The primary focus of this paper lies within developing a better understanding of women's court. This platform enables women’s voices to be heard while constructing a new model of justice built on women’s principles. In order to further investigate the matter, I am exploring the connection between two concepts – gender and nation as well as sexism and nationalism. The construction of gender equates women with infants, especially in regard to their political participation, deems them inferior to men as well as labelling them as “inappropriate” and “too emotional” for decision-making. The social construction of gender limits women’s roles to their private sphere, family and care. Through the construction of nationalism and militant nationalism, the constructed gender role of women is reinforced. Based on closed boundaries of nationalism and dividing groups into “us” and “them”, nationalism gives women a special role inside these boundaries – to protect them as well as the nation’s tradition. A woman is seen as the “mother of the nation” and consequently she is obliged to give birth to “our children”. All of the aforementioned concepts lead to women being perceived as objects, weapons and techniques used in wars for defeating the opponents – “Others”. Raping women in wars has a symbolic meaning of subordinating the “Others” and is practiced as a military tactic for erasing the other nation either by giving birth to children of another nationality or as symbol of not being capable of protecting “your” women. These are among the testimonies heard at women’s courts, which are informal, symbolic courts, without legal standing. However, these courts are important platforms, which allow women to tell their stories, to define justice according to their standards and to strengthen women’s solidarity. The network of women’s courts is spread across the world, where women can testify in a variety of contexts, nevertheless all those stories consist of stories of violations of human women’s rights, stories of pain, but also stories of resistance. Through testifying women touch upon all forms of violence, mostly sexual, ethnic and military violence, which intertwine, complete and support each other. The initiators of women’s courts are activists and feminists who are often part of women’s anti-war organizations. For instance, the women’s court in the area of former Yugoslavia is primarily supported by the organisation Women in black, who express their disagreement and indignation at war injustice as well as all forms of discrimination with a symbol of silence and black clothes. The stories of women who are victims of militant nationalism have been silenced or ignored. The construct of nation’s collective memory is not accordance to many personal women experiences. However, when women testify in the women’s courts, their stories become public. By sharing their experiences, women have gotten the opportunity to become part of the collective memory. As well, the role of social work is to hear marginalized stories and enable the bottomed experiences and knowledge to become part of the history.
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