According to Osho, yes—women can do more for world peace because they bear war’s deepest suffering and are naturally oriented to life, not aggression. When women gain equal say in decisions and collectively refuse to send sons, husbands, and brothers to fight, wars become impossible. He urges a global women’s movement, beginning in each family, to block enlistment and dismantle the war machinery, while sidelining war-making politicians.
If women together say “no” to war and won’t let their loved ones fight, wars would stop.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Can women do more for peace in the world than men?
She certainly can do more for peace in the world, because all the wars are fought by men but suffered by women. Somebody's son dies, somebody's husband dies, somebody's father dies, somebody's brother dies... Men fight the war, but the woman is the real sufferer. You will be surprised to know that whenever an army invades a country, they kill men and they rape women. That is very strange. Even then, there is a difference. They kill the man... But they are full of sexuality, repressed sexuality; all soldiers are repressed sexually. Soldiers and monks, these two are the most sexually repressed people in the world. The woman is the victim: she is raped. And for thousands of years it has been going on. The woman can do much if she is allowed to have an equal part in all the decisions that are made about life, war or anything.…
Women’s education must be entirely different, so that their vision is different—so that they can think of life in other ways. But this is not happening. We are initiating them into the same viewpoints, the same philosophies, the same ideas into which men are initiated—and the world created by men has already proven wrong. There is no need to say anything more. In the last three thousand years there have been fifteen thousand wars in man’s world. Rarely is there a day when somewhere on earth a war is not going on. Day after day there is war. Moment to moment humans are being cut down and killed. This is a world made by men alone—it has failed, it has been a defeat; the experiment is done. Shall we not make one experiment—that women also take a significant part in the making of this world?
If the world is run by women -- and man can take his place more significantly in scientific research, in the service of life and creativity -- and the governments and all other functional things are run by women, we will have a tremendous balance. It will take a little time for women to produce Einstein and Picasso and Michelangelo. It will take a little time to bring a Mozart, a Leonardo da Vinci, because for thousands of years -- in fact, for the whole history -- they have been repressed, so it will need a little time. And once the repression changes into expression, it will be just like land which has been lying fallow for thousands of years gathering all kinds of fertilizers, rain water, and nobody cultivating it. When you cultivate it, it is going to give you a bumper crop.
What is the difference between home and house? Joad said: a house that has a woman in it I call a home; a house without a woman becomes a hotel—merely a building. And in the West, Woman is lost. In the East she is not even there. Do not think she is. She is not. Homes are not made by maidservants. But what can be done? Two or three brief things—and I will finish. First: Woman must be granted a personality separate from man. She must remain neither man’s slave nor his imitator. She must seek her own personality. And she must declare clearly: we are women, we will remain women, and we wish to be women. Remember, only when we become what we were born to be do we become joyous. If we become otherwise, we are never joyous. When the rose opens and becomes a rose, it rejoices.
Beloved master, why have you always emphasized that women are better than men in ruling and administration, taking care? Is that what you experience in your commune or is it only a theory?
I could see the difference when she would come and clean the room, fix the pictures on the walls, clean my books, put them in the right place. I knew that there was a great difference. It was beautiful. But I told her, "You cannot teach me. I appreciate what you do. I love it but I cannot do it." For two years continuously she went on coming every Sunday to clean. And she was the daughter of the collector of the city so it became a great scandal in the university because she had so many servants in her house. The collector was the highest officer in the district. She was hoping that some day I would learn, but I told her it was too late. And in the night when it is dark everywhere, who bothers whether the books are dusted or not, whether the room is full…