Tortillas, trauma and tears: gendering El Salvadoran women’s participation in the 1980–1992 civil war

Throughout the centuries, armed conflict and the machinations of gender relations have been intimately entwined. In this paper the gendered impacts of armed conflict are discussed in relation to El Salvadoran women’s experiences of the 1980–1992 civil war. Drawn from the author’s fieldwork, testimonials are presented which highlight the contradictory nature of women’s experiences of conflict. It is argued that while the participation of large numbers of women in the Salvadoran civil war was almost unprecedented, this participation was generally undertaken in ways which entrenched oppressive sex role stereotypes in Salvadoran society and thus, in ways which acted to disempower, rather than empower Salvadoran women.