Highlighted Session: Women, Cold War politics, and peace education: Challenging the paradigm

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Feminist international theories of “peace” and “conflict” highlight that political, educational, and cultural constructs of “peace” are gendered, and that men and women experience and imagine “peace” differently (Björkdahl & Mannergren Selimovic, 2016). This panel examines how economic, colonial, and political violence during the Cold War impacted women’s and girls’ education in postcolonial and former socialist countries in Africa and Eastern Europe.

The first paper analyzes how the concept of "peace" was defined and operationalized in Tanzanian socialist education policy during the Cold War, focusing on the erasure of gender-based violence from official discourses. While Tanzania’s socialist project promoted solidarity, self-reliance, and resistance to imperialism, it often ignored the violence faced by women and girls. Using feminist and decolonial approaches, the study critically examines historical and media documents and compares these patterns to post–Cold War and contemporary education frameworks. The findings suggest that patriarchal silences about gender-based violence persist in evolving forms within Tanzania and beyond, highlighting the need for peace education that directly addresses both structural and gendered forms of violence.

The second paper explores the experiences of Croatian women teachers who teach citizenship education (CE) amid competing national narratives and rising conservatism in post-socialist, post-conflict Croatia. Using interviews with 16 women CE teachers, the study applies transnational feminist and postsocialist perspectives to understand how these educators negotiate their roles in promoting peace and social justice. Findings reveal that teachers share a sense of responsibility for shaping social relations but differ in how actively they seek to influence students’ values, a tension shaped by both socialist legacies and contemporary political pressures.

The third paper examines how “peace” and “peacebuilding” were constructed in the national narratives of socialist Bulgaria and capitalist Canada and the United States during the Cold War. It contends that both state socialist and neoliberal approaches to peace education overlook the persistent violence against women and sexual minorities within their societies. The study uses archival educational policy data and feminist curriculum theories to propose a teaching and learning paradigm centered on the intersections between political, social and gendered and sexual violence to support educational practice.

Together, these presentations shine light on how intertwined modes of postcoloniality, socialist and capitalist ideological state projects, and the moral economies of gender in schooling across time and space demand broader yet deeper theories and understanding of the relationship between gender, education, peace, and conflict in the contemporary world.

Sub Unit

• Gender Justice SIG

Organizer

• Nana Gulic, O.I.S.E. University of Toronto

Chair

• Miglena S. Todorova, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto

Individual Presentations

• The gendered moral economies of peace: Cold War education in socialist Tanzania and its contemporary echoes - Caroline Manion, OISE, University of Toronto

• Building Peace in Times of Rising Social Divisions: Role of Socialist Legacies in Responding to Radical Conservatism - Nana Gulic, O.I.S.E. University of Toronto

• Peace education and principles of sexual violence prevention: An intersectional teaching paradigm - Miglena S. Todorova, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto