The basic conclusion that I came to after reading Pat Hynes’ “Hope, But Demand Justice” is this: If we humans are to survive, women must achieve decisive roles in governments, on an emergency basis, supported by an international union of women.
This argument is not explicitly made in “Hope.” Indeed, I don’t know if Pat Hynes, the author, intended to make this point, or in this way. But I could not help but to come to this understanding as I read this compilation of Pat’s columns and essays in which she examines our deepest existential challenges.
In writing about our environment, climate emergency, gross economic inequity, refugees, COVID and war, she continually refers to ways in which the plight of women and children is systematically ignored and how women are exploited, often viciously and without fear of consequence, particularly when it comes to war.
In “Ten Reasons Why Militarism is Bad for Women,” Pat reports: “By the 1990s, nine of 10 people who died in war from direct and indirect effects were civilians.” And she reports that 80 percent of the world’s refugees and internally displaced people are women and children. In this essay, she also points out that “[a] unique harm of war for women is the trauma inflicted when men wield women’s bodies as weapons to demean, assault and torture.” The rape of women has been an historic feature of war, she continues, and then she observes that the project of conducting war, overseen by men, has been dependent on the sexual violation of women through officially sanctioned, and sometimes officially organized, prostitution.
One question immediately arises: How long would wars last without rape and other sexual exploitation of women? And another: Are not our profoundly inequitable, grossly destructive economic systems, in the United States and globally, based on the exploitation of women, through both violence and intimidation?
Showing us an alternative to the deadly path that humanity is on, Pat reports the following in an essay on her heartening experiences at the International Feminist Peace Conference, held in Ghana in 2018. The conference was organized by Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, of which Pat is a devoted member.
Studies of women in leadership in public and private sectors have concluded that women in high-level positions and on boards deal more effectively with risk, focus more strategically on long-term priorities, and are more successful financially. Experimental studies of women and men negotiating post-conflict agreements have found that all-male groups take riskier, less empathetic and more aggressive positions. They (the negotiations) also break down more quickly than negotiations that include women. Further, men are more satisfied with decisions made with women involved that those made with all-male groups.
“Hope” is only a brief book, but Pat has packed critical facts and analysis into each article and essay. I suggest that rather than planning to read straight through, you read one column, essay or talk at a sitting, giving yourself a chance to reread and reflect. I predict that you will be inspired to take some kind of action as a result of what you’ve read.
Pat concludes “Hope”:
We create conditions for hope when we aspire to something both good and badly needed and when we work toward achieving it, no matter the odds. And, if enough of humanity joins in this, we can improve the odds of human survival.