Women’s Principled Tactical Pluralism: Understanding the Cases of Sisters2Sisters and the Spouses of People’s Soldiers

Abstract: Feminist social movement scholars have studied the impact of women, gender, and sexual diversity in social movements. Among other questions, they ask: Are women, along with gender and sexual minorities, more likely to be committed to nonviolent (or less violent) approaches to seeking political change? If so, why? These questions are relevant to peacebuilding scholars and practitioners, who often either theorize or design interventions based on the assumption that a more consistent preference for nonviolent approaches to social change leads women to make distinctive contributions to peace. In this article, I conduct a comparative case study of two of the most unique women-led nonviolent initiatives that have emerged since the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar: Sisters2Sisters and Spouses of People’s Soldiers. Through the comparison of these cases, I examine aspects of the nonviolent tactical repertoire developed by women’s groups as part of Myanmar’s anti-regime resistance movement. I then apply an interpretive lens to understand what these choices of nonviolent tactics mean for their founders’ orientation toward the armed resistance and their framings of peace. My analysis simultaneously provides additional evidence for claims made in feminist social movement literature while also problematizing these claims by fleshing out the complexity of the social positionings and tactical choices of the women activists I discuss. I also seek to bridge gaps between feminist social movement literature and peacebuilding practice, pointing to what this discussion illuminates about women’s potential contributions to peacebuilding.