peace is a woman and a mother


saying peace

Peace Is A Woman and A Mother


How do you know

peace is a woman?

I know, for I met her yesterday

on my winding way

to the world’s fare.

She had such a sorrowful face

just like a golden flower faded

before her prime.


I asked her why

she was so sad?

She told me her baby

was killed in Auschwitz,

her daughter in Hiroshima

and her sons in Vietnam, India, Pakistan,

Ireland, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon,

Bosnia, Rwanda and Chechnya.


All the rest of her children, she said,

are on the nuclear

black-list of the dead,

all the rest, unless –

the whole world understands

that Peace is a Woman.


A thousand candles then lit

in her starry eyes, and I saw –

Peace is indeed a pregnant woman,

Peace is a mother.


Ada Aharoni, Dignity Press

showing peace

La Piéta des Roms by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash

doing peace

The theme today is global peace

This poem by the Egyptian Israeli poet Ada Aharoni helps us ask: what is global peace? It also helps us to think about how gender relates to global peace. Women are affected by wars in particular ways, and their contribution towards peace is significant. In our description for this theme, we say "Global Peace is peace between nations, and between people living within nations, whatever their identity. It is sometimes referred to as world peace, and implies the ending of war and the coming of social justice, freedom and equality for all." There are many ways that people could define global peace. There are also many ways that it could be defined through a gender lens.

  • what does global peace mean to you?

  • is gender important in this definition?

  • why is it important to acknowledge the equality of all identities?

  • how does this poem make you feel?

  • do you know the conflicts that she mentions? Look up any that you don't know.

  • how do you feel about the image as a representation of peace?