Gender, Peace and Conflict

Inger Skjelsboek, Dan Smith, Inger Skjelsboek, Dan Smith

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781446228586
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Relaciones internacionales

- What impact does gender difference make to political decision-making?

- Will the political empowerment of women contribute to a more peaceful world?

The role of gender has been increasingly recognized as central to the study and analysis of the traditionally male domains of war and international relations.

This book explores the key role of gender in peace research, conflict resolution and international politics. Rather than simply ?add gender? the aim is to transcend different disciplinary boundaries and conceptual approaches to provide a more integrated basis for future study. To this end it uniquely combines theoretical chapters alongside empirical case studies to demonstrate the importance of a gender perspective to both theory and practice in conflict resolution and peace research.

The theoretical chapters explore the gender relationship and engage with the many stereotypical dichotomies like femininity and peace and masculinity and war. The case study chapters (drawing on examples from South America, South Asia and Europe, including former Yugoslavia) move beyond theoretical critique to focus on issues like sexual violence in war, the role of women in military groups and peacekeeping operations and the impact of a ?critical mass? of women in political decision-making.

Gender, Peace and Conflict will provide an invaluable survey and new insights to a central area of contemporary research. It will be essential reading for academics, students and practitioners across peace studies, conflict resolution and international politics.

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1

Women, Peace and the United Nations:

Beyond Beijing

Dorota Gierycz

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Introduction

Since the creation of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in 1947, elements of the issue ‘women and peace’ have been part of its agenda. However, unlike such questions as the political participation of women, or development, ‘women and peace’ was generally not considered a priority. That it has been retained on the Commission’s agenda has been due largely to the pressure of the Eastern European countries. The Commission’s approach to this issue has been political rather than substantive: rather than dealing with women’s perspectives, it has involved a projection of a wider political debate into what was considered an intergovernmental women’s forum. For example, discussion on the situation of Palestinian women living in the Occupied Territories, and of women under apartheid – two standing items on the agenda of the CSW – followed the traditional pattern of East–West confrontation over the ‘Palestinian problem’ and ‘apartheid’. Women-specific aspects of both matters, such as their roles in the daily survival of their families and societies, or their contribution to peace efforts, remained almost completely neglected until the late 1980s.

Consideration of the issue of ‘women and peace’ has also been affected by the division of functions between different organs of the United Nations and the various parts of the Secretariat servicing them. With peace and security matters allocated to the political departments of the UN and to the intergovernmental organs that they serve, many delegations did not see sufficient grounds for discussing them within the context of social and developmental departments, which is where the Division for the Advancement of Women and its predecessor units have been situated since 1946. Thus, the repeated mandates given by the Commission on the Status of Women in the area of ‘women and peace’ have been viewed by many governments as redundant, demanded for purely political reasons.

One pertinent fact has often been overlooked: representation at the Security Council and the First Committee of the General Assembly and the composition of the respective departments within the Secretariat servicing their activities have been almost exclusively male, at least at the decisionmaking levels. Likewise, the CSW and the Third Committee of the General Assembly constituted the only forum where women’s perspectives and experiences in peace-related areas could have been articulated.

Evolution in approaches to gender analyses in the areas of peace and security

In Copenhagen and Nairobi

In the preparatory process for the Second and the Third World Conferences on Women in Copenhagen and Nairobi and during the Conferences themselves, government discussion on the subject continued to be shaped by the climate of the Cold War. It was characterized by a lack of clear focus on women’s approaches to peace, security, disarmament, conflict resolution and their situation under occupation and apartheid. Those issues continued to serve as an extension of the political confrontation between East and West. In addition, in Copenhagen, in 1980, the debate focused on the emergency situations and the human rights violations in some countries/territories such as Bolivia, Chile, El Salvador, Lebanon, Namibia and South Africa and their effects on women. In Nairobi, in 1985, the intergovernmental dialogue emphasized some themes, such as the role of women in education for peace, in peace research, in decisionmaking and in non-governmental activities related to peace, and took into consideration, at least to a certain extent, women’s perspectives and experiences. Those themes were less politicized. The provisions of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies under the theme of Peace (paras 232–262) reflect the stage of consideration of those issues at the international level in the mid-1980s.¹

Despite its limitations, the Conference in Nairobi was the first UN Conference, which included a number of feminist perspectives in its final document. The holistic definition of peace found in the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies is a case in point. The Strategies, in paragraph 13 state that

Peace includes not only the absence of war, violence and hostilities . . . but also the enjoyment of economic and social justice, equality and the entire range of human rights and fundamental freedoms within society . . . Peace is promoted by equality of the sexes, economic equality and the universal enjoyment of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms. Its enjoyment by all requires that women be enabled to exercise their right to participate on an equal footing with men in all spheres of the political, economic and social life of their countries, particularly in the decision-making process, while exercising their right to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association in the promotion of international peace and cooperation.²

It should also be noted that the Strategies placed the issue of violence against women under the heading of peace, thus emphasizing the link between all forms of violence, ranging from the personal violence to the violence of war and their implications for peace at all levels. The existence of this interdependence has been long denied by the intergovernmental fora. The adoption of the Strategies by consensus raised hope that the holistic approach to peace and its inextricable linkage to human rights, gender equality and the elimination of all forms of violence against women would become a part of discussions in all relevant bodies inside and outside of the UN system, thus influencing emerging policies. However, this was not the case. The only real step forward at the government level was a reluctant acceptance that these views should be further studied and developed within the context of the UN programmes dealing with women’s issues. They were, however, broadly discussed by the interested non-governmental women’s organizations and feminist scholars and increasingly put into practice by the women’s movement.

At the end of the Cold War

In 1990, the first UN review and appraisal of the implementation of the Strategies³ reflecting the views of governments identified several priority elements of the ‘women and peace’ theme, including the participation of women in decisionmaking and non-governmental activities related to peace, and education for peace. The approach to those issues was mainly focused on the collection of data on the level of women’s representation in various decisionmaking bodies at the local, national and international levels and on their contribution to education for peace, mainly derived from women’s traditional social roles as first educators. The reports prepared by the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women for the Commission on the Status of Women on education for peace and on other aspects of the participation of women in decisionmaking, in parliaments, governments, trade unions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and in the civil service (in 1988, 1989 and 1990) followed that approach and reflected the state of the art to the degree limited by the availability of sex-disaggregated data. They also pointed to the existing obstacles and incentives to women’s participation as well as to possible ways of strengthening women’s contribution to those areas.⁴

In the early 1990s the topic of ‘women and peace’ was mainly discussed in the context of political participation of women, in particular in decisionmaking, which became one of the most visible aspects of the work of the Commission. Although the practical progress in this area remained very slow, there was a noticeable increase of interest in addressing this issue by both governments and NGOs. There was also growing recognition of the fact that the enormous gap between the de jure and de facto situation of women in decisionmaking – particularly in peace and security areas – had to be narrowed. Numerous government discussions, expert group meetings and publications began to reflect the view that there could be no progress in democratization, participatory governance and breakthroughs in peace, security and conflict resolution without the full and equal participation of women.⁵

On the eve of Beijing

Further discussion of what had been traditionally called ‘women and peace’ took place in the new political climate that arose from the end of the Cold War. The changes leading towards establishing democracy, market economies and improved cooperation between East and West, however, brought uneven results in terms of government interests in peace-related issues within the context of the Commission on the Status of Women and the work of the Division for the Advancement of Women. Some governments reduced their interest in ‘women and peace’ on the grounds that it was no longer politically valid. Others tried to explore it as a potential contribution to ongoing international dialogue. They began to pay more attention to newly emerging areas and women’s roles, highlighting the link between the participation of women in all spheres of life as full citizens and the prospects of building new, democratic societies and fostering peace processes through more gender-balanced participation in conflict resolution and decisionmaking at the national and international levels.

With the attempts to establish and maintain peace in the future by international peace forces under the auspices of the UN, the new roles for women in such a force were addressed, first at non-governmental and later at the governmental level.⁶ As it was envisaged that the role of an international peace force would go beyond the traditional military peacekeeping and would also encompass some new non-military and police responsibilities (peacemaking, negotiating peace settlements, supervision of elections), the question of the participation of women in such broad peacekeeping activities was brought to the discussion.⁷ That, in turn, promoted questions on the participation of women in military and police forces at national and internal levels. These were given most attention by governments within the context of the second review and appraisal of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies in 1995.⁸ Seventeen governments reported on this topic which, previously, had hardly ever been addressed seriously by governments.

The end of the Cold War was also accompanied by important changes in the focus of NGOs and feminist researchers. In the past, women’s participation in non-governmental peace activities had mainly concentrated on organizing anti-nuclear or pro-disarmament demonstrations, promoting peace education and alternatives to a militarized society, and on avoiding or ending violence. In the new political climate increased attention and importance was attached to the participation of women in all aspects of peacekeeping, negotiation and peacemaking, including decisionmaking. Women have also addressed the implications for human rights of the paradoxical reality that women are excluded from those areas of decisionmaking, yet suffer the consequences of war. A more open political climate and the increasing recognition by governments of the need for the involvement of non-governmental organizations and other actors in civil society, including women’s and feminist groups, in the government debate at the UN and elsewhere created a more conducive atmosphere for the incorporation of their ideas into the debates and documents. Governments devoted more attention to the issue of war-related violence against women and to the fact that in certain armed conflicts women were subjected to rape and forced prostitution as a ‘weapon’ to humiliate the adversary. The realization that women have rarely been involved in decisions on war and peace, but have always been victims, increased the interest of governments in the issue of women’s participation in decisionmaking, in conflict resolution and in all stages of post-conflict reconciliation.

The visible role which women played in the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) in Namibia in 1989–90 further strengthened the argument that women could play a significant role in all stages of peace and security operations, in particular if they achieve a ‘critical mass’. In the case of UNTAG, women constituted 60% of the professional staff recruited for the operation. Although the highest-level positions were occupied by men, five women served at the Director level (D-1/D-2) and women held three out of ten senior field posts as regional directors. They often performed non-traditional roles dealing with the local police, working in dangerous areas and pursuing dialogue between polarized groups.⁹

These new approaches were reflected in the work of the Division for the Advancement of Women in the preparatory process to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. In this period the Division which acted as the Secretariat of the Conference addressed women’s roles in decisionmaking on peace, security, peacekeeping and conflict resolution. This was explained in the context of the human rights of women, women’s citizenship and self-reliance. The Division also began to analyse the difference which women can make in the peace process if they act as a group. The focus of the analyses, however, started to shift from ‘women’ to ‘gender’ as the socially constructed roles played by women and men that are ascribed to them on the basis of their sex. Consequently, gender analysis emerged as an important methodology applied to studies on decisionmaking and conflict resolution prior to the Conference in Beijing and as a leitmotif of the 1995 Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action.

On the platform for action and beyond

Among other matters, the Platform for Action addressed the issue of the participation of women in decisionmaking and in conflict resolution.¹⁰ In addressing these areas, the Platform for Action emphasized that women’s right to participate constitutes their basic human right as well as their right and responsibility as citizens. It stressed that women’s active involvement in conflict resolution at all levels should replace the prevailing attitude to women as helpless victims, subject to humanitarian assistance. The Platform for Action also pointed to the need for mainstreaming a gender perspective throughout all critical areas.

While there was general understanding of what was meant by a gender perspective, no effort was made to articulate its concept and practical implications in detail in the period leading up to Beijing. Thus, translating the concept into practical action became particularly important in implementing the commitments of the Conference afterwards. As a starting point, in UN usage, gender was applied to the socially constructed roles played by women and men that are ascribed to them on the basis of their sex. Gender analysis is done in order to examine similarities and differences in roles and responsibilities be...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Women, Peace and the United Nations: Beyond Beijing
• 2 The Problem of Essentialism
• 3 Is Femininity Inherently Peaceful? The Construction of Femininity in the War
• 4 Women & War, Men & Pacifism
• 5 Gender, Power and Politics: An Alternative Perspective
• 6 Women in Political Decisionmaking: From Critical Mass to Critical Acts in Scandinavia
• 7 Promoting Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution: Gender Balance in Decisionmaking
• 8 Integrating a Gender Perspective in Conflict Resolution: The Colombian Case
• 9 The Use of Women and the Role of Women in the Yugoslav War
• 10 Gender Difference in Conflict Resolution: The Case of Sri Lanka
• Notes on contributors
• Bibliography
• Index