Free Stop the Next War Now by Medea Benjamin

fundamentally different qualities than men. Both women and men exhibit stereotypically feminine traits, such as caring and nonviolence, and both genders engage in so-called women’s work, such as caring for a family’s health and maintaining a clean environment. However, in societies adhering closely to the dominator model, these activities are considered appropriate only for women and inappropriate for “real men.”
    In recent decades we have seen a strong movement toward real partnership between men and women in all spheres of life, along with a blurring of rigid gender distinctions. Men are nurturing babies, and women are entering positions of leadership. But this movement is still slow and localized; in some cultures and subcultures it’s fiercely, even violently, opposed (by certain fundamentalist leaders, for example).
    To continue to make change, the world’s progressive leaders must prioritize a global campaign for equitable and nonviolent gender relations. Valuing so-called women’s issues has enormous implications for the environment, the peace process, economic equity, and political democracy. As long as boys and men are socialized to equate “real masculinity” with violence and control— be it through “heroic” epics or war toys or violent and brutal television shows—how can we realistically expect to end the arms buildups that are today bankrupting our world as well as the terrorism and aggressive warfare that threaten our species’ survival?
    THE THIRD CORNERSTONE: ECONOMIC RELATIONS
    It makes no sense to talk of hunger and poverty in generalities when the mass of the world’s poor and the poorest of the poor are women and children. Many studies show that in most regions of the developing world women allocate far more of their resources to their families than men do. Development policies need to shift their focus to women, and we must include the work of caring and caregiving—still performed primarily by women worldwide as part of the “informal” economy—in national and international systems of economic measurement and accounting (since they are not included in either GDP or GNP).
    We should encourage and reward economic and social inventions that assign value to caring and caregiving work in both the market and nonmarket economic sectors. For example, we have national programs to train soldiers to kill people—and we offer these soldiers pensions. By contrast, we have no national programs to train women and men to effectively care for children—even though we have gained solid scientific knowledge about what is and is not effective and humane child care.
    People need meaningful work. Is there any more important or meaningful work than caring for other humans, particularly our children, and for our natural environment? In the dominator model, work is motivated primarily by fear and the artificial creation of scarcities through wars and misallocations and misdistributions of resources. Redefining what productive work is allows us to imbue work with what it lacks in a dominator system: a spiritual dimension.
    THE FOURTH CORNERSTONE: BELIEFS, STORIES, AND SPIRITUALITY
    As more and more of us come to realize that partnership is a viable possibility for human society, our understanding of spirituality may change radically: not merely an escape to otherworldly realms, spirituality offers us the opportunity for active engagement in creating a better world right here on earth.
    But to spread this consciousness will require what I have called spiritual courage: the courage of political, religious, educational, and business leaders to actively oppose injustice and cruelty in all spheres of life. We must summon great bravery to end domination and violence not only in international relations but also in intimate relations, not only in the so-called public sphere of politics and business but also in the so-called private sphere of parent-child, gender, and sexual relations. Domination and violence