"To share in the best way the worlds of experience of men and women will be an important step in human development" (Irene Comins Mingol, author of the text).
Elise Boulding is noted for her contributions in pioneering work in three areas: Research for Peace, Women's Studies and Future Studies.
Considered the matriarch of Peace Research, Elise Boulding played a key role in the consolidation of the discipline from 1950. In some studies initially dominated by men and focused on the analysis of the war, she made fundamental contributions that opened new research agendas. First she incorporated the approach of peace in a context in which the study of war was dominant. Elise prioritised the study of peace activism and the role of NGOs in building a culture of peace. Secondly, she put great emphasis on the role of peace education as a means for social change. And finally she incorporated the gender perspective, noting for the first time the potential contributions of women for peace. It must be said that activism and social change are to Elise Boulding both the motor and the means of research for peace. In this sense, she explicitly advocated the integration of peace research, peace education and peace activism. In fact, her life was a constant attempt to integrate the private and public, education, research and activism for peace.
Elise Boulding's research on the role of women in peace building precedes a large part of the work on the ability of women to care for people and peace, later developed by writers such as Birgit Brock-Utne, Carol Gilligan, Betty Reardon and Sara Ruddick. Her rigorous and detailed research on women's movements for peace throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is remarkable, especially her study of national and international networks of women for peace. The social feminism of the nineteenth century with a comprehensive view of social problems originated a series of transnational women's groups concerned with both poor working conditions and health as poverty, exclusion and wars. In this sense, Elise Boulding liked to point out that social or humanist feminism preceded the development of more specialised equality.
According to Elise Boulding, there are three traditional areas of women’s work that bind them to building a culture of peace: the education of children - if one accepts that at the age of seven children have created a world view then women have a great responsibility for this, "domestic work" not sufficiently recognized by economists and identified by Boulding as the fifth world and work for peace, although it has never been formally labelled as such. This vision of women as caregivers and carriers of the values of a culture of peace is not, according to Boulding, essentialist. Boulding believes that men have much to learn from women about empathy and care. However, the work of women has traditionally been invisible or analyzed as a secondary activity. Elise denounces this phenomenon and claims the recognition of the contributions and legacy of women as well as the ability to share these tasks, and public space and private equity with men. "My argument is not essentialist in the sense that women are biologically predisposed to care for and work for peace. It is rather that the knowledge of women and their worlds of experience have equipped them to work creatively as workers for peace in ways that men have not been trained by their knowledge and experiences. Obviously this could change. Greater sharing of experience between the worlds of men and women will be an important step in human development."
Elise worked hard as many other feminists do, to not exclude men in their thinking. She specifically denounced the suffering of many men who do not enjoy or want the role assigned by the same patriarchy: the feeling of humiliation and failure, loneliness, the terror of being weak and the pressure to be real men. During childhood and youth, kids experience a forced socialisation in an aggressive style of male domination. There are men who try to overcome these crises challenging the male identity assigned by patriarchy but others find an easy way out by domestic violence, work in the military or some other type of aggressive identity that becomes a way according to Elise Boulding, to address male insecurity. Boulding, in this area, makes a visible effort to study and also the movements of men for equality and peace.
Another of the areas of research for Elise Boulding was Future Studies. Our picture of the future determines how we behave and what we do in the present. Elise conducted workshops in the eighties, using the imagination to think about the world we want for the future in two areas: "Imagine a world without weapons" and "Imagine a post-patriarchy". If women are not able to visualise how they would like the world in the future they will not be able to take appropriate steps towards it. "How would it be, how would a post-patriarchy work?", "Imagine a future without weapons, what would this world be like?". After the first step of fantasy and imagination, the participants then have to analyse the types of institutions that would support or would make the future possible.
Elise Boulding was able to combine research, activism and peace education. She is considered the matriarch of Peace Studies, was Secretary General of IPRA (International Peace Research Association) from 1988 to 1991, a pioneer in recognising the role of women in building peace. She was a complete and unique person, capable, as Mary Lee Morrison says in her biographical work, of addressing the United Nations without any problem and in the next second stopping to tie the shoe of a child and be attentive to the needs of both at the same time.
