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An examination of women's participation in formal and informal peace-building
activities shows that in most cases women are excluded from formal peace negotiations.
Anu Pillay argues that women's participation in designing strategies is essential in
adding value to the process of negotiating peace, and reconstructing society after
conflict.
Remaining at the edge
Anu Pillay
At a recent seminar on peace building in Africa, the question of why gender and not
women was raised. What is the difference? Although I was surprised that this question
came up at all, it made me realise that one makes the assumption that this question has
been sufficiently dealt with and that everyone is moving on from there.
Yet, this question helped me to understand why we often remain stuck in our attempts to
transform gender relations in our society. The politics of gender which shape women's
lives are often not understood or are ignored in most social analyses.
An absent analysis
The person who had spoken before me talked of conflict management in general and
offered some interesting and valuable commentary on current and past conflicts.
However, because his presentation did not include any kind of gender perspective or
gender analysis, he missed some very crucial insights and neglected to provide
recommendations for interventions that would impact on those issues.
For example, the many roles that women play during war was not investigated and the
women were portrayed only as victims, when in fact they may have been active
perpetrators of violence. His recommendations for structural and non-structural
interventions therefore did not take this into account.
Another examples is that a gender analysis of refugee camps often reveals gains made by
women in terms of power, and control over resources. Without this analysis, these gains
are not acknowledged and are lost when people are sent back to often worse situations.
The fact that peacekeeping interventions are largely planned and implemented from such
a skewed perspective means that lasting transformation is impossible to achieve. Yet,
these plans are generally accepted as being the best, without investigating who drew them
up, who was consulted and whether all views were incorporated into the planning and
execution.
Why gender – not women?
So, why talk of gender and not just what is happening to the women? Without a gender
analysis, we miss the power differences, the inequalities and the roles that are assigned to
people because of their sex rather than their abilities or capacities. We see only the
obvious things, like sexual violence against women, women as the victims of war. War is
seen as a patriarchal institution from which women are excluded but victimised. The
"politics of gender", meaning the power relations between men and women, are
structured around opposing notions of masculinity and femininity, and this is what shapes
these conceptualisations.
Instead of focusing on acts of violence against women, the entire culture that creates
current conceptualisations of masculinity and femininity needs to be analysed and
challenged. These are complex phenomena which are the results of a combination of
biological, social and cultural influences and our understanding of power.
For example, masculinity is associated with aggressiveness, competitiveness, dominance,
strength, courage and control, while femininity is associated with care-taking, nurturing,
motherhood, submissiveness, physical weakness and dependency, to name a few.
Predominantly, gender power relations have left a legacy whereby women are more
likely to be disadvantaged relative to men, have less access to resources, benefits,
information and decision-making, and have fewer rights in the household and the public
sphere. These concerns and the struggle for equality have been narrowly perceived as
"women's issues", and programmes are most often designed to focus only on women.
But what really needs to be focused on is the relationship between men and women,
among groups of men and women, and on the equity and equality issues within these
relations.
Gender and conflict management
When using the term conflict management, I am referring to a process and not an event.
Conflicts therefore do not end but are forever in a process of transformation. The
elements of conflict management as used here are preventative diplomacy, peacemaking,
peacekeeping and peace-building. In order to integrate gender issues into the focus of
conflict management initiatives we need to shed light on how major organisations such as
the UN deal with these issues and what provision is made within these structures to
accommodate the concepts of masculinity and femininity. How does post-war
reconstruction processes influence the reconfiguration of gender roles and positions in the
wake of war, and how do women's actions during the conflict shape the construction of
post-war social structures?
An examination of women's participation in formal and informal peace-building
activities shows that in most cases women are excluded from formal peace negotiations.
Such high-level negotiations are identified as male domains, which means that they also
employ discourses and practices that are closer to men's reality than to women's. As a
result, women also lack direct influence in the identification of reconstruction priorities
that are usually part of a peace agreement. What does this mean?
Inclusion is not enough
Since women's realities are characterised by the notion of femininity, then it must mean
that the negotiations, discourses and practices are predominantly masculine. Experience
has demonstrated that it is not enough to merely include women in these structures. Many
countries emerging from armed conflict have adopted new constitutions that grant
women equal political, social and economic rights, and many governments have
developed new quota systems to ensure women equal representation in decision-making
institutions at all levels. However, the implementation of these laws and good intentions
often runs into major obstacles at the social level, where the new discourse of gender
equality may run counter to existing social norms regarding gender roles. In some cases,
local authorities and conservative members of society may discourage or prohibit women
from participating in political activities. Moreover, the fact that the division of labour has
not changed in favour of women, but rather added to their burden, also poses practical
limitations on the possibilities for active involvement of women.
Participation at the design stage
So, while many advocates for achieving gender balance and equality call for the
increased participation of women, without the re-educating of society—on gender politics
and the positive impact that could be achieved if there was gender equity and equality—
women placed in those positions of change find it very difficult to achieve any lasting
transformation.
However, women's participation in the design of strategies is essential to add value to the
process of negotiating peace and reconstructing society after conflict by highlighting the
gender impact issues. There is usually very little, or no, attention paid to gender issues
during these negotiations, for fear of scaring away a settlement. As a result,
transformation of society in the wake of war is limited and women not only remain at the
periphery of social life, but face increased social and domestic violence as a result of the
unequal power relations that are reinforced and re-instated.
Space for healing
One of the most compelling insights coming out of the War Crimes Tribunal held in
Japan in December 2000 was the damage that the silence did to the "comfort women"
after the war was over. It was impossible for a single one of them to heal from their
trauma without the space to talk about what had happened and to be accepted and re-
integrated into society as survivors of the most heinous crimes against humanity.
The stereotypical gender environments to which they returned could not accommodate
the fact that they had been brutally raped and tortured, and that many would be unable to
have children. They were "soiled, unclean, leftover" and, aside from being terribly
scarred physically, were filled with self hatred and guilt. They lived in fear of the men in
their society finding out about their past. They internalised the blame and took on the
shame of what had been done to them.
The result of this is that more than 50 years later they are still suffering terribly. This still
happens and women continue to be rejected by their families after they have been raped
or impregnated during recent and current wars in Africa and Europe.
Anu Pillay is co-ordinator of the African Women's Anti-War Coalition in South Africa
and has been actively working on gender issues for the past 15 years.
The African Women's Anti-War coalition
The coalition steering committee met recently to develop a plan of action for Africa. We
decided that our key objective is to integrate gender issues into conflict management,
focusing on the capacity building and participation of women.
Our mission is to incorporate femininity into traditional peace structures by empowering
women as peace negotiators and mediators and getting key women into position. These
women will work towards combining the masculine and feminine ideals towards an
integrated approach to conflict management rather than the one-sided masculine,
patriarchal strategies that consistently emerge from these institutions and structures.
At this point, the Coalition prefers to be a women-only institution to avoid the inevitable
power struggles and diffusion of foci that would result if men were present. However,
this is not to say that like-minded men will not be welcomed in the future once the
coalition has established itself as a strong force to be reckoned with in terms of gender
transformation.
Regional contacts:
South Africa, PO Box 30653, Braamfontein 2017, South Africa (+27
11 403 3910; email anu@sn.apc.org);
Uganda, email ideas@infocom.co.ug; Burundi,
email ngezalice@yahoo.fr; Senegal, email Codoubop@telecomplus.sn.
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