shim, South Korean women have been both more active and more numerous than men in all segments of the peace movement, from the activism of the 1970s in support of the victims of nuclear weapons and in opposition to war and nuclear weapons to that of the 1990s calling for more oversight and reduced defense spending, and in opposition to the Gulf War.

"The peace movement's principal objectives are preventing wars and reducing the size of the military," says Shim, who has been active in the movement in Korea since the 1970s. "Many men seem to think that such aims are 'unmanly.' Men want 'face,' so they are unwilling to lay down their weapons. But we women cannot bear any more massacres!"

Women a driving force

During the Taiwan symposium, attendees issued a proclamation stating that national security without the participation of women did not truly benefit the people as a whole. It further stated that without cooperation between men and women, there was no way to prevent armed conflict, no way to preserve peace within societies and among nations, and therefore no way to bring about world peace. The peace activism of European, American, and Korean women in recent years is a case in point, illustrating how enormously important women are to the peace movement.

But there is another side to this issue. "We frequently see women active in the peace movement putting limits on themselves," says Chou Sheng-hsin, a special assistant at Taipei County's Yungho Community College and convener of the Alliance for Peace Homeland. "They emphasize traditional motherly devotion, but are unwilling to deal with the truly sensitive core issues." She says that unless our society and national machine--whose watchwords are "competition," "expansion," "survival of the fittest," and "the strong eat the weak"--is reimagined from its most basic premises, the root of the problem will never be addressed and there will never be world peace.

"When you must confront so much injustice in the world," asks Chou, "how do you talk to your kids? You lose the foundation you need to teach them to be fair to the disadvantaged." Chou believes that beginning to pay attention to and think about your own life is the most important step you can take towards peace.

"You don't need some big, terrible thing to happen to be able to talk about peace," argues Chi Hui-jung, CEO of the Garden of Hope Foundation. Chi says that women's interest in peace-related issues usually grows out of small events in their own lives that cause them to become aware of all kinds of injustice, abuse and coercion. In Taiwan, for example, violence is still common in our homes and in our schools. To attack the roots of these problems, you have to instill a proper understanding of the concept of peace.

A giant leap for Taiwan

Data show that more than 70% of Taiwan's "regular participants" in social activism are women. Women's rights used to be associated first and foremost with the welfare of women, but that changed when the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1325 in 2000. Among its many provisions, the resolution urges member states to increase the participation of women in decision-making at all levels, incorporate gender perspectives in UN peacekeeping operations around the world, and encourage women to play a more active role in the prevention of armed conflict.

"In recent years, Taiwan has also begun discussing peace-related issues," says Theresa Yeh, an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University and a member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. "The scope is very broad and includes both the international and domestic communities." According to Yeh, peace issues also play a role in addressing such issues as environmental conservation and poverty.

In Lysistrata, it is the men who start wars, and the women who end them. "But it isn't necessarily that way in practice," argues Yeh. "The most humane and gentle people I've known have been men. If there is to be any hope of peace, the growing numbers of women getting involved in peace work will not be enough; men must get involved too."

Men and women worked as equal partners to arrange the just-completed international symposium on peace. Perhaps that effort was in fact Taiwan's first step down the road to peace.