Samuel A. King

March 7, 2022

#essay #conflict #civilwar #women #gender #peace

Women’s Involvement in Post-Conflict Outcomes

In 2021, 1 in every 95 people on Earth has fled their home due to conflict or persecution. There are now more displaced people in the world than the combined total persons displaced by WWI and WWII. Most of those who fled their homes have fled violent conflicts (UNHCR 2021 & Depillis et al., 2015). This situation has created what has regularly been referred to as a refugee crisis; consequently, how and why violent conflicts occur, how they can be resolved, and how lasting peace can be built is pertinent in international relations study. Recent studies have found correlations between women's rights and equality, lasting peace and whether a society is likely to descend into violent conflict. In light of this, how can the interaction of women and the peace process be leveraged to create better outcomes for all?

Supporting all examination of violent conflicts is a collection of assumptions about the motivations of human action, how it should be studied, and the interests, social structures, needs and choices that explain why and how people resort to violent conflict. These assumptions set the base for the academic analysis of war, and consequently, inform the lenses through which policy-makers and politicians view those same conflicts.

Within the existing research on violent conflict and gender inequality, a consensus is found that inequality correlates with an elevated risk of civil war (Dahlum & Wig 2020). Developing data also indicates that violent conflicts and wars can promote female empowerment, notwithstanding their numerous destructive results on society (Webster, Chen & Beardsley 2019). The central argument advanced through this inquiry is that war comprises an impact that fragments communities, establishing a moment of opportunity for women to further their rights.

Barring the physical losses, both infrastructure and human, caused by violent conflict, it also often discourages financial investments and long-term planning, destroys other economic activities resulting in widespread human displacement, and erodes norms and the social fabric necessary for a prosperous society. According to current research, war has a particularly negative impact on women. For example, Ormhaug, Meier, and Hernesit (2009) have established that less men than women die after violent conflicts – though more die during conflict. Life expectancy for women is also decreased more than men's (Plumper and Neumayer 2006), and more women than men are often displaced as refugees (Buvinic et al. 2013). Furthermore, sexual violence is used as a weapon of war, primarily against women (Cohen & Nordas 2014). When the gun smoke clears, however, the mechanisms that create significant material and social destruction may paradoxically function as mechanisms that permit expanded space, opportunities, and advantages for women (Bakken & Buhang 2021).

Women's progression in politics and other historically male-lead areas of society is contingent on a twofold development in which women grow their human capital through increasing their engagement in the labour and with education. On the other side, it has been suggested that women may take a considerable step forward in some situations, aided by a spectacular incident or catastrophe (Hughes and Tripp 2015). Social movement theory emphasises how mobilisation is influenced by various factors, including opportunity structure, in which agents of change take advantage of political opportunities created by significant events (Tilly, McAdam, and Tarrow 2001). While this concept was created without gender relations in mind, it can be used to theorise how women can take advantage of political openings and power vacuums that can arise after a civil war.

Based on the existing literature, Bakken & Buhang (2021) outline three fundamental pathways through which violent conflict enables effective transformation in women's empowerment. Firstly, civil war may increase the requirement for women to fill new roles in society. Such newly acquired responsibilities can range from being the family's head of household and handling the household's finances to accompaning men to war (Kaufman & Williams 2010; Thomas & Bond 2015). Furthermore, civil conflict may make it easier for women to participate in political decision-making, with the common depiction of women as the more peaceful gender, more naturally averse to violence and less corrupt than males, being in some instances helpful in generating trust (Wood and Ramirez 2018).

Female mobilisation and enhanced pro-social conduct are a second-way civil conflict might influence women's empowerment. Several studies show how many women engage the public sphere during wartime by establishing grassroots projects, organising peace campaigns, and mobilising in civil society groups, which are critical for increasing women's rights and political involvement in post-conflict zones (Merrill 2017). Simultaneously, conflict-related sexual assault can increase a community's social cohesion by eliciting a collective solidarity response (Kreft 2019). According to findings from Sierra Leone, the families of sexual abuse victims are more likely to participate in community groups and social events (Koos 2018). Unlike the first mechanism, which focuses on pragmatic impacts, the mobilisation mechanism emphasises female autonomy and purposeful actions when the opportunity arises (Bakken & Buhang 2021).

A third pathway is a normative shift that can occur due to the preceding two mechanisms. Women in traditional gender roles are considered to belong to the household private life, which left men to hold public office and leadership positions, and to enlist in the military (Bakken & Buhang 2021). Alterations in the division of labour change ideas about what a woman can and cannot do; when women fill these jobs, they demonstrate to the rest of society that women can complete the same activities as men. Significantly, these methods can raise women's self-awareness and demonstrate the value of their contributions (Kaufman and Williams 2010). As a result, mobilising for peace can serve as a springboard for continued female mobilisation and normative reception of women's new more public life after war, resulting in a higher proportion of women in official governmental institutions and novel opportunities to participate in peacebuilding initiatives (Tripp 2015).

While significant amounts of the evidence is suggestive or particular to a case due to data restrictions that impede exploring such processes in a more extensive causal framework, there is emerging empirical support for each mechanism Bakken & Buhang 2021). There may be three essential elements of the current examined mechanisms of post-war female empowerment: its severity, form of resolution, and facilitation of a peace accord with special gender provisions.

Civil wars can take many different shapes, and it is frequently simpler to tell two wars from each other than it is to figure out what they have in common. Despite recent research indicating a broad link between armed conflict and female empowerment (Bakken & Buhang 2021), civil wars differ significantly in their ability to inspire changes in women's political roles in society (Webster, Chen & Beardsley 2019). The severity of armed conflict is the first and possibly most distinguishing feature that can significantly impact post-war sociopolitical development. The bigger the shock to society, the more devastating the conflict regarding material expenses and lives lost. Women will have more opportunities to partake in different sections of the labour market, participate in community activities and social movement, and have a more significant effect on political and social standards as a result of an violent conflict that disturbs and affects a large portion of the population, with cascading effects on attitudes towards women (Bakken & Buhang 2021).

Analysis of women’s parliamentary involvement in Sub-Saharan Africa have established that significant wars elicit a more significant increase in response than low-magnitude conflicts (Hughes and Tripp 2015). In contrast, Webster, Chen, and Beardsley (2019) found that there was a negative effect associated with battle-deaths and women's empowerment. Although there are significant disparities in sample sizes, conflict types, and analytical methodologies concerning these studies, Bakken and Buhang (2021) found a positive relationship between peace agreements and female empowerment. However, there is also a relationship with lasting peace and one-sided military victories (Shair-Rosenfield and Wood 2017), which by their nature, do not end with a peace agreements. These two findings would seem to conflict with each other if female empowerment post-conflict increases the likelihood of lasting peace.

The negotiated nature of formal peace agreements is that all interested parties have an opportunity to air their grievances and make their demands. Because there will be more concerns laid bare when there is discussion over post-conflict state-building, the answers necessary will be more thorough than when the winners take all. Peace agreements typically require power-sharing arrangements with protections for rival groups, which are challenging to create and implement without judicial and political reforms. As a result, it is unsurprising that conflicts resolved by a peace agreement result in more significant advances in civil freedoms and are more effective at eliminating socio-economic inequities. Similarly, peace agreements may make it easier to liberalise the election system by introducing gender quotas (Bakken & Buhang 2021). This wider determination to establish prosperity and security in post-conflict zones will clearly impacts both men and women's civil liberties and political freedoms. However, women's potential for positive change is higher because they generally have fewer rights, to begin with (Bakken & Buhang 2021).

Female empowerment after a disagreement may also result from more deliberate actions. Although women have historically been denied a seat at the negotiating table (Krause, Krause, and Branfors 2018), negotiation procedures may offer openings for women outside of formal channels, such as through lobbying, regional consultations, media campaigns and reconciliation ceremonies. Bell (2015), for example, has shown how women can negotiate during peace processes at various phases and promote gender equality, even when there isn't a clear focus on gender from the start. When a conflict is resolved through a negotiated settlement, the international community has more power to affect post-conflict development. Countries with formal peace agreements obtain greater help than post-conflict governments without them, reflecting more substantial donor influence over recipient countries (Stewart and Daga 2017). As a result, even without a specific emphasis on women's rights in peace agreements, female empowerment can still be a distinct outcome. However, gender-sensitive language, that is, language that provides for the empowerment girls and/or women, vary significantly in peace agreements (Bell and O'Rourke 2010). Gender clauses in a peace agreements demonstrate an explicit recognition of the need for gender parity in talks and a shared desire to boost women's standing in communities. Women's movements might use the direct reference to gender or women in post-conflict societies to compel the state to follow up on gender equality issues. Women's recognition in a peace agreement is ordinarily determined by their mobilisation capacity, entry to negotiation discussions, and the attendance of supporting international negotiators (Bell 2015). While there is some evidence that gender-inclusive language increases the likelihood of post-conflict gender equality, according to Bakken and Buhang (2021), any conflict that ends in any peace agreement is the strongest indicator of post-conflict female empowerment. According to Bakken and Buhang's research, there was only modest evidence for correlations between female empowerment and the inclusion of gender-sensitive language in any peace agreement.

However, gender-sensitive language isn't the entirety of post-conflict gender equality markers; a further question from these findings would be: does the empowering impact of gender-sensitive language and measures hinge on their successful application, or is acknowledgement of such policies in law adequate enough to strengthen women's societal standing? Moreover, how does the involvement of women in the creation of a peace agreement affect those outcomes? New research suggests that gender provisions are most likely to result in genuine improvements in women's political status when women participate actively in peace processes (Bakken & Buhang 2021). To put it another way, substantive participation may be more critical than token representation. However, distinguishing between peace agreement-specific gender inclusions and new emancipating law and policies that develop due to the peace agreement is not easy, particularly when data sets of conflicts span the globe.

In summary, peace agreements themselves, regardless of language or severity of the conflict, are the strongest indicator of post-conflict female empowerment, and there is some evidence to support a greater potential for female empowerment when a peace agreement includes gender-sensitive language, particularly when women are part of the peacemaking process. Can this then lead to more peaceful outcomes overall?

Gender inequality and armed conflict research show a substantial correlation between women's political inclusion and the long-term viability of peace. Gender inequality is a powerful predictor of violent conflict, implying a link between women's safety, political engagement, and long-term peace. Gender equality has been demonstrated to be a powerful predictor of civil war beginning (Hudson et al. 2009), and gender inequality is a strong indicator of a state's peacefulness (Melander 2005). After a ceasefire or negotiated settlement, a higher proportion of female legislators in the national legislature appears to help keep the peace (Shair-Rosenfield and Wood 2017).

International mediators may push female delegates, and internationalised peace agreements are more likely to have female signatures. However, research has shown that the presence of an international mediator does not always result in a more sustainable peace (Beardsley 2008). As a result, international mediation help alone cannot account for the link between female signatories and long-term peace.

Krause, Krause, and Branfors (2018) show that female participation in peace accords directly affects those agreements' outcomes. Their dataset contained 82 peace agreements in 42 armed conflicts, but only 13 agreements had women signatories. After controlling for several co-variants, such as previously established correlations between peace and female political lawmakers, Krause, Krause, and Branfors discovered a link between female signatories on peace agreements and their long-term viability.

These findings suggest that ensuring women's participation in peacemaking and peacebuilding is not the same as including gender-sensitive language in peace treaties. According to Krause, Krause and Banfors (2018), peace agreements that include the most thorough references to women are more likely to suffer from chronic implementation failures. These tend to be highly internationalised agreements with little real consensus between conflict parties (Bell 2015). Studies also suggest that policy conversations about women's engagement in peace processes should consider the diversity of women's organisations and potential female delegates (Bell 2015). Female delegates who sign peace treaties often currently represent the government or a rebel organisation rather than a civil society group. Collaboration between female delegates and women's civil society organisations would broaden civilian support for peace and builds networks that can continue to press for policies that empower women (O'Reilly et al., 2015).

While all these findings point to the apparent desirability for the inclusion of women in peace processes, there are still questions left to be answered. Notably, why does the inclusion of women seem to have such a positive effect on peaceable outcomes? Without understanding this, we may be missing a critical link that could allow a more precise approach to women, peace and security. We also risk placing a great deal of pressure on the women who participate in these processes without understanding how they are supposed to create this peace. International actors, especially from the West, actively call for the participation of women in politics and post-conflict agreements; previously for equal rights and western feminist ideals. Now, this burgeoning area of gender and conflict research risks being used to amplify and support these calls without a proper understanding of the complex situations in which female peace workers are being placed. How can we expect so much from statistics alone?

In conclusion, including women in peace negotiations and giving them a voice is not just a matter of fairness. It appears to directly and positively affect the efficacy, quality, and long-term viability of peace agreements allowing further development in post-conflict zones without them once again descending into violence as a new fragile state and society grow. Violent conflicts themselves also set up a situation in which women can increase their involvement in politics; thereby, a conflict can in some ways create a situation more conducive to peace than that society may previously have held. While there is much understood about the effects of the presence of women in peace processes, more analysis is needed to understand why these effects occur. A greater understanding will not only take unknown risks out of pushing for female involvement in the peace process and allow a more precise strategy for peaceable outcomes, but it will also be fairer to the women who are asked of so much. Women are not simply a means to a peaceful end but an end unto themselves.

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Samuel A. King

March 9, 2022

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