Women at War: Media Coverage Then… and Now

While war narratives for centuries have focused on men’s experiences, women’s stories have gradually been receiving their due, especially in popular culture. 

The Women of World War II is its own, copious literary genre. Kristin Hannah recently scored a massive hit with her novel “The Women,” set during the conflict in Vietnam. Movies and TV shows abound, ranging from “The Six Triple Eight” (WW II) to “MASH” (Korea) to “China Beach” (Vietnam) to docudramas and documentaries about the women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Go On Pretending by Alina Adams

My 2022 History Through Fiction title, “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region,” featured a World War II section, but from the Eastern, Soviet front.  

For my 2025 release, “Go On Pretending,” I wanted to focus on a pair of conflicts that haven’t received the same amount of exposure, and highlight the women’s perspective of both.

In Part #1 of “Go On Pretending,” Rose Janowitz is so committed to progressive causes that, in 1939, she volunteers as part of the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight against Fascist Francisco Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. Rose believes the agitprop which promised women full equality on the battlefield with men:

She’d come to fight. Back home in New York, Rose had listened to stirring tales about the heroic acts performed by the Milicianas, the over 1000 women who’d risen up to defend Madrid in the early days of this Spanish Civil War. They came from trade unions and militant libertarian organizations. Their speedy assembly was reported to be one of the reasons why the Nationalist coup d-etat didn’t start and end in July of 1936, turning, instead, into a going-on-three-year campaign.

The Milicianas served in single-sex and mixed gender battalions, raiding prisons to rescue captured comrades, erecting barricades to protect regained territory, and charging onto battlefields, fully armed, with a specialty in manning machine guns.

That was the duty Rose had volunteered for, albeit as part of an international, rather than native Spanish force. Reality proved somewhat different.

She’d come prepared to face the fog of war at the front. She’d expected chaos among the carnage, the deafening din of gunfire, the blinding haze of smoke, the bleeding wounds, the screaming fallen, the painfully silent dead. She wouldn’t say she’d been looking forward to it, exactly. That would be macabre. But she had been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to do her part, to prove herself an equal of the brave women who’d come before her.

What she hadn’t expected was the bureaucratic confusion. Especially in the columns of self-proclaimed anarchists, communists, and socialists, where a chain of command would seem to go against everything they said they stood for. As they fought for their lives against Franco’s Fascist, Nazi-aligned forces, nobody could agree on what the role of women should be in their struggle. While some insisted that Largo Caballero’s October 1936 decree expelled women from the self-organized militias, others countered that it was, in fact, the opposite. That Caballero’s decree folded the otherwise independent militias into the Republican Army and thus specifically called for an obligatory militarization of women to serve.

In the meantime, rumors regarding how women were treated by both warring sides ran rampant, designed to scare off volunteers and to smear the other as particularly depraved. Republicans touted the bravery of Lina Odena, who committed suicide rather than be captured by Nationalist forces. They insisted that she had every right to fear a fate worse than death and pointed to the Fascists’ threats of rape by Moorish soldiers, as well as their history of violating women and young children in every village they conquered, after which they would parade with the victim’s bloody underwear on their rifles. The Nationalists countered that there was never a threat of rape, and accused Odena of committing suicide not because she feared their wrath, but in order to avoid facing the punishment she was due for her part in the slaughter of priests and nuns behind Republican lines. This was dismissed on the left as a lie spread by Franco’s minions. As was the preposterous claim that female Stalinists were purging Trotskyite comrades in Barcelona. The women of the left were united for their cause. There was no dissent between them. They were an emancipated, liberated fighting force. It was women volunteers on the right who were forbidden from wearing pants, forced into long skirts and sleeves for modesty, and shuffled to supporting tasks like office work, and the care of widows, orphans, and refugees. 

Thankfully, even if there was some lingering confusion about the precise role of women in the merged Republican forces, Caballero’s edict wielded no power over foreign volunteers. The decision regarding how best to utilize women in this struggle for freedom and equality would be up to their individual Abraham Lincoln Brigade unit leaders.

Over 70 years later, in Part #3 of “Go On Pretending,” Rose’s granddaughter, Libby, inspired by her grandmother’s thrilling tales of adventure, opts to follow in Rose’s footsteps, running off to join The Women’s Revolution in Rojava, Syria – much to her mother, Emma’s, distress:

Emma began hearing about the Kurdish region of Syria and their battle against ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, just as Libby started her freshman year at Middlebury College. Libby chose the Vermont school based on their celebrated International and Global Studies program. She wrote her application essay on her father and her grandparents, how she intended to continue their proud tradition of activism. Emma suspected she didn’t come up in her daughter’s statement unless it was as an example of indolent apostates who refused to engage in insurgency. Libby’s infatuation with Rojava suggested to Emma nothing more than that her daughter was enjoying her classwork. And Emma had to admit, the topic was certainly interesting. After their Worker’s Party was banned in Turkey, some Kurds immigrated to Syria, primarily the area known as Rojava. There, they founded the Democratic Union Party.  

So far, so Revolution 101. 

What really captured the imagination of not just Libby, but multiple dreamers around the world, was the phenomenon which came to be known as the Women’s Revolution.

Syria’s civil war opened the door to not only a revival of the Kurdish liberation movement, but the chance to create, from scratch, the concept of democratic confederalism. They wouldn’t merely push back on President Bashar al-Assad, they wouldn’t merely battle to eradicate ISIS. They would, in the process, establish a society based on democratic autonomy, gender equality, feminism, and environmentalism. Rojava would be governed by elected councils, commissions, and coordinating bodies. These four levels of autonomous, self-organized councils would be connected through a bottom-up pyramid. Communes would extend through neighborhood and district levels, followed by People’s Councils to represent each canton. Power was structured to arise from the lowest level, where each resident was free to be involved in all decision-making. The goal of such a grass-roots organization was to be non-hierarchical, non-discriminatory, and to make a state of any kind unnecessary.

But that wasn’t all. Every level of commune, council, commission or court was mandated to be occupied by two democratically elected co-chairs, one of which must be a woman. In any mixed-gender institutions, democratically elected women were required to make up a minimum forty percent. This was in addition to separate women’s communes and women’s councils in every district specifically designed to advance women’s interests.

Among those interests was the banning of child marriage, as well as any kind of forced marriage, polygamy, dowry payments, and honor killings. Rape and domestic violence were decreed illegal, while abortion was permitted. To ensure these principles were carried out, the justice system was also non-hierarchical, with consensus taking priority over a formal vote when it came to passing judgment. Security forces were trained in feminist theory and non-violence before they were issued weapons. 

Furthermore, in 2011, Rojava introduced the concept of jineology. This Kurdish feminist movement aimed to correct the absence of women in the writing of history and science. Women and men received training and education in jineology and the history of oppression. Rojavan men were taught how to overcome gendered, stereotypical, and oppressive behavior, with the goal of creating a new type of man, alongside the freely liberated woman.

Emma agreed with Libby. It all sounded absolutely wonderful.

But Emma had grown up surrounded by a philosophy that also sounded absolutely wonderful. And she had seen how that played out in reality. Emma foolishly assumed Libby had learned that same lesson. But apparently, it either hadn’t sunk in thoroughly or, like every American Socialist Emma had ever met, the working assumption was that the USSR had failed because Marxist principles hadn’t been applied correctly. When they were in charge, they would apply them correctly. And the subsequent society would be absolutely wonderful.

Emma would have been embarrassed by her child’s naivete—not to mention her conventionality. Libby was asserting her individuality by thinking and acting just like everybody else her age. But there was no room for embarrassment while Emma was consumed with terror for Libby’s life. 

Esther Gutiérrez Escoda

Researching the Spanish Civil War versus the Rojava Revolution proved a study in contrasts. With the former, the history was primarily recorded by men, about men. If I wanted insights about the roles – not to mention the thoughts, feelings, and opinions – of women in that conflict, I had to go looking for it specifically. For instance, I found much to enlighten me in the research of Esther Gutierrez Escoda, who made it her mission to set the record straight about the female soldiers of The People’s Army of the Spanish Republic, and in the section on international women volunteers at The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

Naturally, there are no scholars focusing specifically on the men of the People’s Army or The Lincoln Brigade. Because men are presumed the default. When you say soldiers and volunteers, obviously you mean men. 

That wasn’t the case when I did my deep dive into Rojava. Like Emma, I also have a college-aged child enamored with the social and political experiment taking place in Northeastern Syria. He gifted me a book, “Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women’s Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan” by Michael Knapp, Anja Flach, and Ercan Ayboga. I added to that with The Kurdish Project, openDemocracy, and other mainstream news.

Women at war

There, coverage focused almost exclusively on the all-female forces, councils, and communes. It might seem like progress. But I wonder: Is it because the media has finally learned to treat women as equally worthy of reporting on, or because of the oddball factor?

Hey, did you know little women could handle big weapons? Did you know they could go out on the battlefield and not burst into tears – or reach for their make-up? Did you know women could self-organize politically as well as personally? Look how cute they are trying to fight off ISIS!

Basically, Dog Bites Man isn’t a story. Man Bites Dog is. 

To continue the canine metaphor and paraphrase a comment by Samuel Johnson, “At some point, it's not enough to be a dog who plays the piano. You have to ask whether the dog plays the piano well.”

Even though there was more writing about the women of Rojava than there is on the ones of the Spanish Civil War, it still came with a whiff of “Can you believe this is happening?”

I look forward to the day when media coverage of women in war zones is less about how incredible it is to find them there, and more about their goals, efforts, and experiences. You know, like the media coverage of men.