by Melissa Silverstein November 8, 2011 12:53 PM 0 Comments As a
long-time documentary producer, I’ve come across countless films
about war and conflict. But few of those narratives captured the
larger picture of warfare. War Redefined, the final episode of
the five-part series Women, War & Peace (which airs tonight-
check your local PBS listings), tells the story of modern war in
its totality – and shows how women are at the forefront of
conflict in ways that few of us realized. After months of
rigorous research into the contours of today’s global conflicts,
patterns emerged that led us to the episode you’re seeing
tonight. We noticed the disappearance of the so-called
"frontlines" of war – men in uniform are no longer fighting men
in uniform in distant battlefields. We saw, again and again, the
dramatic influence of small arms in the post-Cold War era: their
ubiquity, their volume, and how easily they are sold across
borders. We saw that rape and violence specifically targeting
women has become a systematic