Poland has a long-standing and diverse tradition of women's active participation in pro-statist (para)militarism, armed resistance, and volunteer defense, ranging from socialist terrorists opposing the Tsarist autocracy, to World War I riflewomen, World War II anti-Nazi insurgents, and today's citizen–soldiers in the Territorial Defense Forces. Although not all of these women have engaged in violence directly, they have been integral to militarized organizations preparing for armed activities. While these emancipated female militants constituted a minority of the female population, they repeatedly troubled the gendered imagination of foreign observers or aggressors. For instance, Swiss correspondent F. C. von Erlach expressed surprise at the “stupendously important role”1 women played in the 1863 January Uprising, and the Nazi Security Service cautioned its operatives about the cunning nature of Polish women, described as “capable of the most unbelievable things.”2 Women in (para)military roles have significantly influenced the gender contract of defense in Poland, impacting “what men and women . . . think and expect, and what they do”3 in the sphere of national security.
This legacy persists in the high level of Polish women's involvement in volunteer defense, comparable more to Nordic states than to the Central European region.4 Given this context, it is surprising that the Polish national–military tradition eventually embraced the Western perception of war as an “entirely masculine activity.”5 Yet, this was precisely the outcome. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the archetypal Polish “national hero” was predominantly portrayed in both academic research and public memory as the “motherland's favorite son,”6 “a military man distinguished by his sacrifices in the struggle for the future of his country.”7 Consequently, the narrative of female citizen–soldiers was inadequately incorporated into mainstream scholarship and public memory, both during the era of state socialism and in the post-Cold War era.8 This situation was largely influenced by the focus of Polish professional history on higher military and political echelons, where women were scarce, thereby projecting the experiences of a limited and predominantly male group as representative of the entire nation.
Similar to various other contexts, Polish women's history developed as a response to this looming “problem of invisibility,”9 seeking to fill in the blank spots of the predominantly male-focused (“malestream”) national scholarship and memory. However, this narrative is evolving. The revival of Russian imperialism and the tumultuous conclusion of the post-Cold War era have sparked a resurgence in defense activities and the revitalization of memory tropes in Poland. However, rather than remasculinizing the past, this militarized memory “boom” has regendered national memory in novel ways.
Since the second decade of the twenty-first century, Poland has experienced a “herstorical turn”—a significant surge in popular interest regarding women's roles in the history of wars and independence struggles.10 This shift, primarily fueled by popular herstory books, comics, museum exhibitions, media articles, monuments, and TV shows, has also rekindled interest among professional historians, evidenced by a wealth of new works commemorating significant historical anniversaries over the last decade. This “herstorical turn” exemplifies what Andrea Pető termed “value-driven revisionism”—a reevaluation of history not primarily based on new evidence or significance but on the adoption of a more egalitarian value system in contemporary Polish society.11 An illustrative case is that of Elżbieta Zawacka, a women's paramilitary instructor and World War II Special Operations Executive agent. In 2001, Zawacka justifiably lamented the absence of female fighters from Polish collective memory. By 2019, however, she had been not only featured in a comic book and on a feminist radio show, but also honored as the namesake of a regional battalion of the Territorial Defense Forces. Another symbolic indicator of this shift occurred in 2023 when the Warsaw Uprising Museum, previously critiqued for its inadequate representation of women's history and its portrayal using a “girl pinup” aesthetic,12 opened an exhibition exclusively dedicated to the diverse roles of women in the anti-Nazi resistance.13
By addressing its foundational “problem of invisibility,” the ongoing herstorical turn compels a reevaluation of the rationale behind women's history in and of Poland, prompting the search for new programmatic goals for the coming decades of scholarship. Although rectifying historical omissions by documenting “the missing half of (national) history”14 was a valid objective for women's history in previous decades, such lines of inquiry are gradually reaching their limits. Concurrently, new and distinct “problems of invisibility” are arising as Central and Eastern European (CEE) professional and public herstory become more engaged in and influential on global knowledge production.
Recently, numerous scholars have highlighted the underrepresentation of CEE research and experiences in feminist history of war,15 critical military studies,16 and feminist security studies.17 My decade-long, multi-sited research on women's (para)military tradition in Poland, spanning from World War II resistance to contemporary paramilitary organizing, has led me to identify three novel challenges facing the research on Polish female (para)militarism. These challenges arise as the research navigates through both national and international feminist academic circles and institutional contexts. These challenges are: 1) the silences of “methodological nationalism’; 2) the dominance of Western-centric “feminist fables” on militarism; and 3) the inherent exclusions within feminist history itself. Additionally, I will outline potential approaches for women's history to surmount these challenges, thereby contributing significantly not only to national history but also to the global feminist discourse on militarism and gender, a topic made increasingly pertinent by the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Beyond the Silences of “Methodological Nationalism”
The Polish herstory turn, despite its significant revisionist impact, has remained predominantly national in scope, aims, and outreach, consequently making little impression on international feminist scholarship and political imaginaries. This limited influence on the global stage may largely stem from its deep-rooted connection with “methodological nationalism,” an analytical approach that confines sociopolitical phenomena within the territorial and conceptual confines of the nation-state.18 Such an approach often accepts national discourses and frameworks as given, without challenging or contrasting them with international processes.
A prime example of methodological nationalism in women's history is what I term “nationalist herstory.” This genre, a facet of the current herstorical turn, employs historical narratives of women to forge a specific, politically endorsed concept of nationhood for the present. Predominantly seen in popular history, it celebrates (para)military women as patriotic exemplars, framing their lives within national heroism and martyrdom.19 In Poland, nationalist herstory has largely focused on the experiences of the two world wars. This has led to a proliferation of museum exhibitions, nonacademic publications, and oral history books centered on women's roles in wartime, which have been introduced to the public since the early 2000s.20 By its definition, nationalist herstory intertwines with national identity politics, aiming to reinforce a shared national social imaginary—an amalgam of ideas and symbols through which a community imagines itself and its past.21 These shared social imaginaries, in themselves, are not inherently problematic; they are fundamental to social cohesion and collective action. Particularly in challenging times, like the ongoing war in Ukraine, a societal consensus on the critical aspects of a nation's history, values, and geopolitical stance is vital for fostering comprehensive societal resilience against threats like Russian imperialism. Therefore, integrating women into these national–historical narratives, for instance, through their representation in museum exhibits about past resistance and defense, lays a solid foundation for contemporary gender equality politics.
However, the issue with national herstory rests in what it omits. It often reduces the richness and plurality of the social imaginary to a collection of normative narratives and ideals. For the Polish herstory turn, this limitation contributes to the didactic nature of much of the (para)military herstory. In numerous popular works, the portrayal of militant women from the past often reinforces contemporary Polish cultural ideals of patriotic femininity, rather than exploring and understanding the full spectrum of women's historical experiences with (para)militarism. Justifying why she selected particular women and topics for her World War II herstory book while excluding others, one author expressed this rationale in the following way: “If women played hardball, they would not be heroes to me.”22 Additionally, the predominant focus of mainstream (para)military herstory on nation-building often leads to the overshadowing of stories about women's emancipation by the overarching narrative of national emancipation. In essence, museum exhibits and popular books frequently neglect to adequately address militant women's emancipatory objectives, subversive actions, and experiences of gender inequality, relegating these aspects to a subordinate role beneath the more universal narrative of national resistance and defense. For instance, the main exhibition of the Warsaw Uprising Museum, while including and honoring several women in the resistance, nearly completely overlooks the subject of women's parallel underground organizations, their aims to enhance equality, and the discrimination they faced within the predominantly male resistance frameworks.
At the periphery of the popular herstory movement are professional works in women's history. Here, methodological nationalism is not always a product of deliberate commitment to national identity politics. Rather, it often arises as a byproduct of the entrenched “methodological orthodoxy” in the field of Polish history23—a tendency to adhere strictly to traditional disciplinary standards while avoiding interdisciplinary and transnational approaches. Consequently, professional works on (para)military women's history tend to be descriptive and fact-based, showing resistance to critical and feminist theories.24 Instead of offering a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of sociopolitical dynamics concerning gender and militarism, these works often merely incorporate women into the unchallenged narrative of Polish war and resistance history. Although capable of influencing domestic perceptions through museum exhibitions and publications, the national focus of Polish nationalist herstory on (para)militarism faces significant challenges in shaping international academic and public narratives about gender and militarism. The apparent solution to this dilemma is to embrace transnational theoretical and methodological frameworks, such as “gender,” which can elucidate the interplay between national and global perspectives while critically examining national discourses and histories. At this juncture, however, Polish herstory encounters a fresh “problem of invisibility” — the Western-centric bias prevalent in a significant portion of international feminist theory on militarism and gender. This bias often overshadows the unique experiences and perspectives that Polish (para)military history can contribute, limiting its recognition and integration into the broader feminist discourse.
Overcoming Western-centric “Feminist Fables” on Militarism
Methodological nationalism is not the sole barrier preventing Polish (para)military herstory from entering the global academic sphere. Another significant challenge is the unequal distribution of epistemic power within feminist academia, which often results in the imposition of central frameworks on peripheral experiences.
The Western-centric nature of prevailing feminist theories on war, security, and (para)militarism has only recently been critically examined. As two Czech feminist security scholars note, while “Western” Feminist Security Studies (FSS) knowledge circulates globally, CEE, as well as Southern and Southeastern European perspectives, do not adequately influence the discipline. This has led to a predominance of Western-centric frameworks, sidelining contributions from what has been called the “second world.’25 This geographical imbalance in knowledge production has led to notable misunderstandings, particularly evident in the differing responses of some Western feminists and most CEE feminists to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. While many Western feminists have advocated for an abstract notion of peace, the majority of Ukrainian and CEE feminists have preferred a more pragmatic approach, supporting both the Ukrainian armed resistance and local feminist politics as a suitable international feminist response to this conflict.26
These uncomfortable misunderstandings are not mere coincidences; they arise from the foundational approaches of dominant feminist scholarship in theorizing militarism and gender. Feminist research in these areas, evolving in the West since the 1990s, emerged in response to the neglect of women and gender issues within mainstream war and military studies. Pioneering works in this field have shed light on the critical role of gender in militarist politics, including the gendered protector–protected binary in war narratives, the prominence of masculinity in military institutions, gender divisions in labor for national endeavors, and the gendered nature of military violence.27 However, as often occurs with successful paradigms, this scholarship has given rise to its own set of “feminist fables.” These are deterministic and normative narratives depicting militarization as a process intrinsically linked to traditional gender roles in that “militarization depends on ‘men’ and ‘women’ being, acting, identifying, and even thinking as men and women as constituted through these intersecting discourses.”28 Consequently, feminist research has frequently reduced all varieties of militarism to an inherently patriarchal ideology that glorifies war, and framed every instance of militarization as a process reinforcing male dominance and female subordination.29
The centuries-long history of Polish women's (para)military involvement challenges these rigid frameworks in several key ways. First, unlike European state militaries officially restricted to men, Polish volunteer paramilitarism has historically been more inclusive of women, both in noncombatant and combat roles. Examples include the female Dromedaries active during the 1905 revolution, the women's unit of the Polish Riflemen Association established in 1912, the Voluntary Legion of Women formed in 1918, the Female Military Training organization founded in 1928, and the women-only units of the World War II Home Army, such as the Women's Diversion and Sabotage and Women's Minelaying Patrols. Second, the Polish resistance tradition, unlike typical militarist ideologies of imperialist endeavors, is deeply intertwined with emancipatory political movements like anti-imperialism, socialism, democracy, and women's suffrage. For instance, the early twentieth-century Dromedaries were part of the revolutionary Polish Socialist Combat Organization, and the World War II Underground State emphasized anti-fascism and socialization of production in its final testament.30 Third, the extensive participation of women in Polish independence movements, and their connection with these progressive political movements, necessitates a more nuanced understanding of militarism beyond the simplistic masculine-patriarchal model. Finally, considering Poland's history of statelessness and foreign occupation, militarism might be more accurately viewed not as an ideology exalting war, but rather as a doctrine advocating resistance as a path to justice and positive peace—a liberation from foreign subjugation.
As Polish herstory of (para)militarism makes its way into the global sphere of feminist knowledge production, it faces new “problems of invisibility.” These arise due to their discordance with the prevailing international theories on the gender–militarism nexus. However, it is precisely these conflicts that present an opportunity for Western feminist scholarship to embrace greater complexity, ambiguity, and diversity.31 Engaging in such dialogues can steer academic discourse away from rigid, normative concepts to more analytical and nuanced perspectives. This, in turn, could open up valuable pathways for comparative research into various types of militarism and their interactions with different gender regimes.
Redefining Feminist Politics from Subjectivity to Practice
Considering the prevailing global feminist research trend of framing militarism as predominately masculine, it's unsurprising that much of the scholarship views “authentic” feminist politics as inherently opposing national–military institutions, rather than collaborating with them.32 In Western contexts, feminism has frequently evolved alongside anti-militarist movements. Contrastingly, in Poland, the “first wave” feminism was deeply intertwined with the pursuit of national independence, though it simultaneously critiqued the movement's gender-based exclusions. This intertwining is encapsulated in the assertion that the combined struggle for national and women's rights was fundamental to the Polish women's movement, as many believed that women's equal rights could only be assured in an independent Poland.33 A poignant example is Maria Turzyma-Wiśniewska, editor-in-chief of the 1902 feminist magazine “Nowe Słowo” (New Word) and founder of the Women's Alliance Association, who later became a member of the Riflemen Association, exemplifying this synergy between national and feminist endeavors.34
Despite widespread recognition of the links between early Polish feminist activism and the national independence movement, a tendency persists to distinctly separate these two spheres. In this dichotomy, the feminist movement is often perceived as the sole realm of “authentic” feminist politics, while the (para)military movement is seen more as a conduit for nationalist politics, less so for women's emancipation. This perspective is epitomized by Robert Ponichtera's argument that women engaged in the independence struggle “were nationalists rather than feminists.”35 Similarly, feminist scholar Sławomira Walczewska critiqued the national independence tradition's view of women's citizenship, suggesting it was more about the instrumentalization of women than about their liberation.36 As a result, many post-1989 Polish feminists, empowered by the regained national sovereignty, sought to distance themselves from the national military tradition, overlooking its potential as a platform for advancing gender emancipation.
Influenced by Western liberal feminist theory and activism, post-Cold War Polish feminism has tended to view “authentic” emancipation as achievable solely within an autonomous feminist movement, and “authentic” feminism as grounded in a deliberate feminist identity. Despite valuing the women's (para)military tradition, contemporary Polish feminists often hesitate to incorporate it into the wider narrative of Polish feminist history.37 This hesitancy, which overlooks the (para)military tradition in Polish feminist discourse, is the final “problem of invisibility” that future herstory writing needs to address to fully encapsulate the experiences, motivations, and impact of female resistance fighters. I argue that including (para)military women's stories in the broader spectrum of Polish feminist politics is vital. To do this effectively, it is necessary to expand the definition of feminist politics beyond just the actions of feminist-identified individuals or movements. It should also encompass feminist practices that may not be explicitly labeled as such but still challenge and potentially reshape oppressive gender regimes. Patricia Melzer, who advocated for this expanded view, defined such feminist practices as actions that disturb, confront, and possibly transform oppressive gender structures. These practices, while not necessarily self-identified as feminist, carry significant discursive weight and influence power dynamics in ways that disrupt traditional notions of femininity and masculinity.38
Works of herstory, drawing from the biographical accounts of female fighters, reveal that the independence movement served as a fertile ground for feminist practices. It enabled women to step beyond traditionally feminine roles, exercise both individual and collective agency, and develop everyday security skills, thereby challenging the established societal norm of the gendered protector–protected dynamic. It also allowed women to acquire civic identities, ultimately becoming a factor in women gaining political rights. The concept of women's “co-citizenship” first appeared in the context of the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising, and this idea of female citizenship as exercised through joint resistance struggle continued throughout the nineteenth century. Women's involvement in the struggle for independence was also widely used by suffrage activists in their campaigning for voting rights before 1918.39 In a similar vein, the decision to grant equal rights and responsibilities to women in the World War II armed underground in 1943 was partly justified by their comprehensive involvement in various aspects of the resistance.40
Historical biographies offer substantial evidence of (para)military structures as arenas where women fought for equality and recognition, not just during military engagements but also in their subsequent memorialization. The independence movement, while a platform for women's active participation and political awakening, also exposes persistent efforts by officials to maintain a differentiated status for women through exclusionary military policies and language. A notable instance is the 1922 enforced disbandment of Volunteer Female Legions, which was met with resistance as female leaders responded by forming a women-only paramilitary organization. Additionally, the postwar shift toward a masculinized representation of war history, as previously mentioned, was challenged by women veterans who established their own archives, book series, and monuments dedicated to acknowledging and celebrating the female contributions to resistance efforts, exemplified by initiatives like the Zawacka Archive.41
Undoubtedly, there are valid reasons for categorizing feminist politics as the actions of feminist individuals or autonomous movements. However, it is crucial to recognize that this approach might inadvertently exclude a wide array of transformative activities conducted outside the realm of explicit feminist awareness. Many (para)military women during the two world wars did not self-identify as feminists, possibly because feminism was often perceived as a Western, bourgeois concept, seemingly incompatible with national independence and armed resistance. Among the World War II Home Army women I interviewed, some embraced a feminist identity later in life, while others never aligned with contemporary feminist movements. Nevertheless, their contributions significantly altered gender roles and narratives. Therefore, these actions merit recognition within the broader context of Polish and Central European feminist politics, extending beyond the confines of national history.
Conclusion
In 2018, sociologist Kathleen Blee emphasized the need for feminist research on right-wing politics to evolve beyond its exhausted analytical avenues, and formulate “next-generation claims” to address contemporary challenges.42 As she argued, feminists once transformed scholarship by positing that gender matters for understanding various phenomena, yet today this claim is losing its critical potential. This article calls for a similar paradigmatic shift in the discourse on gender and militarism whose once revisionist and eye-opening claims have likewise fossilized into “feminist fables” as they have entered the mainstream.
Thanks to feminist historians in Poland and beyond, the visibility of women in research and commemoration of armed conflicts has significantly increased. Owing to international feminist theorizing on militarism and war, contemporary researchers now possess a “feminist curiosity” toolkit, comprising critical concepts and theories to explore the nuanced role of gender in national–military projects.43 In Poland in particular, women-centered memory activism has been making successful critical interventions into formerly “malestream” collective memory, popularizing female militants from the past and their role in both national and women's emancipatory politics. Owing to these various contributions, the herstory of Polish (para)militarism is far from invisible today, finding its way not just into history books but also TV shows and music albums. However, as (para)military herstory enters mainstream national remembrance, it is often hijacked by methodological nationalism, which is more interested in using women's stories for nation building than contributing to transnational knowledge and remembrance. On the other hand, when Polish (para)military herstory wishes to do the latter, it encounters another whole set of problems. With Western-centric feminist imagination largely reducing militarism to a patriarchal project, and seeing feminism as rooted in a conscious anti-military and anti-nationalist subjectivity, Polish experiences past and present are doomed to reside on the margins of transnational discussions as uncomfortable “apocrypha.” Only by addressing these three novel “problems of invisibility” will Polish feminist scholarship be able to formulate “next-generation claims” about gender and militarism that are so badly needed beyond Central Europe alone.
Notes
Franz L. Erlach, Partyzantka w Polsce w r. 1863 w świetle własnych obserwacji, zebranych na teatrze walki od marca do sierpnia 1863 roku [Polish people's warfare in 1863 according to my own observations, gathered in the theater of battle from March to August 1893], Translated by J. Gagatek (Warszawa: M. Arct, 1919), 233.
“Die polnische Frau im Volkstumskampf” [The Polish woman in the ethnic-national struggle], 17 VIII 1944, GK 912/DC 826, Archive of the National Remembrance Institute (AIPN).
Simon Duncan, “Theorizing European Gender Systems.” Journal of European Social Policy 5, no. 4 (1995), 263–284, here 265.
According to data acquired from the Polish MOD, young women constituted 43 percent of students in the volunteer Certified Military Classes in schools in 2020, and 20 percent of soldiers of the Territorial Defense Forces in 2023. Women are also active in the paramilitary sector, constituting approximately 25–50 percent of members, while such organizations are much more male-dominated in neighboring countries. According to World Values Survey, Polish women's willingness to defend the state is highest in the Visegrad region. See for example Weronika Grzebalska, “Regendering Defence Through a National-Conservative Platform? The Case of Polish Paramilitary Organizing,” Critical Military Studies 9, no. 2 (2021), 259–278.
John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).
Andrew A. Michta, Red Eagle: The Army in Polish Politics, 1944–1988 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1990), 19.
Jerzy J. Wiatr, The Soldier and the Nation: The Role of the Military in Polish Politics, 1918–1985, (New York: Routledge, 1988), 2.
Weronika Grzebalska, “Between Gender Blindness and Nationalist Herstory: The History of Polish Women in WWII as the Site of an Anti-modernist Revolution,” Baltic Worlds 4 (2017), 71–82.
Scott, Joan Wallach. “The Problem of Invisibility,” in Retrieving Women's History: Changing Perceptions of the Role of Women in Politics and Society, edited by S. Jay Kleinberg, 5–29 (London and Paris: Berg/UNESCO, 1988).
Grzebalska, “Between Gender Blindness and Nationalist Herstory.”
Andrea Pető, “Roots of Illiberal Memory Politics: Remembering Women in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution,” Baltic Worlds 4 (2017), 42–53.
For past discussion on commemorating women insurgents, see for example Karolina Sulej, “Morowe panny czy pin-up girls w moro? Jak chcemy pamiętać powstanki warszawskie?” [Daring girls or pin-up girls in camouflage? How do we want to remember the female Warsaw insurgents?], naTemat.pl, 28 July 2012, https://natemat.pl/25019,morowe-panny-czy-pin-up-girls-w-moro-jak-chcemy-pamietac-powstanki-warszawskie.
“Exhibition honors heroines of 1944 Warsaw Uprising,” PolskieRadio.pl, 4 August 2023, https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7991/artykul/3220409,exhibition-honours-heroines-of-1944-warsaw-uprising.
Anna Kowalczyk, Brakująca połowa dziejów [Missing half of history] (Warsaw: W.A.B., 2018).
Nancy M. Wingfield and Maria Bucur, eds. Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006).
Grzebalska, “Regendering Defence through a National-Conservative Platform.”
Kateřina Krulišová and Míla O'Sullivan, “Feminist Security Studies in Europe: Beyond Western Academics’ Club,” in Feminist IR in Europe: Trends in European IR Theory, eds. M. Stern and A.E. Towns (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, “Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology,” The International Migration Review 37, no. 3 (Fall 2003), 576–610.
Grzebalska, “Between Gender Blindness and Nationalist Herstory.”
Some examples include popular herstory books, e.g., Patrycja Bukalska, Sierpniowe dziewczęta ’44 [August Girls ’44] (Warsaw: Trio, 2013); Łukasz Modelski, Dziewczyny wojenne [War girls] (Cracow: Znak 2011); Barbara Wachowicz, Bohaterki powstańczej Warszawy [Heroines of insurgent Warsaw] (Warsaw: MUZA S.A. 2014); literary fiction books, e.g., Sylwia Chutnik, Kieszonkowy atlas kobiet [The pocket atlas of women] (Cracow: Świat Książki, 2008); exhibitions, e.g., Ola Misztur, Powstanki 1944 (Warsaw, 2010); musical albums, e.g., Various Artists, Panny wyklęte [Cursed girls], 2014; educational films, e.g., Powstanie w bluzce w kwiatki [Uprising in a flowery blouse] (Feminoteka Foundation, 2009); TV shows, e.g., Michał Rogalski (dir.), Dziewczyny wojenne [War girls], (TVP, 2017). For a more complete overview, see Weronika Grzebalska, “Od fałszywego uniwersalizmu do fetyszyzacji różnicy: Historia powstania warszawskiego i rewizjonistyczny zwrot herstoryczny” [From false universalism to the fetishization of difference: The history of the Warsaw Uprising and the revisionist herstorical turn], Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość [Memory and justice] 2–26 (2015), 148–149.
See, for instance, Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987).
Karolina Sulej and Anna Herbich, “Kobiety nie wypinają piersi po ordery” [Women do not stick their chests out for medals], Wysokie Obcasy, 12 November 2016, http://www.wysokieobcasy.pl/wysokie-obcasy/7,53662,20956648,kobiety-nie-wypinaja-piersi-po-ordery-jak-bardzo-historia-nie.html.
Dobrochna Kałwa, “Historia kobiet—kilka uwag metodologicznych” [Women's history—a few methodological remarks], in Dzieje kobiet w Polsce. Dyskusja [Women's history in Poland: A discussion], ed. Krzysztof A. Makowski (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Nauka i Innowacje, 2014), 18–19.
Natalia Jarska, “Women and Men at War: A Gender Perspective on World War II and its Aftermath in Central and Eastern Europe,” eds. Maren Röger and Ruth Leiserowitz (Osnabrück, 2012); reviewed in Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość 24, no. 2 (2014), 513.
Karolina Krulišová and Mila O'Sullivan, “Feminist Security Studies in Europe.”
See, for example, the open letter issued by Ukrainian feminists: The Feminist Initiative Group, “‘The right to resist.’ A feminist manifesto,” Commons, 7 July 2022, https://commons.com.ua/en/right-resist-feminist-manifesto/.
See the following: Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997); Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000); Cynthia Cockburn, “Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War: A Feminist Standpoint,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 12, no. 2 (2010), 139–157; Laura Sjoberg and Sandra Via, eds. Gender and International Security: Feminist Perspectives, Routledge Critical Security Studies Series (London: Routledge, 2010).
See Maria Stern and Marysia Zalewski, “Feminist Fatigue(s), Reflections on Feminism and Familiar Fables of Militarisation,” Review of International Studies 35, no. 3 (2009), 611–630, here 621; Victoria M. Basham and Sarah Bulmer, “Critical Military Studies as Method: An Approach to Studying Gender and the Military,” in The Palgrave International Handbook of Gender and the Military, eds. R. Woodward and C. Duncanson, 59–71 (London: Palgrave Macmillian, 2017).
Adem Elveren and Valentine M. Moghadam, “The Impact of Militarization on Gender Inequality and Female Labor Force Participation,” Working Paper 1307, Economic Research Forum, 2019, https://erf.org.eg/publications/1307/.
For more on women and the so-called patriotic/independence Left, see, among others, Joanna Dufrat, Kobiety w kręgu lewicy niepodległościowej: Od Ligi Kobiet Pogotowia Wojennego do Ochotniczej Legii Kobiet [Women in the independence left: From Women's League of War Preparedness to Women's Voluntary Legion] (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, 2001).
Grzebalska, “Regendering Defence through a National-Conservative Platform.”
Cynthia Cockburn, “Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War,” 142.
Aneta Stępień, “‘The World of Female Fighters and Female Wanderers’: Pro-independence Women's Groups in the Fight for Suffrage and National Independence in Poland,” Slavonica 26, no. 1 (2021), 1–20.
Marta Sierakowska, “From the Partitions to an Independent State: The Feminist Movement in Poland in the First Half of the 20th Century,” in Women's Movements: Networks and Debates in Post-Communist Countries in the 19th and 20th Centuries, eds. Edith Saurer, Margareth Lanzinger, and Elisabeth Frysak (Köln-Weimar-Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2006), 475–494.
Robert M. Ponichtera, “Feminists, Nationalists, and Soldiers: Women in the Fight for Polish Independence,” The International History Review 19, no. 1 (February 1997), 16–31.
Sławomira Walczewska, Damy, Rycerze i Feministki: Kobiecy dyskurs emancypacyjny w Polsce [Ladies, Knights and Feminists: Women's empancipatory discourse in Poland] (Kraków: Wydawnictwo eFKa, 1999), 46.
In a private conversation about my work on World War II Home Army women insurgents, one prominent Polish feminist explicitly told me not to “make these women into our feminist foremothers.” I believe this represents a wider imaginary of post-1989 Polish academic feminism which initially drew heavily from Western discourses of trans- and anti-nationalism.
Patricia Melzer, Death in the Shape of a Young Girl: Women's Political Violence in the Red Army Faction (New York: NYU Press, 2015), 237.
Małgorzata Fuszara, “Walka Polek o prawa wyborcze” [Polish Women's Struggle for Voting Rights] in O społeczeństwie, moralności i nauce [On society, morality and science], ed. Wojciech Pawilk and Elżbieta Zakrzewska-Manterys (Warsaw: ISNS UW, 2008), 65.
Weronika Grzebalska, Płeć powstania warszawskiego [The gender of the Warsaw Uprising] (Warsaw: IBL PAN, 2013), 67–68.
The archive of the Foundation of General Elżbieta Zawacka. Pomeranian Archives and Museum of the Home Army and the Military Service of Polish Women, https://zawacka.pl/zbiory (accessed date).
Kathleen Blee, “Next Steps for Scholarship on Gender and the Far-Right,” Center for Research on Extremism Working Paper Series No.1 / 2018 (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2018), 10, http://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/publications/c-rex-working-paper-series/blee-next-steps-2018.pdf (accessed 7 August 2024).
Cynthia Enloe, The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), 17.