Women in the Crossfire: How Masculine Power Fuels War

Is there a connection between toxic masculinity and geopolitics?  

As a feminist-activist whose work focuses on impact of war on women and girls, I’d say the war by Israel and the United States on Iran, led by two powerful and privileged men, Donald J. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, is a masterclass on a dangerous brand of ego-driven toxic masculinity that prioritises war and a false sense of power and saviorhood over stability and peace. 

“To the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”  In a video address on February 28, Trump said, “No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want.” 

But is that what the people of Iran really want? Or is the Trump-Netanyahu duo on a testosterone-fueled war drive where military might is equated to “being a man” and power, no matter the cost to human lives. After all, not too long ago Netanyahu in an interview to NBC news had said: “A man’s got to do, what a man’s got to do. And a country’s got to do what a country’s got to do.” 

In fact, Trump’s geopolitical strategy seems very aligned to his treatment of women invade spaces that don’t belong to you unapologetically. 

So is Trump, a transphobic cis-man who has been publicly accused by dozens of women of sexual assault, really interested in liberating Iranian people and the Iranian women from the shackles of an oppressive theocratic regime that maimed, imprisoned and killed women’s rights, human rights and queer activists? 

Shirin (name changed) is an Iranian woman documentary photographer caught in the crossfire. Through multiple texts exchanged with me over the last week, Shirin explains in her own words what the Iranian people want, and what she, as an Iranian woman fears the most.  

“Many wars throughout history have been justified through a masculine logic of power, competition, and ‘saving’ others. Decisions about war are most often made by men, and the language of war is frequently shaped by ideas of strength, control, and heroism.” 

Shirin’s statement is not just an assumption but is actually backed by facts. Why Leaders Fight, a book authored by Horowitz, Stam, and Ellis documents that between the period of 1875-2004, male leaders and heads of states were responsible for 86 wars and in contrast a woman leader’s role was seen in only one war during that period.  

So, while male leaders wage wars using countries and cities that people inhabit as their playfield for drones, missiles and bombs, it is women and children who experience the worst impacts.  

According to Al Jazeera, one week into US-Israel’s war on Iran, more than 1,300 Iranians have been killed, with children accounting for 30 per cent of the dead and nearly 200 women among the casualties. The war on Gaza (as of February 2026) has killed at least 72,063 people and women, children, and the elderly comprised 56.2 per cent of those killed. (as reported by the Gazan health ministry) 

I ask Shirin, as a woman caught in the crossfire, is she afraid? I wait patiently for her response amidst Iran’s internet blackout, and as I worry for her safety. She texts back the next day.  

“In every war, women and girls are among the first whose security becomes fragile. When a girls’ school is bombed, it is not only a building that is destroyed, it sends a message that the future of girls is once again under threat. For many girls in this region, especially in southern Iran, like Sistan and Balochestan and Hormozgan, education is the only window toward a different future. An attack on a school is an attack on hope. Many of these women have already lived through years of social and cultural restrictions, and they are deeply afraid of those limitations returning or intensifying. War often becomes an excuse for tighter control, for shrinking public space, and for pushing women’s voices to the margins. 

During the previous wave of conflict, I had an experience that stayed with me. When an evacuation warning was announced for my area, it was after midnight, around 1:30 am, and I ran out of my home in panic to reach the metro station and take shelter. Once I reached the street, I realised I had fled in my pajamas and a crop top. I suddenly became aware that even in an emergency, my clothing did not meet social expectations and that they might not let me go inside the metro. At that moment, I felt I was forced to choose between two fears: the fear of a missile strike and the fear of social judgment. I went back inside, risking my life, to change into “appropriate” clothes. During those minutes, my fear was not only of an explosion, it was the realisation that even while running for my life, but I also still had to think about how I was perceived (as a woman). 

This experience reflects something larger: for women, war is not only about bombs. Pregnant women, women dealing with menstruation, hormonal conditions, or other health issues carry additional physical and psychological burdens during crises. Under extreme stress and instability, women’s bodies themselves become another site of vulnerability.” 

Iranian women know too well how women’s bodies are exploited by men in power for political and religious gains. Ruled by a male-dominated theocratic regime that has quashed women’s rights through extreme violence. In recent memory and prominence is the fierce feminist movement “women-life-freedom” (jin-jiyan-azadi) that raged through the streets of Iran when a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, died in police custody after being detained for not wearing a headscarf. Her death sparked nation-wide protests, and she became the symbol of resistance against the Iranian regime’s crackdown on women’s rights and liberty. 

While this may be in recent public memory, the feminist movement in Iran dates to the 18th-century Qajar dynasty, where the seeds for women’s emancipation through education, legal rights, social and cultural participation were sown. Then came the Pahlavi era, which witnessed women’s liberation and rights granted by the state including significant legal, educational, and social rights. The 1979 Iranian revolution that started the Khomeini era regressed the progress made. So, do the women of Iran buy the West’s narrative that this war will liberate them and reestablish the rights they had to give up four decades ago? 

Shirin texts back through intermittent internet connection. “There is a deep concern among us women that if meaningful and stable political change does not occur in Iran, the aftermath of war could bring even stricter control over women, including increased pressure regarding dress codes and social presence. The region where the girls’ school was attacked has long experienced severe cultural and religious restrictions on women. In some of these areas, women were denied education for years or allowed only very limited public presence. War can become a pretext for pushing women backward again. We are only a few years removed from protests in which women and men stood up for personal and social freedoms and paid a heavy price. 

One of my greatest fears is that war will push those struggles to the background. As a woman, my deepest fear is not only physical violence, it is the normalisation of violence. It is the possibility that survival will replace freedom as the only priority. I fear that the war will once again reduce women to silence, reduce them to simply “staying alive”… after years of fighting to have a voice, to study, to work, and to exist fully in society.” 

Her words silently scream out on my screen. I reread it slowly again: “I fear that the war will once again reduce women to silence, reduce them to simply “staying alive”...  

Just like Shirin and the millions of women in Iran, I too wonder, “What about the fight for Azadi then?”