Abstract:
The Yemen Civil War has been described as one of the worst humanitarian
crises in the world, with violence and conflict plaguing the country and depriving
the people of their utmost basic needs. With the escalation of the conflict in 2015
when the Saudi-led coalition officially intervened, the violence and instability only
magnified. The collapse of civilian infrastructure, including healthcare
infrastructure, became prevalent in the country. Its collapse has stripped away
millions of people’s access to healthcare in the midst of ongoing conflict, rendering
insecurity for the people. Women are among the most vulnerable groups threatened
by this collapse, facing life-threatening risks due to their sex and gender. The
insecurity women face extends to numerous ways, from sexual violence used as a
tactic of war, to gender-based violence, to structural economic marginalization.
This study analyses how war and conflict in the Yemen Civil War create
gendered insecurity for women through the collapse of healthcare infrastructure in
between 2015-2019. The insecurity that women face in this case reveals in several
ways, from the inability to access maternal care to gender restrictions that limits
women's mobility and rights. By applying a Feminist Security Studies lens, the
concept of security is defined beyond traditional state and military-centric views of
security, instead focusing on the everyday experiences of war as an equally
significant security concern. This framework elaborates how gender and gender
hierarchies enable the prioritization of military means over civilian healthcare needs
due to the subordination of femininities, revealing hierarchies that render those as
masculine as central and feminine as peripheral. Feminist Security Studies has
revealed that this healthcare collapse is not just a collateral damage of war, but is a
means of weaponizing women's survival, making it a battlefield of their own.
