With the discovery of radium by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre, there emerged new inventions that altered the course of history, one of them being luminous paint for trench watches, specifically during the First and Second World Wars. Women were employed to make these luminescent watches in factories because of their nimble and agile hands/fingers where they were instructed by the factory managers to lick the radium-dipped brush with their mouths to a fine point to paint the numbers of the dials. Consequently, they developed cancers and diseases and started losing parts of their jaw, mouth, throat, bones etc. These women are called the Radium Girls because it is said that their bodies are glowing in their graves to this day because of the ingested radium (Morgan 2022). These happenings were uncared for and the women were sidelined and militaries all around the world started bulk-ordering the watches for their soldiers to be more at par with each other in the dark, for bombardment, drone and cockpit dials/switches and time-setting devices. The women from these factories were instructed to continue working, if not for their wages/livelihood, then at least for the soldiers and country.
Figure 1. ANZACs wearing luminous wristwatches in World War I
Figure 2. United States Radium Corporation
Using this instance, two security perspectives can be exemplified – military security and the security of the individual (women, in this case). The first is very much traditional security, centered around military objectives. In this paradigm, the soldiers and the states are the referent objects while the threat objects are rival states/international order. In the second case, critical security studies would place the Radium Girls as the referent object and the threat object would primarily be men and the state, along with other states and the global order.
While traditional security studies (in this case) would naturally favor the soldiers and the state because they matter to national security and sovereignty the most, critical security studies (in this case) would take the aspect of women’s security into consideration because security and protection at the individual level is crucial. This is where the relativity of security (Krause and Williams 2018) comes in – for what, whom, how and why. The policy objectives in traditional security studies are protecting territory, advancing militarily and gaining rank in the international order. For this, the luminescent trench watches were essential and if it meant trampling down on scores of women and their mental and physical health then so be it. However, this is starkly contested by critical security studies and it is done rightly so – the state is advancing their military and hard power in the name of protecting its citizens. The state used the radium girls, their own citizens, as tools to achieve a certain goal and this defeats the very constitution of security. The Radium Girls also emphasize how women are perceived in society, they are nothing but mere automata (parts of a machine) to fulfill man’s and the nation’s desires.
Feminist theory has had to navigate and find its position among the other theories, disciplines and discourse. In International Relations, the space for feminist studies was limited until women fought hard against the status-quo. Feminist studies is apt to study and analyse the Radium Girls because it would center around the women, but would not marginalize the other factors like state security, hard power, men and military advancement. Usually, in the mainstream discourse of security, solutionizing would be in regard to solving the problem of the state, as military issues would take precedence over the Radium Girls’ well-being and lives but feminist theorization would prioritize the Radium Girls – did they not know of the effects of radium? Why exactly could they not leave their jobs? How much later did they get legal assistance and support?
Coming to the contemporary landscape, there are different factories all around the world that are sanctioned and funded by the US (ILO). Similarly, only women are employed, not to give them opportunities to earn and become financially secure, but because of their small and nimble hands. In this world, women are most suited to sew buttons, to work on smaller machines and are more adept at the more delicate assembly line work. This is where the post-colonial approach can be used; for post-colonial states, territorial and military power are vital, but so are ideology, economy and infrastructure. These states are considered weak, and to get rid of this weakness they inevitably align themselves with the imperial powers of the international order. The capitalistic, globalist power of the US can be seen as an infiltrating and infringing force. The post-colonial approach would be used here to debunk Eurocentric American views of how power should be distributed and how subjugation through different means like industry and economy is the new colonialization. Additionally, the operation of ‘white man’s burden’ wherein the developed nations feel that they have to intervene in the economic and industrial affairs of the lesser developed nations to help them “develop and progress” can also be scrutinized.
Figure 3. Female Garment Workers
There is a close relationship between postcolonial states and the gendered individual in the context of radium girls/women from the global south and industries in the underdeveloped/developing countries. This is where, both the feminist and post-colonial approaches can be articulated. Previously, women in the factories in the US were marginalized and encroached on by the state. It has now digressed to different immigrant female workers and women from the developing countries being oppressed by men (the “higher gender”), their own respective states and the US (and other developed countries) as well. This kind of domination is multi-faceted and must be understood from different perspectives. There is an intersectionality of identities, of being a woman from a post-colonial nation, subjugated by both man and state, their own and foreign. With the help of both the approaches, this embedded power/gender relation in the national and international domain can be contextualized and further interrogated (Parashar, 2016).
It is known that there is an ongoing competition/hierarchy of empires. Although, presently, the power held by the American empire and its capitalist, “masculine” nature transcends borders and impacts different postcolonial states and their citizens – in this (contemporary) case, the women working in different industries/factories of developing countries endure rigorous treatment and oppression because their own states are not able to protect them against the US and, the radium girls (historically) did not receive justice and were failed by the “ever so great” America. The feminization of colonized states and subjects should also be taken into account. Violence and gender are closely related and embedded (Shepherd, 2009) into the larger processes of globalization, capitalism, industrialization and militarization – both at the national and international level as solidified by the instances used above.
Figure 4. Radium worker with radium-induced sarcoma of the jaw, also known as Radium Jaw
“The only conclusion the world outside can draw is that, notwithstanding all its universalist and humanitarian rhetoric, western lives matter more than those of others” (Barkawi, 2004). This can be complicated even further, to say that western lives, but only those of men, matter more than those of others. This is explicit in the case studies used. It seems as though this glass ceiling will never be shattered and what is needed are fundamental, structural changes to the inherent workings of the domestic and global systems. The gendered biases and embedded binaries that are inherent in the military industrial complex, in the working of industries and economies can be epistemologically and ontologically studied more comprehensively with the help of the feminist and the post-colonial approaches.
References
Barkawi, Tarak. 2004. ‘On the Pedagogy of “Small Wars”’. International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) 80 (1): 19–37.
“How to Achieve Gender Equality in Global Garment Supply Chains.” International Labour Organisation , www.ilo.org/infostories/en-GB/Stories/discrimination/garment-gender#introduction.
Krause, Keith, and Michael C. Williams. 2018. “Security and ‘Security Studies’: Conceptual Evolution and Historical Transformation.” In The Oxford Handbook of International Security, edited by Alexandra Gheciu and William Curtis Wohlforth. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
Morgan, Kate. “The Radium Girls’ Dark Story Still Glows with Death and Deceit.” HowStuffWorks, HowStuffWorks, 10 Nov. 2022, history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/radium-girls.htm.
Parashar, Swati. 2016. ‘Feminism and Postcolonialism: The Twain Shall Meet’. Postcolonial Studies 19 (4): 463–77.
Shepherd, Laura J. 2009. ‘Gender, Violence and Global Politics: Contemporary Debates in Feminist Security Studies’. Political Studies Review 7 (2): 208–19.
Figure 1 – Crivello, Danny. “How the First World War Shaped the Watch Industry.” Coronet, Coronet, 5 May 2022, coron.et/new-long-reads/how-the-first-world-war-shaped-the-watch-industry.
Figure 2 - Balkansky, Arlene. “Radium Girls: Living Dead Women.” Library of Congress Blogs, 19 Mar. 2019, www.nist.gov/image/radium-girls-work.
Figure 3 - “In Pictures: Bangladeshi Garment Workers.” Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 23 May 2013, www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2013/5/23/in-pictures-bangladeshi-garment-workers.
Figure 4 - Hintz, Charlie. “The Radium Girls, Radium Jaw and the Deadly Undark Paint.” Cult of Weird, 21 Apr. 2023, www.cultofweird.com/medical/radium-girls/.
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