When Isabel Met Kavita and Talk About Militarism

Global Fund for Women’s event, November 16, 2010
Ramdas and Allende spoke about the many women they had met throughout the world, women who Ramdas described as “indestructible,” who had been victimized by wars, internal violence and U.S. military intervention. Both spoke from a place of experience—Ramdas recounted working in an orphanage filled with unwanted girls in her native India, while Allende spoke of her experiences in Chile after the U.S.-funded coup d’etat ousted her cousin Salvador Allende from the presidency. Allende, in particular, had witnessed first-hand the devastating effects of militarism under the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that followed the coup.

Both women stressed the relationship between nationalism and militarism, which Allende said “scares her stiff.” And certainly they made a compelling connection between U.S. exceptionalism (a wedge issue following the election of President Obama and throughout the mid-term elections) and the culture of violence. They encouraged the audience, composed largely of American women, to be active, loud voices of feminism—reminding us that our pursuit of gender parity should not be contained within U.S. borders.