Women as Ecological Subjects: Care and Political Ecology of War in Kristin Hannah’s The Women
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53032/tvcr/PP/2026.v8n1.04Keywords:
care, emotional labour, institutional neglect, ecological subjectAbstract
Through a close reading of The Women (2024), using the framework of feminist political ecology, this paper examines how women nurses, as ecological subjects in militaristic landscapes, come under institutional neglect, and how this neglect of their embodied experiences in war zones further renders their lives more vulnerable and precarious. It also studies how the emotional and ecological labour, care and maintenance offered by the women combat nurses is undervalued and masculine spectacular violence at war is privileged. It also analyses how women and men engaged in combat were perceived differently at their homes as well.
References
Bauhardt, Christine, and Wendy Harcourt, editors. Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care: In Search of Economic Alternatives. Routledge, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315648743
Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? Verso, 2009.
Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. Routledge, 2004. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203499627
Das, Veena. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. University of California Press, 2007. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520939530
Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. University of California Press, 1989.
Hannah, Kristin. The Women. St. Martin’s Press, 2024.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. 20th anniversary ed., University of California Press, 2003. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520930414
Masco, Joseph. The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post–Cold War New Mexico. Princeton University Press, 2006. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400849680
Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press,
Scott, Joan W. Gender and the Politics of History. Columbia University Press, 1988. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7312/scot91266
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford University Press, 1985.
Tronto, Joan C. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. Routledge,1993.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 The Voice of Creative Research

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.