The stated mission of Women Against War (WAW) "is to empower, educate, and motivate women and girls to stop war and demand social justice."  Founded in October 2002, WAW is based in Albany, New York, where the group holds its general monthly meetings, activist workshops, and training sessions.

The "Issues & Viewpoints" section of WAW's website recently featured a piece titled "In Memory of Rachel Corrie," which stated: "Under the cover of world attention riveted on the events leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Israeli army is having its brutal way with the Palestinians." Corrie was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Hamas group that recognizes the Palestinians' right to what it calls "armed struggle" in the form of suicide bombings targeting Israeli soldiers and civilians; she was killed in an accident in 2004 while trying to disrupt an operation by the Israeli Defense Force.

WAW was one of 229 groups to publicly endorse the Third North American Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM), which is the ISM's student arm on campuses throughout the United States and Canada; PSM chapters have called on their respective colleges and universities "to divest from Israel all financial holdings until Israel ends its system of occupation and apartheid in Palestine." 

Judith Fetterley, a professor of English and women's studies at the State University of New York in Albany, is a co-founder of Women Against War.  

In 2003, the organization exhorted members of the U.S. Congress to oppose the Patriot Act, stating that the new legislation "fail[ed] to respect our time-honored liberties," and "contain[ed] a multitude of new and sweeping law enforcement and intelligence gathering powers ... that would severely dilute, if not undermine, many basic constitutional rights." WAW has also given its organizational endorsement to the Community Resolution to Protect Civil Liberties campaign, a project of the California-based Coalition for Civil Liberties (CCL) which seeks to influence city councils to pass resolutions creating non-compliance with the provisions of the Patriot Act.

WAW is a member organization of the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, which is led by Leslie Cagan, a longtime committed socialist who aligns her politics with those of Fidel Castro's Communist Cuba.