“Violent extremism” must be reconsidered from the standpoint of local women, rather than from a “narrow, Western-centric, and male-dominated” perspective—a move that reveals, in the context of Iraq and Syria, the inclusion under that label of violence attributed not only to Salafi-Jihadist groups but also to government forces, “government-affiliated militias,” and patriarchy.
In Afghanistan, some women from “liberal democracies” report experiencing a “third gender”—whereby, if they act as equals to their male counterparts, they “are masculinized, and not real women but something else,” providing them with a measure of freedom and access in this context.
Women comprised less than a quarter of the Afghan religious peacebuilders network examined, and most of them were engaged in peacebuilding work focused on education, including teaching peace and conflict resolution from an Islamic perspective or raising awareness in their spheres of influence about what Islamic sacred texts say about peace.
A list experiment is an effective research method for uncovering sensitive information, as its use suggests that sexual violence was much more prevalent during the Sri Lankan civil war (affecting about 13.4% of the population) than direct questioning would indicate (at 1.4% of the population).
Certain gendered myths—like the “gentleman soldier” and “women as peacebuilders”—were used by the Rwandan Defense Forces to re-assert traditional gender roles.
Nearly all nonviolent resistance movements face a common challenge—the temptation to turn to violence, whether among those within the movement or on the part of the government whose policies or behaviors may be the target of the resistance movement.
When governments are less corrupt and have high levels of women’s participation, they are better able to promote and support peacebuilding.
Gender—along with other social identities—positions women and men in particular ways in relation to power and influences both how vulnerable or adaptive they are to environmental change and how they experience violent conflict and its transformation.
Eighteen years later, the "gender perspective" required by Resolution 1325 has fallen short of its transformative potential. Peace practitioners must turn their gender lenses inward to examine their own cultures and practices as potentially part of the dual problems of gender inequality and insecurity.
In the case of Bougainville, women leaders emphasized their peacebuilding role in the conflict, drawing on both local customs and norms—like their “maternal responsibility”—and global norms enshrined in UNSCR 1325 to buttress their participation in peace work.