PEACEW RKS

Gender, conflict, 

and peacebuilding

state of the field and lessons learned

from usip grantmaking

Kimberly Theidon and Kelly Phenicie 

with Elizabeth Murray

[ [

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Photo courtesy of AP Photo/ 

Ricardo Mazalan

The views expressed in this report are 

those of the authors alone. They do not 

necessarily reflect the views of the 

United States Institute of Peace, and do 

not represent official positions of the 

United States Government.

United States Institute of Peace 

2301 Constitution Ave., NW 

Washington, D.C. 20037

Phone: 202.457.1700 

Fax: 202.429.6063 

E-mail: usip_requests@usip.org 

Web: www.usip.org

Peaceworks No. 76 

First published 2011

© 2011 by the United States Institute of Peace About the Report

This report is a result of an initiative to reflect on 

developments, contributions, and prospects in specific 

areas where USIP grantmaking has been concentrated. 

The Praxis Institute for Social Justice was commissioned 

to review the state of the field, identify lessons learned, 

and contemplate future directions of work in the area 

of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding. A review of 

relevant USIP grantmaking—spanning more than 100 

projects with gender dimensions—was compiled to 

complement the report. About the Autho

rs

Kimberly Theidon is executive director of the Praxis 

Institute for Social Justice and an associate professor in 

the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. 

Her forthcoming book, Intimate Enemies: Violence 

and Reconciliation in Peru (University of Pennsylvania 

Press) was produced from a USIP grant-funded project. 

Kelly Phenicie is a research associate with the Praxis 

Institute. Her most recent article, co-authored with Lisa 

Laplante, was published in the International Journal of 

Transitional Justice. Elizabeth Murray is a consultant to 

the United States Institute of Peace. The body of this 

report was researched and written by Kimberly Theidon 

and Kelly Phenicie, and the appendix by Elizabeth 

Murray. The authors thank USIP for the opportunity to 

participate in this initiative and are grateful to Steven 

Heydemann and David Backer for their helpful input on 

earlier drafts.

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Peaceworks • September 2011 • no. 76

CONTENTS

[ Gender identities are crucial to conflict dynamics. Both 

men and women are involved in inflicting violence and are 

its victims, defying a simplistic classification of roles. ]

Introduction ... 5

Institutionalizing Gender Sensitivity ... 6

From Women to Gender? ... 12

Gender and Conflict ... 14

Gender and Postconflict Transitions ... 24

Recommendations ... 30

Appendix: Related USIP Grantmaking ... 35

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

Summary

■ The field of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding has emerged over recent decades; 

become institutionalized through policymaking, legal practice, and the development of 

practitioner models; and been enhanced through academic research.

■ Significant gaps remain in the understanding and awareness of the gendered dimensions 

of conflict and its legacies.

■ The field must overcome a tendency to reduce gender sensitivity to a focus on women.

■ Gender identities and norms—as well as the systems, institutions, traditions of practice, 

and patterns of attitudes that support them—are crucial to conflict dynamics and 

responses. Both men and women are involved in inflicting violence and are its victims, 

defying a simplistic classification of roles.

■ Sexual violence is a widespread though not universal phenomenon during conflict. It is 

employed selectively, for strategic reasons, and targets men as well as women.

■ During transitions from conflict, gender concerns are rarely taken into account adequately. Gender-based violence, especially against women, often persists. Also, most 

transitional justice processes have failed to afford a safe space for victims to talk about 

the violence they experienced and to redress the harms they have suffered.

■ USIP grantmaking has supported notable work on gender identities, sexual violence, and 

women’s rights and empowerment, as well as organizations that focus on women’s issues. 

Relatively few of the funded projects, however, have focused primarily on gender.

■ The field must embrace a broader concept of gender, examine in-depth the gendered 

aspects of security and peacebuilding, more fully appreciate the nature of conflict 

through a gender lens, and develop better ways to undertake gender-sensitive postconflict measures.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

Introduction

As a starting point, in United Nations usage, gender refers 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 between women and men without direct reference to biology, but rather 

to the behaviour patterns expected from women and men and their cultural reinforcement. These roles are usually specific to a given area and time, that is, since gender roles 

are contingent on the social and economic context, they can vary according to the specific 

context and can change over time.1

The twentieth century was characterized by numerous armed conflicts, authoritarian regimes, and genocidal episodes, as well as by a significant increase in attention to women’s rights 

and protagonism in the context of political violence. These developments prompted research 

and policy initiatives on conflict prevention, resolution, and reconstruction activities, which 

have more recently begun to incorporate the insights of gender studies to better understand 

and respond to the impact conflict has on men and women. This fusion has produced a new 

field of inquiry—gender, conflict, and peacebuilding.

Over recent decades, important progress has been made in this field, yet much remains to 

be understood about the gendered dimensions of conflict and its legacies. With an eye toward 

addressing these knowledge gaps and heightening awareness in both academic and practitioner work, the Grant Program of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) commissioned the 

Praxis Institute for Social Justice to review the state of the field, reflect on the lessons learned, 

and contemplate future directions. To this end, we reviewed the relevant history and literature. 

In addition, we convened a two-day workshop with USIP grantees working on the cutting 

edge of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding. The workshop, which brought together researchers 

and practitioners, was a constructive way to gather insights from a wide range of prominent 

specialists, in particular to establish outstanding issues and policy needs and to generate new 

areas of inquiry. This report, in turn, offers an assessment of what has been achieved to date in 

this growing field and identifies opportunities for advancing the research and policy agenda.

We begin with a brief overview of the rise of women’s rights within the international human rights framework, the various documents and agencies charged with upholding and furthering gender equality, and the evolution of practitioner models and approaches. A major 

issue in this context is the persistent gap between legislating gender sensitivity and implementing that vision in practice.

We then discuss the key themes that emerged in the academic and practitioner literatures, 

as well as in the workshop.

The first theme highlights a fundamental concern of implementation, namely, defining 

what constitutes appropriate gender sensitivity. This definition has several notable elements, 

including the degree of emphasis on women, ambivalence about the role of men as subjects 

of attention as well as participants in advancing this agenda, and uncertainties that arise when 

dealing with local traditions and cultures.

A subsequent set of themes spans a multitude of relationships between gender and circumstances before, during, and after conflict. We initially examine processes of militarization 

and demilitarization, demonstrating that gender is a significant dimension of how security 

and peacekeeping are oriented and conducted. In this context, we also introduce a number 

of compelling issues that challenge the tidy distinctions often made between political and 

criminal violence, the public and private spheres, and conflict and postconflict settings. Next, 

we focus further on gender identities, arguing that sustaining certain concepts of masculinity 

and femininity are integral—perhaps as much as guns and bullets—to militarism and conflict. 

Gender is a significant 

dimension of how security 

and peacekeeping are 

oriented and conducted.

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PEACEWORKS 76

6

We follow up by contrasting conventional images of gender to the actual wartime experiences 

of women, especially as combatants. This discussion reveals that gender stereotypes do not afford adequate representations of the nature of agency and behavior, yet still have potent and 

even perverse effects that reinforce inequities of power. In particular, the treatment of women 

as sexual commodities leads us to reflect on the broader phenomenon of sexual violence and 

its links to the social construction of gender and other patterns of practice surrounding conflict. Here, we show that the typical depictions—of women as victims, with rape an exclusive, 

predominant, and defining violation—overlook the varieties of violence that both women and 

men experience and the complex manner in which they are addressed at an individual and 

societal level.

The last theme concerns transitions from conflict and the extent to which transitional justice mechanisms and institutional reforms incorporate a gendered perspective. A key insight is 

that the dividends of peace are not shared equally, in part because gender regimes forged or 

exacerbated in conflict settings can persist after hostilities abate. In fact, violence against women 

and girls frequently increases—what is referred to elsewhere as the “domestication of violence.”2

Moreover, the design and implementation of specific postconflict policies can exclude women 

from accessing benefits, reflecting and reinforcing their marginalization in society.

Finally, we conclude by isolating the areas where collective efforts are most needed in the 

field to ensure a greater measure of gender equality and social justice and by offering recommendations in those regards.

The appendix discusses the patterns of relevant USIP grantmaking and spotlights support 

for notable work on gender identities, sexual violence, and women’s rights and empowerment, 

as well as organizations that focus on women’s issues. It also reflects on the contributions of this 

funding with reference to the insights in the main body of the report, noting in particular that 

relatively few of the funded projects have made gender a central focus, which, in part, reflects 

the structure and limitations of USIP’s grant competitions.

Institutionalizing Gender Sensitivity

The formal protection of women and girls during armed conflict is a relatively recent development, paralleling the emergence of women’s rights over the second half of the twentieth 

century. Before World War I, mention of women in war treaties and international conventions primarily addressed protecting their honor. These same documents included vague 

references to “soldiers’ discipline,” without framing violence against women, particularly 

sexual violence, as a crime punishable by law.3 Following World War II, faint efforts were 

taken to punish perpetrators of sexual violence. Mass episodes of rape—such as Japanese 

“comfort women,” the Nanking massacre, and widespread Allied army abuse of local women 

in occupied countries—were not redressed in proportion to the overwhelming evidence of 

violations committed. Allied postwar tribunals were designed to try perpetrators of wartime atrocities; with the victorious Allies in control, however, only the defeated Axis troops 

were brought to account. The Tokyo tribunal for the Far East made an explicit reference to 

rape in its rulings against perpetrators and included rape in certain convictions.4 Control 

Council Ten, which regulated the trials in Nuremberg, also listed rape as a crime against 

humanity, although none of the subsequent trials resulted in prosecutions for rape. Despite 

these limitations, the tribunals did help construct certain parameters for prosecuting crimes 

against humanity involving sexual violence.5 Nevertheless, the security of civilians, especially 

women, was clearly considered of secondary importance.6

The dividends of peace 

are not shared equally, 

in part because gender 

regimes forged or 

exacerbated in conflict 

settings can persist after 

hostilities abate. 

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

A critical step in advancing the security of women was the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The 

Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was the “first modern-day international instrument to establish protections against rape for women.”7

 Article 27 of the Fourth 

Convention stipulates that “women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor, 

in particular against rape, enforced prostitution or any form of indecent assault.” Protocols I and 

II of the convention, added in 1977, echo this call for special respect of women and the protection 

of their personal dignity against humiliating and degrading treatment, such as rape.8

Yet none of these measures succeeded in breaking the long-standing association between 

rape and honor.9 One of the main problems with this approach is that rape “as a mere injury to 

honor or reputation” does not imply the same level of bodily and psychological harm as “injuries to the person,” nor does it merit the same retributive consequences.10 The first Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy (1994–2003), has asserted that 

associating rape with honor often confers shame on the victim rather than the perpetrator: 

By using the honor paradigm, linked as it is to concepts of chastity, purity and virginity, 

stereotypical concepts of femininity have been formally enshrined in humanitarian law. 

Thus, criminal sexual assault, in both national and international law, is linked to the 

morality of the victim. When rape is perceived as a crime against honor or morality, 

shame commonly ensues for the victim, who is often viewed by the community as “dirty” 

or “spoiled.” Consequently, many women will neither report nor discuss the violence that 

has been perpetrated against them. The nature of rape and the silence that tends to surround it makes it a particularly difficult human rights violation to investigate.11

Therefore, although the Geneva Conventions were an important development in advancing 

women’s rights, the task of redefining legal and societal attitudes toward sexual violence had 

barely begun.

The UN System

Among the outgrowths of World War II that had important implications for gender issues were the United Nations (UN) and the nascent international human rights regime. In 

1946, just a year after it was established, the UN created the Commission on the Status 

of Women (CSW) as a functional arm of the Economic and Social Council to promote 

gender equality and the advancement of women. The same year, the Section on the Status of Women—today, the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW)—was also 

established to serve as secretariat to the commission. In the decades that followed, these 

two bodies helped break ground for many important international instruments that would 

uphold women’s rights.

Originally, the CSW focused on incorporating women into international conventions and 

rectifying inequality and discrimination in legislation. Subsequently, its attention shifted to 

eliminating forms of discrimination that still existed in practice.12 In 1963, the CSW drafted 

the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (adopted four years 

later) to reinforce the advances in women’s rights achieved since the launch of the commission. 

To make these provisions legally binding, the declaration was designated the Convention on 

the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and went into 

effect in 1981. For the first time, governments were legally required to “take in all fields, in 

particular in the political, social, economic and cultural fields, all appropriate measures, including legislation, to ensure the full development and advancement of women, for the purpose of 

guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on 

a basis of equality with men.”13

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These achievements were extended by other efforts at the international level to organize, 

define objectives, advocate for the interests of women and girls, pursue policy changes and 

programmatic activities, and tackle accountability for criminal violations.

In particular, the four world conferences on women were vital steps in advancing gender 

equality. The first, held in Mexico City in 1975—designated International Women’s Year—

called for full gender equality, the elimination of gender discrimination and greater participation 

of women in development and world peace.14 It also led to the establishment of two additional 

UN bodies: the Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the International Research 

and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW). UNIFEM was 

created to “help improve the living standards of women in developing countries and to address their concerns,” and UN-INSTRAW to promote the advancement of women through 

research and training.15 The resounding success of the conference and the growing influence of 

women’s movements around the world prompted the UN to promote equality, development, 

and peace by declaring 1976 to 1985 the UN Decade for Women.

The second and third conferences, convened during the 1980s, continued to gain ground 

for women. By focusing on less-explored themes related to women’s well-being, such as employment, health, education, and property rights, these conferences helped expand the research 

and policy agenda.

The fourth conference, held in Beijing in 1995, revisited the issue of gender and conflict 

and resulted in a large-scale endorsement of gender mainstreaming. The Beijing Platform for 

Action, adopted during the conference, identified “the effects of armed or other kinds of conflict on women” as one of the critical areas of concern and encouraged the development of a 

greater gender perspective in international criminal law.16 Numerous governments agreed to 

promote gender-sensitive policies and programs, thereby encouraging the UN to implement 

steps to mainstream gender within the institution.17

Meanwhile, the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights had underscored the illegality 

of sexual violence during armed conflict. Soon afterward, in March 1994, the UN established a 

Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, mandated to examine the causes and consequences of gender-based violence. In addition, the UN’s ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (ICTY and ICTR)—two countries where sexual 

violence during armed conflict in the early 1990s was so pervasive it captured international attention on an unprecedented scale—achieved major gains in codifying sexual and reproductive 

violence and in defining potential measures for protection. The jurisprudence resulting from 

these two tribunals classified systematic rape and other sex crimes as war crimes, crimes against 

humanity, and forms of genocide. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 

adopted in 1998 subsequent to the establishment of the ICTR and ICTY, not only included 

rape as a crime against humanity, it also managed to break with the honor paradigm of the 

Geneva Conventions: “Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced 

sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity” were no longer considered merely moral offenses, but rather crimes against humanity.18 Judge Navanethem Pillay, 

the ICTR’s only female judge, wrote in one of the court’s rulings, “from time immemorial, rape 

has been regarded as the spoils of war. . . . now it will be considered a war crime. We want to 

send out a strong signal that rape is no longer a trophy of war.”19 In addition, the rulings for 

the trial of Duško Tadić established that sexual violence could be prosecuted through existing 

international law even in the absence of domestic legislation directly addressing rape.20 Furthermore, the presence of women in high-level positions within these tribunals helped increase 

“Rape, sexual slavery, 

enforced prostitution, 

forced pregnancy, 

enforced sterilization, or 

any other form of sexual 

violence of comparable 

gravity” were no longer 

considered merely moral 

offenses, but rather 

crimes against humanity.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

their presence in other important institutional bodies, allowing them to have a greater impact 

on issues related to armed conflict.21

On a complementary front, the UN Security Council progressively reconceptualized its 

definition of security. For many years, security was largely viewed as a military issue. During the 

1970s and 1980s, little regard was given to humanitarian issues in conflict settings.22 During 

the 1990s, by contrast, a broader definition of human security was incorporated.23 Unfortunately, as often the case with categories deemed gender neutral, the definition did not include 

forms of security most important to women and girls.

This oversight was partially addressed in 2000 by UN Resolution 1325, marking the first 

time the Security Council expressly mentioned in a resolution the impact of war on women 

and women’s contributions to conflict resolution and sustainable peace. The resolution echoes 

the Beijing Conference’s call for gender mainstreaming, specifically in relation to “peacekeeping missions and all other aspects relating to women and girls.”24 To publicize the resolution 

and make it accessible to women all over the world, UNIFEM has translated the text into 

more than seventy languages.

In 2008, Security Council Resolution 1820 went further and recognized rape as a weapon 

of war and a threat to international security. The resolution noted that “women and girls are 

particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, 

dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community 

or ethnic group.”25 Meanwhile, the UN Secretary General has also issued various reports and 

opened debates on issues related to women, peace, and security.26

In sum, after a long process the international legal scaffolding related to gender is largely 

in place. The 1980s and 1990s in particular exhibited important changes in how the UN and 

other international institutions viewed violence against women. Once considered a private issue to be resolved within the confines of the home, gender-based violence increasingly became 

public as an issue to be placed “at the forefront of an international agenda.”27 The gap between 

legislation and enforcement, however, continues and warrants further research into ensuring 

more effective implementation and evaluation of efforts.

Gender Policies and Practitioner Models

These institutional measures and policies signal a common objective: to address the distinctive concerns and injustices that girls and women face in both war and peace. Despite the 

ostensible clarity of this goal, identifying the means to that end has presented additional 

challenges. How could women be incorporated most effectively into existing international 

systems? What kinds of policies or models of intervention would ensure a genuine, comprehensive, and thorough response to women’s concerns? What should be included among 

women’s issues during conflict and postconflict periods? Are there ways to ensure that the 

global agenda reflects the local and regional priorities of socially, culturally, and historically 

situated women?

That the majority of conflicts in recent decades were in developing countries has greatly 

influenced approaches to these questions. Already faced with economic difficulty as part of 

the Global South, developing countries plagued by conflict often depend on the funding and 

assistance provided by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and humanitarian organizations. The gender policies and practitioner models promoted by the aid and development fields 

influence how gender operates during peace and conflict, as well as amid transitional justice 

and reconstruction processes.

Once considered a 

private issue to be 

resolved within the 

confines of the home, 

gender-based violence 

increasingly became 

public as an issue to 

be placed “at the 

forefront of an 

international agenda.”

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PEACEWORKS 76

One of the first attempts to modify these policies and models was the Women in Development (WID) approach introduced in the 1970s, which reached its apex during the UN 

Decade for Women.28 Later referred to facetiously as “add women and stir,” WID was increasingly criticized for its emphasis on women, rather than on gender relations, and for 

failing to address systemic gender inequality. WID did not “consider the underlying and 

often discriminatory gender structures upon which these very projects are often built.”29 As a 

result, development became a “fixed menu, with women allocated the role of cook.” Although 

women’s issues had gained ground, the ground was sown with gendered assumptions.30

In response, the Gender and Development (GAD) approach was adopted, focusing more 

on the gender relations among and the social roles of men and women.31 Unlike WID, the 

GAD approach implied “more than . . . getting equal slices of the development pie,” by helping 

women gain power and control within decision-making processes.32 The idea of mainstreaming gender was forged within this movement. Gaining momentum around the time of the 

Beijing Conference in 1995, gender mainstreaming quickly became the preferred approach 

to incorporating women into discussions concerning development and resulting activities, including those involving conflict and postconflict settings. Mainstreaming gender called for an 

all-encompassing change in the mentality reflected in legislation and institutions.33 In 1997, 

the UN Economic and Social Council issued the following definition:

Mainstreaming a gender perspective is the process of assessing the implications for 

women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in 

all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns 

and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and 

evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so 

that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate 

goal is to achieve gender equality.34

The concept has been adopted by most of the large and influential international agencies. The 

gender policy of the World Health Organization, for instance, asserts that the “integration of 

gender considerations must become a standard practice in all policies and programmes.”35 This 

wording is reiterated in the policies of the UN Development Program (UNDP), UNESCO, 

FAO, the World Bank, and ILO, and widely adopted in the European Union.36

Despite the widespread acceptance, criticism about the effectiveness of the approach has 

been frequent. Gender mainstreaming is ultimately abstract and hence tends to be interpreted 

differently both across and within governmental and nongovernmental organizations, humanitarian agencies, and international institutions. In many cases, gender policies lack thorough or 

sincere implementation and accountability.

According to Hannah Warren, one of the principal sources of these issues is “the multiplicity of meanings and goals that this concept [of gender mainstreaming] encapsulates,” which 

has given rise to seemingly limitless approaches to implementation.37 She further observes that 

the gender analysis frameworks in practice since the mid-1980s “have evolved in tandem with 

the evolution of ‘gender’ in development and are thus ‘based on very different understandings 

of the nature of power and inequality.’ As a consequence they differ (in some cases significantly) regarding their assumptions of what needs to be analysed and addressed.”38

Gender experts and practitioners therefore face a vast array of options when implementing 

a gendered perspective, making efforts somewhat haphazard.39 This smorgasbord of possibilities—in terms of both definitions and approaches—obscures what a gender agenda entails. 

The upshot is that “what development organizations mean by ‘a focus on gender’ or ‘a gendered 

approach’ and what it means to their work is often undefined or even contested.”40

Gender mainstreaming 

is ultimately abstract 

and hence tends to be 

interpreted differently 

both across and within 

governmental and 

nongovernmental 

organizations, 

humanitarian agencies, 

and international 

institutions. 

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

Another contributing factor is the array of mandates, ideologies, and goals of institutions 

and organizations, which affect their overall orientations. A good example of these disparities 

is “the resource and economic focus of the World Bank, compared to the rights and equality 

agendas of NGOs such as ActionAid and Oxfam.”41 Logically, those sorts of differences can 

have direct and significant implications for the nature of gender policies. As a study by the 

organization Gender Action points out, although “it is mandatory for World Bank staff to 

analyze the environmental impact of every operation,” the same does not pertain to gender.42

Meanwhile, the UNDP remains unable to mandate gender mainstreaming, which would be 

irreconcilable with its emphasis on self-determination and the unwillingness of some member 

countries to adopt gender policies.43

Such variation in gender policies is found not only among institutions, but also within 

them. In fact, a USIP-commissioned report cited the U.S. government for a lack of cohesion 

on this front, to the detriment of furthering gender awareness and equality:

Despite rapid progress within the U.S. government to recognize the importance of 

women’s inclusion in stabilization and reconstruction operations, no overarching strategy, mandate, or program exists to ensure implementation. Initiatives, funding, and 

projects remain ad hoc; research and best practices have not been consolidated; and much 

depends upon the individual knowledge, commitment, and insight of relevant staff at 

headquarters and in the field.44

The report emphasizes the ongoing need to educate staff, strengthen support dedicated 

to women’s issues (such as by ensuring sufficient funding), and provide systematic training 

for field personnel.45 Likewise, gender mainstreaming seems to face major obstacles to institutionalization within the World Bank. The study by Gender Action found that Bank staff 

could be divided into two groups: the gender experts “who work full time promoting gender 

integration into Bank activities,” and all others, “most of whom have neither heard of the 

Strategy nor looked at Bank gender web pages providing tools for engendering investments 

and other activities.”46 One can also juxtapose the groundbreaking decisions of the ICTY and 

ICTR with the UN’s initial silence regarding abuses by peacekeepers against local women 

during missions. Noëlle Quénivet asserts that it was journalists, rather than UN officials, who 

first uncovered the violations. Even when confronted by the abuses, the agency’s first reaction 

was the institutional equivalent of a “boys will be boys” shrug of inevitability.47 This pervasive 

silence prompted two leading feminists scholars to assert that international humanitarian law 

conceives “rules dealing with women. . . as less important than others. . . drafted in different 

language than the provisions protecting combatants and civilians.”48

The failure to consistently implement gender policies is especially disappointing when one 

contrasts the simultaneous gains for other notable interests and constituencies. For instance, 

the Gender Action study reports that in the World Bank, the number of gender experts rose 

from one in the early 1980s to approximately 115 circa 2003, whereas the number of environmental experts rose from one to roughly 700 or 800 over the same period.49 Similarly, Natalie 

Hudson found that among UN system staff, children’s issues have stronger mandates than 

gender. As one UNIFEM official told her in 2006,

On children and armed conflict, not only have you got six resolutions, six, but each one 

of them strengthening parts of the original one. There is a working group. There is a 

champion within the Security Council, which is France. There is a [Security Council] 

working group which is seized of this matter at all times and has to make sure that all 

resolutions pay attention. There is a Special Rapporteur [Representative] to the 

Secretary-General on children and armed conflict. . . . And she is allowed to name 

names. She is allowed to say the LRA are persecuting children, bombing schools and 

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PEACEWORKS 76

hospitals. Now, we’re not allowed to do that. [Resolution] 1325 does not empower us or 

anybody in the UN to say the following armed parties or governments are abusing 

women’s rights, are condoning sexual violence as a military practice, as weapon of war. 

We’re not allowed to say that. If we could, could you imagine the newspaper reports, the 

outrage from governments, the shame, the embarrassment? Some states and parties 

would move to stop these practices, but we’re not allowed to do that.50

A plausible interpretation of these intra-institutional comparisons is that something particular 

to the gender domain, which distinguishes it from other causes, presents a hindrance to furthering gender policies.

In sum, evidence is compelling that new policies and practitioner models are required 

for advancing a gender-sensitive agenda. Although mainstreaming has succeeded in certain 

spheres, it has not generated the desired degree of institutional or attitudinal changes. Even 

within institutions that pay attention to gender, the gap between a general policy of mainstreaming and its implementation can be significant, undermining efforts to maintain a consistent focus across activities. The evident lack of effective commitment has led some critics 

to wonder whether gender mainstreaming is now a “token exercise.”51 For example, Hilary 

Charlesworth has argued that the “force of the term . . . may now be so dissipated that a new 

term is required.”52 It remains true—as Warren wrote in 2007, well after the gender mainstreaming boom—that the “need for appropriate methodologies was, and still is, felt by many 

to be the missing factor in translating the desire among those committed to ‘incorporating 

women/gender into development’ into practice.”53 What new approaches could achieve the 

ambitions of gender mainstreaming? At a minimum, greater conceptual clarity is needed to 

move beyond current piecemeal approaches to ensuring gender awareness, so that gender sensitivity becomes a widely acknowledged and enforced norm.

From Women to Gender?

One of the hotly contested issues in the field has been how much policies and interventions 

should center on women. As Margaret Andersen explained on receiving the Sociologists for 

Women in Society Lecture Award in 2004,

When I went to the University of Delaware in 1974, women’s studies was becoming a 

more established program of study, although most campuses, including mine, were facing enormous political struggles to have women’s studies recognized as a legitimate part 

of the curriculum. Those were heady days. Many reacted to the study of women with 

ridicule, so those of us teaching at the time had to defend the academic quality of our 

courses by insisting that studying women was real academic knowledge.

The debate is exemplified by the ambiguous use of the word gender in policies, literature, 

and discourse.54 Sometimes, the reference is to the generally accepted definition of gender as the 

“relations between men and women,” invoking the social and cultural contouring of those relations and gendered identities. With troubling frequency, however, gender is used interchangeably 

with women, conflating the two and leaving men as the unmarked, default category—the generic 

human against which others are compared and potentially deviate.55

Reflecting on this tension, Sylvia Chant and Matthew Gutmann note the resentment of 

women toward acknowledging and involving men in mainstreaming policies. They argue that 

“not all women want to include men in gender and development and some are even ‘hostile.’”56

Chant and Gutmann attribute this resistance to concerns about losing ground in the gender 

equality movement:

[There are] very real fears that making way for men may eclipse women’s primacy in a 

field which they themselves staked out against major odds and which has been marked 

by struggle ever since. ‘Letting men in’ (in anything other than a secondary capacity at 

With troubling frequency, 

gender is used 

interchangeably with 

women, conflating the 

two and leaving men as 

the unmarked, default 

category—the generic 

human against which 

others are compared and 

potentially deviate.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

least), could be regarded as ‘letting go’ of a terrain in which women have won a legitimate 

claim to their own, albeit limited, resources.57

The perceived stakes include general progress as well as concrete footholds in specific domains 

of policy and practice, such as international agencies.

Meanwhile, certain men lament—and at times ridicule—the challenges they have faced 

when working on gender issues, which is generally “assumed to be a woman’s job.”58 Feleke 

Tadele’s experiences as a male development worker in Ethiopia, documented in a 1999 Oxfam 

publication, illustrate these frustrations:

Many women take it as a joke when they see me in meetings and discussion forums. Even 

if a man is sympathetic to the cause of gender equity, and has knowledge of the practical 

and theoretical issues, he may encounter prejudice from those who feel that . . . only 

women can sense the real issues and can plan necessary changes properly.59

From this perspective, tipping the scale in favor of women, let alone pressing for exclusivity, 

may not be the wisest path to sustainable gender equality. As Tadele insists in the same report, 

gender-sensitive men seek equality for both genders,60 and, in turn, all genders lose if men are 

marginal to the very programs that seek to transform gender relations.61

Narrow conceptions of what constitutes gender sensitivity may also prove detrimental to 

women in many parts of the world, particularly if those conceptions are based on Western feminist theories.62 For instance, rigid notions of what women need to be equal may obscure spaces 

where women have traditionally found comfort. Drawing on her work with Oxfam in Bosnia, 

Usha Kar offers a thoughtful reflection on this tension. During the civil war in the Balkans, Oxfam began sponsoring a knitting project in response to local women’s requests for a project to promote their sense of productiveness and well being. Yet many on the Oxfam staff were uncomfortable with a project focused on knitting, an activity they associated with women’s traditional—read 

“inferior” or “backward”—role. Should Oxfam, a leader in the movement toward gender equality, 

really support a knitting project? Could this actually promote women’s well-being or liberation?

Once they began interviewing participants, the Oxfam staff discovered that many of the 

women had lost their husbands or other male family members during the conflict, and viewed 

knitting as a way to reconnect with their roles in a society torn asunder. The project grew into 

“Bosfam” (short for Bosnian Family), and the women began seeking ways to ensure that the 

project would be self-sustaining under their management. As one step in that direction, the 

women decided to host a fashion show, which they asked Oxfam to fund. The Oxfam staff was 

then faced with another dilemma, namely, how they could justify funding a project that could 

be interpreted as “reinforcing conventional prejudices about women’s preoccupation with their 

physical appearance, their excessive interest in fashion, and other frivolous diversion.”63 Despite staff reluctance and even embarrassment, Oxfam funded the show. The results, according 

to both the program participants and the staff, were remarkable. Fiona Gell, deputy country 

representative at the time, recounted:

It was incredible and fantastic, a sort of glittering parade, in total contrast to all the gloom 

outside. . . . Young refugee women, ground down by bereavement and violence, their 

futures bleak and hopeless, were striding up and down a catwalk, tripping up and down 

playfully in silken evening dresses and gorgeous woolly jumpers. The atmosphere was 

bursting with self-confidence. They were lovely, exciting, sexy, had the audience rapt.64

In this case, therefore, as with earlier, had Oxfam simply stuck with its standard assumptions 

and intuitions, the activities would never have been implemented and the benefits—the very 

things it desired in the abstract—would not have been realized.

This example illustrates a series of issues that feature throughout this report. Of course, international and domestic NGOs assure funders that they include their beneficiaries in program 

Tipping the scale in favor 

of women, let alone 

pressing for exclusivity, 

may not be the wisest 

path to sustainable 

gender equality.

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design and implementation, and that they are sensitive to local needs and priorities. This has become a pro forma component of virtually any grant application. The example points to the challenges that lie beyond the facile rhetoric, and to the ways in which local gender agendas are not 

a seamless fit with international assumptions regarding gender equality and how best to achieve 

it. In particular, using gender as code for women limits the transformative potential of endeavors 

in the research, policy or practitioner arenas. As Sophie Richter-Devroe observes, “a gender perspective does not mean focusing exclusively on women. It means looking at the inequalities and 

differences between and among women and men.” 

65 The example is also a powerful reminder 

that postconflict recovery may assume forms that bear scant resemblance to the increasingly 

standardized models routinely exported to various war-torn corners of the globe.66

Gender and Conflict

In the following sections, we begin by examining processes of militarization and demilitarization, demonstrating that gender is a significant dimension of how security and peacekeeping 

are oriented and conducted. We conclude by contrasting conventional images of gender to the 

actual wartime experiences of women, especially as combatants.

Security and Peacekeeping

Militarization and demilitarization involve micro- and macro-level changes. Every sphere of 

individual and collective life is affected, and both men and women are pressured to adapt and 

take on new roles as societies prepare for war or peace.

Numerous scholars have observed that the military and defense industries are steeped in 

gendered metaphors, frequently of an aggressive nature.67 Catherine Niarchos, for instance, 

notes that “military language and training is [sic] saturated with sexual imagery, much of it 

misogynous.”68 Traditional wartime constructs and propaganda similarly objectify women: 

“The enemy is portrayed as he who will rape and murder ‘our’ women; the war effort is directed 

at saving ‘our’ mothers, daughters, and wives.”69 In some cases, women serve and fight alongside 

men in armed forces. Yet this can expose these women to higher risks of sexual violence and 

harassment. In other cases, the risk of such problems and associated questions about the effects 

of gender integration on morale—however circular they may be—have limited the extent of 

female involvement in militaries. Meanwhile, the same military bases installed in the name of 

security may lead to an increase in sexual violence or prostitution, underscoring the degree to 

which security itself is a gendered good.70 In fact, in many instances women are either abducted 

or effectively provisioned to service male soldiers. Thus, the dynamic among the protection, 

objectification, and abuse of women by soldiers is contradictory.

What we need is a body of work that offers us what we now have for capitalism, colonialism, and globalization: a set of texts that analyze militarism in relation to nationalism, 

late modern capitalism, media cultures, and the state while mapping the ways in which 

militarism remakes communities, public cultures, and the consciousness of individual 

subjects in multiple geographic and social locations.71

Sexualized imagery and abusive conduct cannot be explained by small group norms or 

one bad apple: it appears to be systemic within many militaries, including that of the United 

States.72 In Washington, DC, for instance, the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) 

reacted to this concern by embarking on a campaign that attempted to “re-humanize the 

Other.”73 Cami Rowe reported that these veterans “described experiences of discrimination, 

sexual abuse, rape and harassment” within the U.S. military, and that their comments pointed 

The same military bases 

installed in the name 

of security may lead to 

an increase in sexual 

violence or prostitution, 

underscoring the degree 

to which security itself 

is a gendered good.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

to the conclusion that “gender discrimination is intricately linked with the construction and 

conduct of war.”74 For instance, a gay male veteran asserted that stark homophobia can push 

men to commit abuses to prove their heterosexuality:

From my personal experience I can tell you that young straight men, otherwise good 

men, will go to great lengths and do horrible things to prove that they’re not gay. That 

somehow this idea that men are beings devoid of feelings and compassion and that 

women are weak and just a ball of emotion is at the center of all this . . . It’s got to stop 

. . . my highest idea of someone who serves in our military, the code of conduct that they 

would bring to the battlefield, has everything to do with dispelling these old ways of 

thinking around gender and sexuality.75

We highlight this veteran’s insistence that a man’s attitudes toward homosexuality may be 

a factor in his abuse of women. Of note, the performative nature of gang rape signals to other 

participants that each of the perpetrators is a “real man.” Thus it is not only soldiers’ views about 

women, but also their views about sexuality—particularly homosexuality—that can drive them 

to commit sexually violent crimes.

Just as militarization and armed conflict are highly gendered, so are the demilitarization 

processes that follow. As Fionnuala Ní Aoláin notes, “The disarmament of weapons is not 

the disarmament of minds.”76 As mentioned earlier, an upsurge in violence often characterizes postconflict periods. Though evidence is persuasive that reporting of domestic violence 

increases in significant measure due to restored (or newly established) access to local institutions such as police departments, the persistence of militarized mentalities may also be a 

contributing factor:

Attitudinal change is critical and under-valued. For women, it means that while guns 

may physically no longer be present in public spaces, this does not change a social 

psychology that makes the use of violence acceptable (whether in the private or public 

sphere).77

The possibility should therefore not be overlooked that militarized men, no longer having 

an external enemy to fight, shift their violent practices to the home. The bodily capital that 

served ex-combatants well in the war zone does not easily transfer into civilian forms of social capital when men demobilize.78 Similarly, Colleen Duggan suggests the term compromised 

masculinity to refer to the loss of status and identity crisis that can affect men after armed conflicts end.79 Such phenomena are not limited to former conflict zones, much less to particular 

regions of the world. In fact, research has revealed the high level of domestic violence in Western soldiers’ homes following their return from combat, including the “intimate violence experienced by partners of military personnel.”80 These circumstances prompt the question of how 

gender regimes could be reworked—in particular, to more effectively disarm masculinities—in 

the aftermath of war.

Gender inequalities can also be imported by international organizations that come into 

postconflict countries to facilitate transitional periods. For example, Ní Aoláin asserts that 

“much less scrutiny has been given to dissecting the patriarchy inherent in international institutions, even less to revealing the masculinist bias of these same bodies and the actors who 

represent them.”81 Even as some “men who were in power are losing power, other men are 

taking their place,” thereby maintaining a male-dominated dynamic,

the international presence is lauded for rescuing such societies from the worst of their 

own excesses, [but] what is little appreciated is that such men also bring with them 

varying aspects of gender norms and patriarchal behavior that transpose into the vacuum they fill.82

In addition, she highlights the irony of “exporting western military models to transitioning 

states as presumed ideals of virtue” and notes how this might provoke “complementary rather 

Militarized men, no longer 

having an external enemy 

to fight, shift their violent 

practices to the home.

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PEACEWORKS 76

than contradictory patriarchies” under the “guise of reform.”83 Beyond traditional militaries, 

gender discriminatory behavior has also been found in the peacekeeping forces sent to provide 

security and aid, as mentioned earlier. In many cases, populations that have suffered the consequences of war and extreme conditions have been confronted with peacekeepers who engage 

in sexual violence or economic coercion, leading women to trade sex for food, protection, or aid 

to which they are entitled.84 The upshot is that soldiers and peacekeepers contribute to an array 

of gendered violence, abusing the very people they are meant to protect.

As a result, scholars and practitioners now stress that security involves much more than 

just physical safety. Instead, they encourage the adoption of “a broad concept of security that 

encompasses physical, social, economic, and sexual security.”85 Similarly, some have begun to 

analyze the relationship between the equality of women in a society and the level of security in 

that state. In a 2006 speech, Kofi Annan pointed out that there is “no policy more effective [in 

promoting development, health, and education] than the empowerment of women and girls” 

and that he would even venture that this is the most important policy “in preventing conflict, 

or in achieving reconciliation after a conflict has ended.”86

In sum, greater emphasis on incorporating gendered concerns in security sector reforms 

is vital, and, to this end, further research on gendered perceptions of security is necessary. In 

particular, understanding the processes used to militarize bodies and minds, the forms of violence practiced and suffered, and local and regional histories is crucial to determine how best 

to script new gender possibilities in the aftermath of war.

Gender Identities

We began by noting that many variables generate, exacerbate, or deter violence. Among those 

variables are gender identities—the masculinities and femininities forged in times of peace as 

well as in conflict and postconflict settings. 

Research on men is as old as scholarship itself, but a focus on masculinity, or men as 

explicitly gendered individuals, is relatively recent.87

“In explanations of atrocities, one particular form of social identity—masculinity—has 

frequently been ignored.” 88 

Although insights from masculinity studies have only recently been incorporated into the debates traced throughout this document, the preliminary efforts are promising. Here, we summarize these contributions with respect to four basic questions: What precisely is meant by 

masculinities? How are they forged and sustained? What is the relationship between wartime 

and peacetime masculinities? What are the resulting effects on women?

As a starting point, R. W. Connell has approached the concept of masculinities as a “configuration of practices within a system of gender relations.”89 In other words, individuals draw 

on a diverse cultural repertoire of masculine behavior that is, in turn, informed by one’s class, 

ethnic, racial, religious, and other identities. Although emphasizing the relational aspects of 

gendered identities and their malleability, Connell argues that in any context “masculinity . . . 

occupies the hegemonic position in a given pattern of gender relations, a position that is always 

contestable.” 

90 Hegemonic masculinity obscures the alternative masculinities that not only exist in each cultural context, but are also available for each individual. The concept of hegemonic 

masculinity is particularly salient to conflict settings in which the conflation of masculinity 

with the use of violence and weaponry may be an enduring fusion.91 Indeed, as David Morgan 

has written, “of all the sites where masculinities are constructed, reproduced, and deployed, 

those associated with war and the military are some of the most direct.” 

92

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

According to Valerie Hudson and her collaborators, evolutionary theorists believe patriarchal hierarchies originated as a way to protect women. Women opted to “make adaptive choices that serve to perpetuate this system,” such as forming “a general preference for 

the most dominant men.” This strategic orientation may also have a biological consequence, 

whereby the “experience of chronic, intimate oppression, exploitation, and violence shapes 

women hormonally, molding them into creatures more easily persuaded by coercion to yield 

and submit.” These predispositions can then be passed on to daughters through hormones 

in the mother’s placenta, in this way reproducing more submissive women. The resulting patriarchal genetics spill over into political systems, in which “those with physical power also 

dominate political power.”93 

Other researchers have investigated how dominant tendencies develop in young boys. Psychological studies “demonstrate that very young boys do not display more violence toward 

girls than girls display toward boys.”94 Instead, boys become more violent toward women for 

three main reasons: male-bonded groups, immediate reinforcement (instant gratification), and 

modeling (what is observed from parents, society, the media, and so on).

Bonding in male-dominant environments generally involves elaborate socialization mechanisms that are critical to understanding the roles men assume during conflict. From fraternities to illegal armed groups to state-sponsored militaries, induction into male-dominant 

groups frequently involves brutal or demeaning rites of passage.95 For example, several former 

soldiers from the Peruvian army have described the use of sodomy on young recruits who were 

reluctant to demonstrate the “appropriate” level of aggression vis-à-vis the civilian population.96

These men also described severe beatings and verbal harassment. The status of men during 

conflict is thus complex. Even those in the position of acting as aggressors and victimizers, like 

the members of fighting forces, can, at times, be victims of sexual violence. Acknowledging 

such circumstances need not devolve into a lack of accountability or endless moral elasticity.97

Rather, it is merely a statement of fact, which should be appreciated and warrants consideration 

in formulating appropriate responses.

Immediate reinforcement implies that “male children who imitate the violence they observe against women in the home are likely to perpetuate it as long as it gets them what they 

want.” 

98 From this perspective, aggression toward women will continue unless it becomes less 

rewarding for men.99

A key but often overlooked aspect of reinforcement and modeling is the important part 

women play, as child-bearers and caretakers, in molding masculinities. Numerous examples 

underscore women’s role in “making men” who may be groomed for violence and armed 

combat. This evidence certainly explodes notions that women are naturally inclined toward 

peace, or necessarily drawn to peaceful men. Indeed, in conditions of scarcity or pervasive 

violence—for example, during a time of war—some women may seek out a male who is 

aggressive enough to ensure that rest of the “wolves” are held at bay.100 In fact, a study by 

Lorraine Bayard de Volo, funded by a USIP grant, demonstrates how and why states mobilize motherhood for war, as well as how militaries benefit from “maternal framing.”101

Some states make a special effort to target women, especially mothers of combatants, by 

capitalizing on their socially perceived maternal roles. Thus, women often engage in forging violent masculinities for various reasons, even if this contributes to the continuation of 

gender inequality, oppression, and violence.

The field of psychology also offers insights into the ways men are emotionally affected 

as adults by how closely they adhere to the societal roles assigned them. These studies have 

Women, as child-bearers 

and caretakers, play 

an important part in 

molding masculinities. 

Numerous examples 

underscore women’s 

role in “making men” 

who may be groomed 

for violence and 

armed combat. 

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PEACEWORKS 76

revealed that deviating from socially assigned roles can provoke internal conflict, low selfimage, or even depression. James O’Neil has suggested that this gender role conflict is often 

related to “men’s negative or violent attitudes toward women.”102 He writes,

[Gender role conflict] has been significantly correlated with sexually aggressive behaviors and likelihood of forcing sex, abusive behaviors and coercion, dating violence, hostile 

sexism, hostility toward women, rape myth acceptance, positive attitudes toward and 

tolerance for sexual harassment, and self-reported violence and aggression.103

During our own research, we easily found examples of how salient this psychological 

concept could be for the field of gender and conflict, underscoring the importance of crossdisciplinary dialogue. For instance, gender role conflict seemed particularly exemplified in 

a case study on the excess of male children in China. The one-child policy has resulted in 

many more men who want to marry than there are women available. The Chinese have 

developed a term for the surplus males in their society that translates as bare sticks or bare 

branches, referring to the men’s inability to continue their family line because no wife can 

be found for them.104 According to Valerie Hudson and Andrea Den Boer, most Chinese 

believe that a man is not truly a man unless he marries. As a result, men’s inability to meet 

this societal expectation often results in “hypermasculine displays in order to prove to others, as well as to themselves, that they are indeed ‘real men.’”105 This can also cause a “greater 

amount of antisocial, violent and criminal behavior” than if these bare branches had been 

able to marry.106

The notion that men’s “unmet sexual needs” pose a danger to women and to the broader 

society in which they live is a recurring argument.107 This same sort of thinking contributes to 

the supposed need for soldiers to have access to sex workers—for fear their unmet sexual needs 

might otherwise lead them to abuse local women. As Cynthia Enloe has amply demonstrated, 

the military and prostitution travel together, reflecting a troubling assumption about men’s 

allegedly uncontrollable sexual drives.108 It is striking that across regions, militaries plan for 

sexual provisioning as much as they do for other supply needs.

Regarding future areas of inquiry, we echo what Connell has advocated:

Key to this work will be the capacity to grasp the situational specificity of masculinities, 

violence and violence prevention, and the capacity to move from the individual level to 

the level of institutions and nations. The continued development of our understanding 

of masculinities is an important part of the knowledge we need to build a more peaceful, 

survivable world.109

For these reasons, gender-sensitive research and programming must include a focus on men 

and boys, the identities that they (and others) adopt, and the contributing influences of institutional, social, and familial factors, including the manner in which children are raised—by 

women and men.110

“One of the Guys?” 111

Over the past century, the nature of armed conflicts has changed. In particular, wars are no 

longer primarily interstate conflicts arising out of national interests.112 This reconfiguration has 

been accompanied by the increased awareness that women are no longer—if they ever were—

simply civilians standing on the sidelines or camp followers trudging along (or lying beneath) 

the soldiers. As Charlotte Lindsey has observed, “The assumption that women are vulnerable 

overlooks the fact that women are more and more frequently taking up arms.”113 

We in the West are the heirs to a tradition that assumes an affinity between women and 

peace, between men and war, a tradition that consists of culturally constructed and 

transmitted myths and memories. Thus, in time of war, real men and women . . . take 

The military and 

prostitution travel 

together. It is striking 

that across regions, 

militaries plan for sexual 

provisioning as much 

as they do for other 

supply needs.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

on, in cultural memory and narrative, the personas Just Warriors and Beautiful Souls. . . . 

These paradigmatic linkages dangerously over-shadow other voices, other stories: of 

pacific males; of bellicose women; of cruelty incompatible with just-war fighting; of 

martial fervor at odds—or so we choose to believe—with maternalism in women.114 

The growing interest in and research on women’s agency during conflicts has contributed 

to “debunking the myth that women merely suffer in silence in times of conflict.”115 A milestone in detailing women’s multiple roles, including unfortunately as perpetrators of genocidal 

violence, was the 1995 African Rights Watch report, Rwanda—Not So Innocent: When Women 

Become Killers, which examines women’s active participation in the 1994 genocide and murder of political opponents in Rwanda. A substantial number of women, and even girls, were 

involved in the slaughter in countless ways, inflicting tremendous cruelty on other women as 

well as on children and men. The women implicated in the violence came from many walks of 

life and social strata.

When women challenge the mythical division between Just Warriors and Beautiful Souls, 

they tend to be portrayed as particularly transgressive and ruthless, thus implicitly violating 

gender norms of femininity, which plays into other derogatory stereotypes. Consider, for example, the guerrilla movement known as the Communist Party of Peru–Shining Path, in which 

women are estimated to have formed 40 percent of the militants. The media depicted those 

women as reveling in their ruthlessness and the bloodletting and especially apt at rendering the 

fatal coup de grace to “enemies of the party.” These images were amplified in local gossip and 

lore. In one case, peasant patrollers in northern Ayacucho contended the female guerrillas had 

been harder to kill than their male counterparts: “We had to shoot them over and over again 

because they just refused to die.”116

Another much publicized example was the Liberian female rebel leader, Black Diamond, 

whom the Western media turned into a prominent symbol of women warriors. Gang raped by 

national forces at fifteen, Black Diamond responded by taking up arms. In 2003, she captivated 

the press and aroused great international interest despite being only twenty-two. Chris Coulter 

has analyzed how the Western media depicted Black Diamond and other West African female 

fighters. She quotes from a BBC article: “‘Black Diamond’ and her comrades may look like 

a bunch of street-wise girls with attitude but they have the military hardware to back up the 

look.” As Coulter explains, the photos accompanying the article portrayed the women “not as 

terrifying killers, but more along the line of ‘sexy ghetto chicks,’ using highly sexualized language that drew on a set of racist stereotypes about black women as sexually loose and seductive.”117 The stereotype of female combatants being prone to promiscuity repeats across regions. 

Away from the glare of the cameras, however, women provided Coulter with different reasons 

for having taken up arms. Forced recruitment and abduction played important roles, and the 

level of sexual violence was staggering. Some women enjoyed the increased access to food from 

pillaging and some the benefits that could accrue to them if they were taken as bush wives 

by rebel commanders. Some in Sierra Leone cited the respect they had relished when they 

carried a gun.

The dimension of respect arises in other cases. In Mozambique, for example, Harry 

West encountered a similar dynamic among women soldiers who fought in the country’s 

socialist guerrilla war of independence against Portugal (1964–74). Women were welcome to join and ostensibly treated as equals within the guerilla army (FRELIMO), which 

needed women’s support. Of particular interest in West’s research was the nostalgia former female guerrillas expressed: many missed the time when they had wielded power and 

benefited from the status of “being treated as men.” Rather than talking about what had 

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PEACEWORKS 76

been done to them during the war (for example, whether they had been subject to sexual 

violations), the women would reminisce about their successes and time as rebel fighters 

because their participation reminded them of when they were treated as equals and received 

greater respect. West also noted the lack of post-traumatic stress disorder among women, 

even among those who entered as minors, in spite of their involvement in the army. A more 

common challenge for these women was to resume interfamily relationships and adjust to 

a patriarchal society following the conflict. The ambivalence these women express about 

their experiences as combatants is therefore compounded by how they are treated when 

they return to civilian life.

Research conducted with former combatants in various Latin American and African 

countries reveals how gender greatly influences the options available as these individuals transition from their armed group back into civil society.118 Disarmament, demobilization, and 

reintegration (DDR) programs are often designed around certain gendered assumptions about 

combatants and their needs. Thus they tend to systematically marginalize women at each step 

of the process.

A larger insight is that women’s experiences both during and after conflict are not homogeneous. Mats Utas’s study of what he calls social navigation tactics in Sierra Leone affords 

a fascinating look at women’s livelihood strategies in these contexts. “Rather than reproducing the opposition between conventional portrayals of ‘women as victims’ and the counterhegemonic narratives (as represented by Black Diamond) of ‘women as (hyper) agents,’ . . . 

agency is manifest and deployed across the full range of women’s wartime experiences.”119 He 

describes how during the Liberian civil war, women engaged in girlfriending: singling out and 

securing soldier boyfriends (the higher the rank, the better) in order to protect themselves 

and their families, and to provide them with food and money during a time of scarcity. Elsewhere, women have been known to trade sex “in a quid pro quo for the release of young men 

targeted for death by the military.”120 These strategies represent instrumentally pragmatic ways 

to increase women’s security as well as their social or economic status within a war or postwar 

setting. As a result, Utas argues,

A more robust analysis of women’s lives in the war zone requires seeing women as something other than mere victims devoid of agency or alternatively as ‘fully free actors,’ but 

rather as tactical agents engaged in the difficult task of social navigation.121

The ability to socially navigate, however, is paradoxically grounded in how a woman’s body 

becomes a commodity on the market.122 Women may begin to use their bodies in various ways 

for their own interests or protection, or to care for loved ones.

Such complexities and contradictions are crucial to explore when undertaking research 

and to acknowledge when designing policies and practical interventions. A richer awareness of the diversity of women’s lived experiences of war and its legacies may permit more 

thoughtful approaches that actually take account of and address their wide range of circumstances and needs.123

Repertoires of Violence

We have discussed dispositions toward violence, especially among men, and mentioned the 

particular phenomenon of sexual violence both during and after conflict.124 These topics 

warrant further attention not least because they have been the subject of considerable focus 

among scholars and practitioners, yielding findings that challenge simple images and conventional wisdoms. 

Disarmament, 

demobilization, and 

reintegration (DDR) 

programs are often 

designed around certain 

gendered assumptions. 

Thus they tend to 

marginalize women at 

each step of the process.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

Rape becomes an unfortunate but inevitable by-product of the necessary game called 

war.125

Rape is not inevitable in war.126

Susan Brownmiller, who contributed to opening space for a discussion about rape, treated 

mass sexual violence during war as an inevitable outcome of transhistorical male domination. 

In other words, such violence is a natural by-product of prevailing and characteristically unequal systems of gender relations rather than an extreme departure from norms of behavior 

that materializes only temporarily in the midst of conflict. Recent research, however, has called 

for greater nuance in analyzing and explaining the prevalence of sexual violence within and 

across conflicts.127

In particular, Elisabeth Wood, drawing on research funded by a USIP grant, challenges 

the claim that sexual violence is endemic in conflict.128 Her work, especially focusing on the 

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, establishes that rape is not a constant feature 

of armed conflict. In fact, the use and extent of rape varies across conflicts, among different 

warring parties within the same conflict, and even within the same group of combatants. She 

theorizes that the occurrence of rape, or more broadly acts of sexual violence, depends on a 

commander’s strategies and beliefs, the strength of military hierarchy as it pertains to the dissemination of orders and punishment for infractions, the beliefs of individual combatants, and 

the cultural norms that evolve within smaller groups of combatants. Wood also argues that 

by showing that sexual violence is not an inevitable component of war, perpetrators are more 

likely to be held accountable for their crimes. Her compelling argument has stimulated a new 

generation of research on sexual violence during armed conflict.129

Another debate concerns the (dis)continuities between sexual violence during periods of 

peace and war. Evidence suggesting that sexual violence during conflict is intimately related 

to existing gender regimes and sexual practices is abundant. Maria Olujic provides one apt 

example, demonstrating how wartime atrocities in the former Yugoslavia had their origins in 

long-standing traditions:

Male teenagers would run after a woman, knock her down, jump on top of her, pin her 

onto the floor, roll her over, and then pinch her breasts or grab at her genital region. In 

public, this physical assault aroused the cheers of men and motivated women to yell out 

and pull the man off the victim . . . Since the attacked women usually rejected the men’s 

advances, the play rape became a way for a man to publicly save face and publicly humiliate a woman for rejecting him. In short, it was a game of status in which men had to be 

on top.130

These peacetime male-female interactions were similarly “illustrated in songs, jokes, and 

stories” that provide evidence of the “undercurrent of dangerous violent sexuality” contained in 

courtship.131 As a result, Olujic concludes, “violence against women is not restricted to war; its 

roots are well established in peaceful times. And use of violence against women in war cannot 

be understood without first examining its cultural meanings in peace.”132 This association is 

not limited to the former Yugoslavia, but is universal as studies of countries in other regions of 

the world indicate.

For example, Jelke Boesten has made similar arguments, using a case study of Peru, regarding the salience of peacetime gender relations to conflict periods. She notes that “sexual 

violence during political conflict is often framed by social codes and gender norms which 

make such violence acceptable, tolerated, and often justifiable both in war and peace.”133 Thus, 

“rape in wartime not only results in the breakdown of the existing social order, it is also reflected by that existing social order.”134 Indeed, until 1997, the legal code in Peru allowed a 

rapist to be exempt from punishment if he married his victim; in the case of gang rape, all the 

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PEACEWORKS 76

perpetrators would be exempt from legal consequences if one of the men agreed to marry the 

victim. Although the law was changed, attitudes lag. In rural communities, it remains common 

for families of a rape victim to negotiate un buen arreglo (a good arrangement), whereby the 

rapist marries the woman he raped, or at least provides the family with some form of compensation. These traditional practices—and the commensurate sense of impunity for acts of sexual 

violence—probably contributed to soldiers’ use of sexual violence during the internal armed 

conflict. As former general German Parra stated in a televised interview following the release 

of the Peruvian TRC’s Final Report in 2003, “soldiers had to satisfy their instincts. . . . Anyway, 

rural women were used to that because their men do the same to them.”135 

Likewise, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women emphasizes the connection between wartime violence and ordinary social conventions in a report from a mission 

to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The executive summary states that “if the sexual violence associated with war is addressed in isolation, gender-based discrimination and violence 

endured by women in ‘peace’ will be grossly neglected and the war on women reinforced.”136 

Sexual violence during wartime could be viewed, therefore, as representing an exacerbation 

of existing patterns and accepted norms of behavior under conditions that tend to multiply 

the number of armed actors and heighten their authority and freedom. Such a perspective is 

characteristic of the continuum of violence approach.137 Margaret Walker acknowledges its logic 

but identifies important weaknesses:

The emphasis on a continuum of violence has indispensable uses. It is a basis for predicting forms of violence and harm women are likely to suffer, and it is essential to understanding social, institutional, and legal reforms needed in the aftermath of violence in 

conflict. Even so, it does not adequately capture the experience of catastrophic and lifechanging violence many women experience in these conflict situations. In the context of 

reparations, a focus on the victim’s experience of harm and loss is essential.138

The distinction Walker draws is important. On the one hand, consistent with the continuum 

of violence approach, sexual violence during conflict can appear to mirror the gendered and 

structural forms of violence characteristic of normal daily life. On the other hand, women (and 

men) insist they have seen or practiced forms of violence they never could have imagined—

forms of violence that challenge any notion of a moral community with its capacity to impose 

limits on human action. As Wood has noted, “repertoires of violence” may magnify existing patterns of interpersonal violence, yet they may also reflect innovation as perpetrators begin deploying forms of violence that are truly unprecedented in a particular region or armed conflict.

Researchers and practitioners ought to acknowledge these world-rupturing events which 

are particularly salient to discussions of sexual violence. On this front, Roland Littlewood lays 

out a series of compelling questions for further research:

What is the immediate motivation of the military rapist? What are his notions of sexual 

pleasure, of his usual sexual pleasure, his expectations of fatherhood? What does he think 

he is doing? . . . We need to know much more about the soldier’s view at the time of his 

act. How does he consider and deal with the conventional objections to rape? Perhaps by 

dehumanization, which then justified violence as a collective practice? But then how does 

he justify sexual intercourse with a “non-human”?139

Littlewood acknowledges that these questions will be difficult to answer given the “near impossibility of research in humans . . . and because of the postconflict disgust, on the part of 

both the principal and his surviving victim, which prevents any sort of detailed contextual 

study. War is sanitized in military memoirs, certainly on the part of the victors.”140 Despite the 

challenges, quality research on this topic is essential, because understanding socialization into 

sexual violence may provide insights into undoing that process.

Sexual violence during 

wartime could be viewed 

as an exacerbation of 

existing patterns and 

accepted norms of 

behavior under conditions 

that tend to multiply 

the number of armed 

actors and heighten their 

authority and freedom.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

Walker also makes a compelling argument that the focus ought to be on how individuals 

experience armed conflict, and how they prioritize certain aspects of their suffering as well as 

the forms of redress that might help them set their worlds right. Ironically, considering the 

tenacious effort to have sexual violence recognized as a war crime and crime against humanity, this might not be what women categorize as the worst violation they have endured during 

times of war. For example, survivors of sexual violence in Peru challenge common sense notions 

of rape as a “fate worse than death.”141

Equally significant, even if sexual violence is defined broadly, the gendered dimensions 

of conflict may still be viewed in overly narrow terms. In fact, an emphasis on sexual violence 

may obscure other issues that are of greater importance to many women. At a conference on 

gender and transitional justice, a participant recalled that “in the wake of the performances of 

the Vagina Monologues in Afghanistan, one Afghan woman [had] told her that her vagina 

[was] more concerned with socioeconomic issues regarding food security.”142 As a result of encountering such perspectives, academics and practitioners are increasingly realizing that sexual 

violence may not be at the top of some women’s hierarchy of harms, and that more emphasis 

needs to be placed on discovering local women’s priorities, including their views of what constitutes appropriate justice and redress. It has also become clear that both the experience and 

meaning of sexual violence is “in significant measure culturally determined [emphasis added]” 

and as such may have different implications depending on local cultural codes.143

Thus, although sexual violence is an important aspect of conflict, it is not the only salient 

aspect from a gender perspective, especially because it is not a universal constant. Understanding the nature and sources of variation in sexual violence, including prevailing gender systems 

and cultural practices, is therefore a vital step. Equally significant, an appreciation of the gender 

dimensions of conflict must be more robust, encompassing other types of violations and their 

consequences. These considerations, in turn, are crucial to discussions on postwar reparations, 

a topic we address later.

Sexual Violence Against Men

The emphasis on women as victims of sexual violence is understandable, but clearly the reality 

is more complicated. 

The soldiers took the men aside. They raped the women in public, but the men—they 

took them somewhere else to do those things to them.144

Thus far, other forms of sexual violence—male on male, female on male, and female on 

female—have been “at the periphery of the existing discussion,” for a number of reasons.145 

Sandesh Sivakumaran asserts that men who are raped by men, or forced to perform some 

sort of sexual act with another male, are often “tainted” with the homosexual label, whereas 

the perpetrator is not. Many societies equate manhood with “the ability to exert power over 

others, especially by force,” thus making victimization and masculinity irreconcilable concepts. 

This leads to the “belief that men cannot be victims” and causes rape to be “dismissed as a 

woman’s issue.”146 Furthermore, Sivakumaran found that “it is not uncommon for survivors 

to have become sexually aroused during the rape and this may even have been the intention 

of the perpetrator.”147 Such a response can induce victims to have feelings of guilt, as well to 

confront difficult questions regarding sexual identity.148 Male security officials and interviewers 

frequently add to the trauma with their own homophobia and misunderstanding of male-onmale rape. Reportedly, some police officers in the United States have asked male rape victims if 

Both the experience 

and meaning of sexual 

violence is “in significant 

measure culturally 

determined” and as 

such may have different 

implications depending 

on local cultural codes.

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PEACEWORKS 76

they ejaculated and whether they had any homosexual friends, as if such a line of questioning 

were relevant to the abuse experienced by the victim.149

If women and girls find it difficult to speak about sexual violence due to stigma and shame, 

then this is magnified for men and boys. The silence of the latter two groups is compounded 

by the well-intentioned focus on these violations as happening overwhelmingly to women 

and girls, which may render other victims invisible. For instance, an Amnesty International 

report on rape and sexual abuse against women in detention centers observes that “although 

men are sometimes raped in custody by government agents, it is a form of torture primarily directed against women, and to which women are uniquely vulnerable [emphasis added].”150 This 

assertion is partly true, particularly with respect to patriarchal social structures and biological 

differences, but to say that women are uniquely vulnerable implies that men are not. Similarly, 

in testimonies given to the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the same act—for 

instance, inserting a police baton into someone’s anus—was likely to be coded as torture when 

committed on a male and rape if committed on a female.151 The same act was interpreted as 

sexualized not in and of itself, but rather as a function of the person against whom the violence 

was perpetrated. Even when some men did come forward and speak, therefore, what they said 

fell outside the range of what people were prepared to hear. Yet, objectively speaking, in both 

instances the act is torture and also sexual violence.

What this discussion makes clear is the need for a better understanding of the nature of experiences in a conflict, including the gender aspects. Fundamental to the task is greater fidelity 

of knowledge, which requires broad-based empirical research and tapping the local knowledge 

of practitioners to develop more precise and comprehensive pictures that capture and seek to 

explain variation within and across contexts. In the process, it is essential not to distort the picture by imposing limiting assumptions, especially if inconsistent with individual dispositions 

and realities on the ground, about what is most important and typical, or by losing sight of the 

reasons why certain violations may be underreported.

Gender and Postconflict Transitions

This section concerns transitions from conflict and the extent to which transitional justice 

mechanisms and institutional reforms incorporate a gendered perspective. A central lesson 

is that the dividends of peace are not shared equally, in part because gender regimes forged 

or exacerbated in conflict can persist afterward. Violence against women and girls, in fact, 

frequently rises. Moreover, the design and implementation of specific postconflict policies can 

exclude women from accessing benefits, thereby reflecting and reinforcing their marginalization in society.

No Aftermath for Women?

Armed conflicts are both destructive and transformative. During war, women frequently 

take on new roles which may lead to a greater sense of political protagonism and institutional savvy.152 As Rita Manchanda has suggested, political violence and the transitional period 

that follows can open up “intended or unintended spaces for empowering women, effecting 

structural social transformations and producing new social, economic, and political realities 

that redefine gender and caste hierarchies.”153 Yet the spaces women enter when men are at 

war often contract when conflicts end and governments find ways to “absorb a large number 

of demobilized soldiers.”154

If women and girls find it 

difficult to speak about 

sexual violence due to 

stigma and shame, then 

this is magnified for 

men and boys. 

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

That war is profoundly gendered has long been recognized by feminist international 

relations scholars. What is less recognized is that the postwar period is equally 

gendered.155

The changes in gender dynamics during and after war have thus become a subject of particular 

interest within gender studies, because transitional periods present an opportunity to script 

new gender roles if femininities and masculinities are made the object of study and intervention. Conversely, if gender issues are marginalized during transitional periods, existing social 

inequalities and power relations can remain largely intact.

The evidence shows clearly that the latter outcome is prevalent and set in motion by events 

before conflicts are resolved. In practice, women have been overwhelmingly excluded from peace 

agreements and national rebuilding efforts, and the additional burdens women assume as a result 

of armed conflict are often left unaddressed.156 Christine Bell and Catherine O’Rourke explored 

whether—and if so how—this UN Resolution 1325 influenced peace agreements signed between January 1990 and January 2010.157 They found relatively few specific references to women 

in the agreements, which led them to examine various barriers to fully implementing the resolution’s call for women’s equal participation with men and women’s full involvement in all efforts to 

maintain and promote peace and security.158 Among the key barriers they identify are the many 

players in the world of peace mediation (the UN among them), a lack of gender awareness by 

the parties and mediators, the absence of female participants, and a worry that including genderspecific concerns of women makes it more difficult for the parties to reach agreement or stabilize 

any agreement reached. In response, Bell and O’Rourke emphasize that

addressing the status of women in peace agreement texts is significant not just for the 

inclusion of peace-building strategies but for their future inclusion in the domestic 

political and legal order itself [because] Peace agreements have a distinctive quasi-constitutional quality and sometimes even constitute or contain constitutions.159

Thus, moving from “pieces of paper” to “peace agreements” remains a challenge.

Truth Commissions: Speaking of Silences

Peace agreements, of course, are just one step in the often lengthy and difficult transitions 

from conflict. Another common item on the agenda is transitional justice, which former UN 

Secretary General Kofi Annan has defined as

the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come 

to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve 

justice and achieve reconciliation. These may include both judicial and non-judicial 

mechanisms, with differing levels of international involvement (or none at all) and individual reform, vetting and dismissals, or a combination thereof.160

Among other options are truth commissions and reparations programs. Gender arrived a 

bit late to the transitional justice debates, but recent scholarship is quickly filling the void. Key 

issues include the conditions that may discourage people—women in particular—from coming forward to relate what happened to them during the conflict, as well as the removal of their 

agency and the discounting of their experiences when they do so. 

When people talk about rape, they talk a great deal about silences.161

These issues reflect a host of causal factors that ideally should be remediated but often persist—

which has implications for the functioning of the various transitional justice mechanisms and 

their utility for individuals and society at large.

In principle, the mechanisms can bring about consequential changes that benefit those 

who have been historically excluded, marginalized, and victimized. For example, Cheryl 

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McEwan noted, in research on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission process, that “the role of women’s personal testimony in shaping the nation and citizenship is 

particularly important in a country such as South Africa where the legacies of colonialism 

and apartheid have effectively silenced black women’s voices.”162 Her observation resonates 

with claims that have been made more broadly about the ability of truth commissions to 

cultivate a participatory ethos, to afford a platform for publicizing the violations suffered 

by particular social groups, and to officially acknowledge and set the stage for redress of 

those harms.

Yet these positive outcomes are hardly a given. Truth commissions, if they are not careful, 

can easily continue prevailing patterns by failing to actively include the experiences of constituencies that have historically lacked a voice in the political and social arenas. On this count, the 

record shows that truth commissions, notwithstanding their ostensible purposes, can actually 

silence and sideline women’s concerns and other gender dimensions of conflict.

What to do with these silences—how to listen to them, how to interpret them, how to 

determine when they are oppressive and when they may constitute a form of agency—is 

a subject of much concern and debate. Clearly, if there is a theme capable of imposing 

silence, it is rape. Women have many reasons to hide that they have been raped and, 

with justice a very distant horizon, few reasons to speak about a stigmatizing, shameful 

experience.163

For example, when South Africa’s TRC was ongoing, one woman complained about powerful deterrents to reporting incidents of sexual violence: “Some of the rapists hold high political positions today—so if you spoke out you would not only undermine the new government 

you fought for, but destroy your own possibilities of a future.”164 Therefore, coming forth is not 

a straightforward opportunity that most everyone is inclined to embrace, but rather has major 

trade-offs, as going public might mean damaging the country’s fragile democracy, confronting 

powerful elites and risking retaliation, or stigmatizing female politicians who had been raped 

by members of various state or opposition forces.

It does not help that the truth commissions in many countries have failed to make sufficient provisions for ensuring the privacy, anonymity, and even security of witnesses, considerations that come into play at multiple stages. The most obvious is in giving evidence, whether 

in the form of a written statement or oral testimony. Someone might be dissuaded from doing 

so if they felt exposed and vulnerable as a result. To minimize or avoid these concerns, Tristan 

Borer—in an article produced from a project supported by a USIP grant—has advocated that 

truth commissions adopt approaches “enabling gender-sensitive testimony to emerge, including allowing women to testify only before women commissioners, allowing them to testify in 

camera, and allowing them to remain anonymous.”165 Such protections of victims’ confidentiality should become part of a standard protocol strictly heeded at all times, including after a truth 

commission—by nature a temporary body—concludes its work. Otherwise, serious problems 

can ensue. For instance, the archives of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which 

issued its final report in 2003, contain all documents on victims, including those concerning 

sexual violence. Many of their testimonies requesting confidentiality are filed with a copy of 

their national identification card, personal information, fingerprints, and, where relevant, a 

copy of the birth certificate of any child resulting from the rape. The archives are located in the 

center of Lima, Peru’s capital, and can be accessed with relative ease. As a result, confidentiality is essentially out the window. There are other unintended, though arguably less damaging, 

consequences: for example, one of the managers of the archives claims that a girl learned she 

was a product of rape after perusing the testimonies.166

Truth commissions in 

many countries have 

failed to make sufficient 

provisions for ensuring 

the privacy, anonymity, 

and even security 

of witnesses.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

These complications are not limited to truth commissions, but rather arise in other transitional justice proceedings. In fact, different mechanisms may be in tension with one another as 

far as the degree to which they accommodate the interests of victims. For instance, the concern 

for their anonymity has also been contemplated in the context of truth commission cases 

turning into criminal proceedings. Judith Gardam and Hilary Charlesworth find, however, 

that proposed changes to legal practice “have not been readily accepted” because there is “a 

perceived conflict . . . between the demands of a fair trial and the protection of women as victims and witnesses.”167 These disparities limit the available options, at the very least tending to 

discourage certain individuals from taking part in legal cases because they may have to forego 

their privacy and therefore face unwanted insecurity.

Other factors can affect how gender-based violence is recalled. We noted earlier the impact of culture. Political dynamics can also influence how an individual feels about and opts 

to articulate their experience of conflict, as well as views patterns of abuses. Hungary affords 

a representative example of varying perceptions of sexual violence based on political affinities. 

Over the last century, the country endured two major conflicts—the Nazi takeover during 

World War II and the subsequent Soviet invasion. A study by James Mark found that those 

with left-wing stances sympathized more with the Soviets, saw them as their liberators, and 

minimized the acts of sexual violence the Red Army committed, whereas those with rightwing stances tended to defend the Nazis and to emphasize the sexual abuses perpetrated by the 

Soviets. These tendencies were observed even among the actual victims of sexual violence, some 

of whom had political beliefs that motivated them to express favor for, rather than condemn, 

their perpetrators’ side. Meanwhile, citizens of Jewish origin related more to the Red Army, 

minimizing their atrocities because they saw them as liberators:

They downplayed rape or provided different accounts of the sexual contact between 

Soviet soldiers and Hungarian women. In so doing, they used rape stories as a different 

form of “truth-telling”: to highlight their experience of 1945 as a liberation.168

The implication is that when constructing victimologies, individual and collective memories 

may be reworked to pursue a variety of ends beyond a straightforward, factual accounting of 

the legacies of violence.

Similarly, many sectors of society may participate in constructing and maintaining comfortable or convenient silences around sexual violence, as well as other types of atrocities. Consider situations when the mothers, wives, sisters, lovers, and daughters of soldiers returning 

from combat are regaled with war stories of battles fought and enemies slain; local officials 

organize days of commemoration, parades, and monuments for the heroes; and governments 

extend economic benefits frequently associated with military service, underscoring the close 

ties between military service and citizenship in many contexts. In any of these contexts, it is 

difficult to imagine the former combatants narrating tales of rape to the audiences that await 

their return, because rape is not what patriotic heroes are supposed to do. There is scant space 

for them to speak candidly, though not for lack of anything unseemly to describe:

There must be more than a million men alive who have carried out collective sexual 

violence against women in war, insurgency, riots or gang activism. And on these acts 

(with the exception of The Winter Soldier Investigation of the Vietnam Veterans 

Against the War) they have remained silent. How they make sense of them—forgetting, 

excusing, memorializing—we do not know. Nor whether their exculpations are all of a 

piece when talking to, say, their current sexual partner, their priest, doctor or former 

comrades.169

Some acts may thus be unspeakable and “unlistenable.” Sexual violations are, by their nature, 

prone to falling into one of these two categories. 

Many sectors of society 

may participate in 

constructing and 

maintaining comfortable 

or convenient silences 

around sexual violence, 

as well as other types 

of atrocities.

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Despite the many silences, some women and men do speak out about sexual violence. For 

those who have occasion to talk—perhaps in the venue of a truth commission, criminal trial, or 

other formal setting—about the violations they experienced or witnessed, their testimony does 

not imply they are in control of the context, or that they exercise meaningful discretion over 

what they say or how it will be received and used. Additionally, the act of providing testimony 

does not ensure that the events recounted will receive appropriate attention or redress.

On this count, Catherine Cole contends that victims surrender their agency in any courtroom proceeding, especially one concerning serious violations of international law:

Trials about crimes against humanity can be particularly debilitating and disempowering 

for victims. As with all trials, the courtroom casts victims in a passive rather than active 

role, allowing them to speak only when spoken to by an agent of the court, and even then 

to speak only on certain terms and topics, subject to cross-examination that may be of an 

adversarial nature.170

The diminished sense of agency in transitional justice contexts is even more commonplace and 

pronounced for women, because they frequently speak about the sufferings of others rather 

than their own experiences. Sidonie Smith describes that in the South African case, “women 

became witnesses to mourning for lost loved ones” rather than “witnesses to their own experiences of harm and degradation.”171 A similar pattern has been observed elsewhere, when 

women provide testimony about sexual violence.

This outcome can be influenced by a sense of shame about discussing one’s own violations, especially when they likely confer social stigma, but it also reflects the gendered nature 

of memory specialization. Women typically narrate communal suffering and the quotidian 

impact of war. It is unsurprising, therefore, that they become the bearers of collective memories of sexual and other violations as well and are routinely called on to narrate degrading and 

brutal episodes of violence as part of transitional justice proceedings. Yet placing this burden 

on women is problematic, given that they are not the only victims or witnesses; offering testimony is demanding, invasive, and even dangerous, and what ensues may be out of their control. 

Among the pressing needs are more creative evidentiary methods, particularly ones that would 

shift the responsibility for recounting episodes of sexual violence away from women (and especially toward the rapists), without jeopardizing their access to justice, reparations, and other 

forms of redress.172

Even when people do speak up about sexual violence, their interlocutors may be ill equipped 

to hear them. A poignant case from Peru concerns a young woman named Rosalia, who was 

raped during the internal armed conflict. In a taped conversation stored in the TRC archives 

in Lima, an interviewer asked Rosalia for details about her rape. Rosalia explained that she 

was initially raped by a soldier who was stationed near her home. In accordance with the convention mentioned earlier, Rosalia was married to her rapist. Before he disappeared, she also 

became pregnant. In relating her story to the interviewer, Rosalia stated from the outset that 

her child was the product of rape. When the interviewer heard the story, he insisted the child 

was conceived during marriage. Growing frustrated with her, he insisted that she was not being honest with him. Yet Rosalia viewed her marriage and subsequent pregnancy as a product 

of the initial rape: had she not been raped, she would neither have married the man, nor have 

been obligated to continue having sex with him, which led to the birth of her child. The interviewer was undoubtedly prompted by the training he had received: the “interviewer’s task 

is not only to take a testimony that is as accurate as possible from victims as they experienced 

events, but also to try to establish ‘facts’ for legal purposes.”173 In the end, therefore, the requirements of evidence and the designs of an individual narrating his or her life painfully diverge.

Women typically narrate 

communal suffering 

and the quotidian 

impact of war . . . and 

are routinely called on 

to narrate degrading 

and brutal episodes 

of violence as part 

of transitional 

justice proceedings.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

A related but more general problem is that the forms of harm experienced by women tend 

to be overlooked or classified as less serious in relation to the human rights violations suffered 

by men. Ní Aoláin argues that “harm naming” is essential during times of transition to understand the abuses that occurred.174 The problem is that this process may result in a hierarchy of 

victimization that prioritizes certain abuses above others. For example, Julie Guillerot found 

that the Peruvian TRC classified violations according to a scale. Death and disappearance 

were considered the most serious violations because they affected the right to life. Next was 

disability, because it entailed a loss of the ability to generate income, followed by imprisonment, 

because it entailed the interruption of a life project. She notes, however, that

Rape ended up at the bottom of the scale because it was not considered to have any 

impact on such rights or abilities. This view failed to take into account, however, the 

potential consequences of rape on the victim’s social status, including rejection by the 

husband, impossibility of getting married, stigmatization in the community and so 

on—all of which can lead to the impossibility of accessing means of livelihood, within 

the context of a society based on mutual help relations, reciprocity, and gender divisions 

of labor.175

The myopic perspective, which effectively minimizes the significance of rape, offsets a laudable 

move by the Peruvian TRC to adopt a broad definition of sexual violence, including forms of 

abuse extending beyond rape.

The scope and severity of women’s experiences of conflict can also be diminished by a 

narrow focus on particular violations. Certain truth commissions that have implemented 

“gender-sensitive” strategies overwhelmingly emphasize gathering women’s first-person testimonies about rape.176 In particular, Fiona Ross argues that the South African TRC essentialized violations of bodily integrity as the predominant gender-based harm. Consequently, the 

commission constructed, and arguably prized, the rape-victim narrative, which was condensed 

from testimonies during the public hearings and became emblematic of women’s experience 

of apartheid.177

This example is symptomatic of how truth commissions consistently contour the manner 

in which people come forward to narrate their lives and experiences during eras of conflict. A 

common feature is the overriding orientation toward recounting stories of suffering and loss. 

Such a victim-centric approach has definite merits because it avoids ignoring the important 

history of abuses, but it may also inadvertently silence other significant relationships people 

have with their pasts, such as defiance, protagonism, and pride.178 Women, who tend to already 

be marginalized in these processes, are especially subject to the latter repercussions. For example, because women were often testifying either as victims of rape or as witnesses of violations 

experienced by others, they came to be portrayed in the final report of the South African TRC 

as “a secondary class of victims without agency in the [anti-apartheid liberation] struggles.”179

In other words, the picture is that they were on the periphery of what was happening politically, 

observing the violence and suffering modest unrelated violations, as opposed to those to which 

male activists were frequently subjected (arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, torture, beatings, 

abduction, attempted murder, assassination).

Of course, women have much more to say, without which understandings of the nature and 

impact of conflict and the needs of postconflict transitions will not reflect the true breadth of 

experience. In conversations outside the framework of Peru’s TRC, women described systemic 

injustice, the gross violations of their socioeconomic rights, the sting of ethnic discrimination, 

and the futility of seeking justice from the national and local legal systems. Their reflections 

also reveal other dimensions of conflict that women face disproportionately: the suffering of 

their family members and communities, the long daily walks to the river for water, the hours 

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spent scrounging for bits of kindling, their children’s gnawing hunger that they tried to calm 

with water and salt, and being subjected to ethnic insults in the streets of the cities in which 

they sought refuge. When abuses against women and girls have been addressed within transitional justice processes, however, the emphasis is largely on sexual violations, obscuring the 

many other ways in which armed conflicts affect women and girls versus men and boys.

The failure to adequately recognize the full profile of experiences and violations during 

conflict, including its gender dimensions, limits the prospects of reparations for harms and 

their associated potential to transform gender regimes. As a result of the narrow focus on 

certain classes of violations, especially physical ones, viewed as most severe and often disproportionately suffered by men, most formal reparations programs are woefully insensitive 

to the many other ways in which women and girls are affected by violence and surrounding 

circumstances. At a minimum, these programs rarely account for pervasive problems such as 

forced labor, coerced marriage, displacement, chronic health problems stemming from sexual 

violence and malnutrition, and a sharp rise in female-headed households and the resulting 

feminization of poverty, which can be exacerbated by male-biased land tenure systems and 

inheritance patterns. Another profoundly significant thing the programs often ignore is the 

myriad opportunities that are foregone or never available because of the loss of family members, economic assets, institutional upheaval, and infrastructural damage. In principle, another 

recourse victims have is to resort to filing a civil lawsuit. Among the challenges of this strategy, 

however, is that the daily violence women experience has yet to be recognized or defined in 

many legal systems.180

Responding to these sorts of issues, Ruth Rubio-Marín has advocated for harnessing the 

transformative potential of reparations to destabilize gender hierarchies.181 In part, she recommends moving from a rights-based to a harms-based approach when designing reparations 

programs. As justification, she argues that reparations, when conceived as redress for the violations of rights, are likely to reproduce the gender biases characteristic of many existing rights 

systems.182 In contrast, focusing on harms can capture the wider range of consequences women 

disproportionately bear:

Indeed, the need to identify who, beyond the right holder, has been individually or collectively affected by the violation and deserves redress allows movement beyond the 

rights paradigm in one concrete way that may be fundamental to women, namely by 

bringing to the fore the interrelatedness of the harms and the ways in which the diffuse 

nature of harms affects women specifically. For instance, although, strictly speaking, 

there is no human right not to be widowed, the harm done to women whose husbands 

are executed or disappeared can nevertheless find adequate recognition through this 

harms-based notion of victim.183

Approaching reparations in a way that captures diffuse harms can permit recognition of women’s roles as primary caretakers in most societies, thereby affording the basis of measures that 

support both them and their “children born of war.”184

Recommendations

We have reviewed the history of legal developments and the evolution of policies, approaches, 

and activities related to the field of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding. We have also examined 

recent discussion in the field and described evident shortcomings and needed improvements in 

research and practice. Here we summarize those insights and recommendations and offer our 

reflections on several cross-cutting issues.

Most formal reparations 

programs rarely account 

for pervasive problems 

such as forced labor, 

coerced marriage, 

displacement, chronic 

health problems 

stemming from sexual 

violence and malnutrition, 

and a sharp rise in femaleheaded households. 

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

Institutionalizing Gender Sensitivity

Disagreement on the meaning of the word gender disrupts efforts to create gender-sensitive 

strategies for conflict and postconflict periods. Despite attempts at consensus, strategies and 

models still suffer greatly from contradictory definitions and interpretations that ultimately 

undermine their effectiveness. Agreement on certain fundamentals is necessary to ensure that 

work on gender does not remain inconsistent or piecemeal and to enable research, policy, and 

practice to advance constructively. At the same time, the gap between conventions and enforcement remains tenacious. Even when international and domestic legislation has been progressive, abiding by the resulting requirements continues to be a key concern for the field. Unfortunately, the prevalence of these issues has undermined the fight for gender equality.

■ Recommendation 1: Adopt clear definitions of gender.

■ Recommendation 2: Standardize gender policies and practices.

■ Recommendation 3: Internalize norms of gender sensitivity across the community of 

researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.

■ Recommendation 4: Engage in strong, consistent enforcement of formal rules and 

policies.

From Women to Gender

The insights that gender studies offer policymakers, scholars, and practitioners working on the 

issues of conflict and peacebuilding are impoverished when gender is reduced to women. Obviously, navigating conflict and postconflict situations in such a way that women and girls do 

not end up being ignored or marginalized is essential. An exclusive focus on women and girls, 

however, leaves important angles unexplored and overlooks the fact that they alone cannot 

create real, lasting changes in gender dynamics. Involving men and boys in gender-sensitive 

endeavors—as subjects, participants, contributors, and proponents—is therefore in the best interest of the field. The focus should not be limited to violent men but should also include those 

men who have carved out space for alternative, peaceful forms of masculinity, yet are frequently 

rendered invisible in conflict and postconflict settings.

■ Recommendation 1: Approach gender broadly, not simply as a synonym for women.

■ Recommendation 2: Include men and boys as well as women and girls in gender-sensitive 

programs.

Gender and Conflict

To reiterate, security is a gendered good. Further research would help us better understand how 

women and girls as well as men and boys define security and what they prioritize in their daily 

lives. Such information can also help expand notions of security and identify barriers to fully 

implementing UN Resolution 1325.

Likewise, gender is equally central to the phenomenon of conflict, especially insofar as it 

relates to expectations and norms of behavior, patterns of interactions among individuals in 

society, and individuals who become perpetrators and victims. Efforts to forestall conflict and 

promote peace must therefore address gender identities, especially by examining local variants 

of masculinity and the ways they are conducive to violent or misogynistic behavior.

The insights that 

gender studies offer 

policymakers, scholars, 

and practitioners working 

on the issues of conflict 

and peacebuilding are 

impoverished when 

gender is reduced 

to women. 

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PEACEWORKS 76

At the same time, one cannot assume that such dispositions are universal, especially because it is evident that rape and other forms of sexual violence vary greatly within and across 

armed conflicts. Accounting for this variation will provide not only insights into how men 

(and, at times, women) are socialized into committing acts of sexual violence, but also the steps 

that can be taken to prevent and punish these abuses. Part of what may be required is to confront gender inequities and biases that are structural and persistent, rather than a temporary 

artifact of conflict.

■ Recommendation 1: Recognize that gender infuses all aspects of providing security, 

including conflict and peacebuilding.

■ Recommendation 2: Pay close attention to the way in which various gender identities and 

roles are reinforced during times of peace and thus foster conflict.

■ Recommendation 3: Study violence with gender dimensions, including identifying and 

explaining variation as well as appreciating its counterintuitive complexities and individual and societal effects.

■ Recommendation 4: Acknowledge the strong links among gender-related violence 

before, during, and after conflict and prevailing systems of gender relations.

Gender and Postconflict Transitions

Conflict never spares one gender entirely, but the harms to which the different genders are 

exposed need not be identical in type and prevalence. Proper accounting of past conflict and 

its impact on the population is vital and should embody these features. A critical step in this 

regard is to avoid giving clear priority—official or de facto—to one gender by privileging 

their narratives or characteristic experiences in transitional justice processes. Achieving balance and breadth in reporting and redress requires affirmative efforts on a number of fronts. 

People must feel welcome, free, and safe to speak. At a minimum, this necessitates that 

opportunities for input are open, inclusive, and nondiscriminatory. Individuals should not 

be constrained, based on assumptions about gender, by misguided expectations concerning 

what or whose violations they will discuss. Instead, they should be allowed to relate the 

experiences of conflict that matter to them, at their discretion. 

For this to be most successful, the responsibility of truth telling is ideally distributed 

so that both genders, victims and perpetrators alike, take part actively. Creative approaches 

in both practice and research can facilitate these efforts. Meanwhile, appropriate protections of privacy and confidentiality must be afforded, wherever warranted, that reflect the 

vulnerabilities and disincentives associated with gender, social status, and the information 

in question. Reparations measures should be similarly cognizant of and aim to remediate 

the actual losses that people experience as a result of conflict, again with an eye toward the 

gender dimensions of considerations such as the distribution of different types of violations 

and the background social, political, and economic conditions.

■ Recommendation 1: Comprehend the entire range and diversity of the experiences of 

conflict across the genders.

■ Recommendation 2: Appreciate and alleviate the gender-based constraints to people 

talking about abuses they suffered and other harms due to conflict.

■ Recommendation 3: Design and implement means of redress that more fully reflect the 

true nature of harms, including gender-based disparities before and after conflict.

A critical step is to avoid 

giving clear priority—

official or de facto—to 

one gender by privileging 

their narratives 

or characteristic 

experiences in transitional 

justice processes.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

Cross-Cutting Reflections

There are several final thoughts that apply across the board to the field of gender, conflict, and 

peacebuilding.

First, a pressing need remains for further conceptual and theoretical improvement, consolidation, and innovation; empirical and applied research; and development of policy and practice 

related to each of the issues discussed. The field is still young. Many of the shortcomings and 

other problems described can be attributed to the early stages of maturation and the inevitable growing pains that ensue. These circumstances are not cause to be disillusioned, because 

countless people, organizations, institutions, and governments have been actively involved on 

all of these fronts and important progress has been made in a relatively short period. Instead, 

the evident weaknesses and needs form the basis of an agenda worth pursuing with vigor and 

optimism about what more can be accomplished in the years ahead, and we urge a redoubling 

of efforts to pursue these objectives.

Second, the work in this field must be undertaken with creativity and tremendous respect 

for the people who are engaged and their environments. The goals of achieving gender sensitivity and equality, especially in conflict and peacebuilding contexts, cannot be separated from the 

necessity of rigorous, responsible, and ethical methods. This stipulation bears mention because 

its importance is heightened when the ambition is to advance by conducting research, designing policies, and implementing programs on sensitive topics. Furthermore, one cannot forget that it is usually developing countries that experience conflict and people from developed 

countries who bring in funding to help. In these settings, a certain lack of understanding and 

cultural differences are not always properly acknowledged. Also, a degree of resentment often 

arises in receiving countries toward those who are helping, given the attitudes of arrogance and 

superiority associated with those doing the giving.

Third, communication and cooperation ought to be strengthened among people in the 

field from different academic disciplines and professional domains. Despite the considerable body of research in gender studies generated since the 1970s, dialogue among academics, practitioners, and policymakers is still limited. The reasons for this are numerous. One 

is the basic culture of academia, which typically does not enable or encourage follow-up 

to test the applications of research findings. Such efforts may run afoul of incentives that 

significantly favor publications over impact on policy and practice, as well as concerns about 

maintaining a certain level of neutrality on political and social issues. In addition, many 

academic programs lack a practice focus that would be a stimulus to orienting and translating research outputs to international institutions, governments, and NGOs. Moreover, few 

formal channels of communication exist among academics, policymakers, and practitioners 

to ensure joint learning opportunities and exchange ideas and knowledge, which constrains 

the prospects of collective endeavors. 

Beyond these general issues, the field of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding faces specific challenges. Being newer, it has not yet acquired the sort of consistent, full-fledged 

mainstream status that ordinarily brings attention, resources, and influence. Instead, gender 

often resides on the interstitial margins and is afforded token interest in both academic and 

professional settings—valued by those directly involved, but not necessarily more widely. The field is also inherently interdisciplinary in scope, yet interdisciplinary partnership 

is lacking. Balkanized methods, findings, and research topics, as well as academic and 

Despite the 

considerable body of 

research in gender 

studies generated since 

the 1970s, dialogue 

among academics, 

practitioners, and 

policymakers is 

still limited.

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PEACEWORKS 76

practitioner fiefdoms, have limited the quality and impact of work. These problems are not 

easy to overcome, but if the field is to make additional headway, interactions among key 

contributors and stakeholders must increase and be sustained, the obstacles to building 

bridges among the relevant disciplines must be overcome, and research, policymaking, and 

practice must complement one another.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

Appendix: Related USIP Grantmaking

In this report, Kimberly Theidon and Kelly Phenicie examine the historical events, landmark 

decisions, and trends in policymaking, practice, and research that have brought the field of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding to its present state, and offer recommendations for the future. 

Their analysis provides a useful lens through which to reflect on USIP’s related grantmaking. 

Since 1986, the Grant Program has awarded a total of roughly $86 million in support of more 

than 2,100 projects. Gender has been an explicit consideration in at least 109 of these projects, 

representing 5.2 percent of grants. This appendix identifies patterns among those projects, describes noteworthy examples, and considers the broad impact of this area of grantmaking with 

reference to the insights the report provides.

General Patterns

Sixty-two projects have emphasized gender, and forty-seven others have incorporated gender 

as a secondary theme. In terms of geographic distribution, Iraqi civil society organizations have 

been awarded a disproportionate share of the grants, including fully half (thirty-one) of those 

emphasizing gender. This particular pattern is a by-product of the structure of grantmaking 

activity.189 Among the other grants that emphasize gender, there is a modest concentration 

in Africa (ten projects) and a conspicuous absence in East Asia. The remainder is distributed 

across the rest of the Middle East and North Africa outside Iraq (six), Europe (four), Latin 

America (three), and South Asia (one), or else cross-regional (six). The vast majority of these 

projects (fifty) are oriented primarily toward practice; relatively few (twelve) are research studies. The topics and goals of the projects are enormously varied but can be roughly grouped into 

three major categories: the relationship between gender identities and the dynamics of conflict and peacebuilding (twenty-five), sexual violence in conflict (ten), and promoting women’s 

equality or building women’s capacity (forty-five). At least twenty of the grants are for multifaceted projects and thus fall into multiple categories. Such grants, when highlighted, are 

discussed within the category that most clearly captures the core of the project.

The following sections highlight grants in each of these gender-emphasis categories and 

briefly discuss the grants in which gender is secondary and those made to organizations that 

focus on women.

Grant-Funded Projects that Emphasize Gender

The projects with an emphasis on gender are roughly distributed into one of three categories: gender identities, sexual violence, and promoting women’s equality or developing 

women’s capacity.

Gender Identities

A central theme of a number of the grants that focus on the ways gender identities can have 

an impact on conflict and peacebuilding is the role of women as peacebuilders. Addressing 

this angle is warranted given the historical exclusion of women from peace processes, which 

this report describes. Yet Theidon and Phenicie caution that women-centric approaches may 

obscure the fact that femininities and masculinities interact to influence conflict and peace. 

As a result, they conclude by recommending a shift towards work “involving men and boys in 

gender-sensitive endeavors” (31).

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To an extent, the trends in USIP grantmaking reflect such a reorientation. A number of the 

earlier awards, such as one to Herbert Kelman and Eileen Babbitt (Harvard University) and 

several others to the Fund for Peace, were devoted to women as peacebuilders. Several more recent awards, however, adopt a more nuanced view of the role of both genders in building peace 

and igniting conflict. In particular, Lorraine Bayard de Volo (University of Kansas), Michael 

Kimmel (State University of New York—Stony Brook), and the IANSA Women’s Network 

(Nigeria) stand out for their novel approaches.

Kelman and Babbitt received a grant in 1992 for the project Transforming the IsraeliPalestinian Relationship to Assure a Stable Peace: A Proposal for a Women’s Workshop (SG-155–92). 

This activity was not explicitly aimed at rectifying women’s exclusion from peace processes, but 

rather took the practical view that “women’s special capacity to build relationships across lines 

of conflict” could be harnessed to “create a political environment conducive to strengthening 

the peace negotiation process.” The burgeoning socio-biological literature on women’s proclivity toward peaceful, collaborative interactions, which Theidon and Phenicie discuss (17), 

clearly influenced the design of the project. Babbitt, with Tamra Pearson d’Estree, ultimately 

furthered scholarship on this topic by publishing a journal article concerning the methodology and results of this workshop and several similar initiatives. In follow-up interviews, the 

women reported no direct political consequences of their participation, but did cite improved 

networks between Palestinians and Israelis, as well as increased ability to understand the 

other’s perspective.190

The Fund for Peace received three grants for work conducted in Somalia and Somaliland in 

1995 (USIP-170–94F), 1996 (USIP-018–95F), and 1997 (USIP-018–95F). The common objective was “to strengthen the capacity of Somali women leaders and women’s organizations to 

participate effectively in the establishment of peace and security in Somalia.” The participants 

received training on conflict resolution and then were asked to transfer their newly acquired 

skills to local community members and lead discussions on women’s involvement in peace 

processes. These projects did not necessarily introduce a novel perspective to the field of gender 

and peacebuilding. By addressing the historical exclusion of women from decision-making 

in Somalia, they did broaden the spectrum of the population involved in peace initiatives in 

Somalia. In addition, they capitalized on the female participants’ unique access to networks 

in their home communities, thereby expanding the conflict resolution capacity in a war-torn 

environment with few formal opportunities for intensive, sustained education.

In the past decade, USIP’s grantmaking has gone beyond a focus on women as peacebuilders to include research projects that explore the underappreciated ways that both masculinities and femininities can influence conflict and peacebuilding.

A case in point is the grant Bayard de Volo received in 2003 for the project Women’s NonViolent Action in Latin America (SG-229–02S). Drawing primarily on the case of Nicaraguan 

women who were mobilized by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, she explored organizations of mothers of fallen soldiers and their consequences for the women who participate 

and for society at large. She cites a collective maternal solidarity as one of the nonmaterial 

gains for the female participants, explaining how they perceive themselves as having acquired 

through the trials of motherhood the strength necessary to endure war and loss.191 The centrality of motherhood in their self-conception renders them highly traditional in one sense, 

but they are also nontraditional in that they effectively transcend victimhood as they channel 

their responses to losses into political action. In addition, Bayard de Volo examines the use of 

maternal imagery and maternal framing to mobilize support for conflict.192

 USIP’s grantmaking has 

gone beyond a focus on 

women as peacebuilders 

to include research 

projects that explore the 

underappreciated ways 

that both masculinities 

and femininities 

can influence conflict 

and peacebuilding.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

Meanwhile, Kimmel, who received support in 2001 for the project The Gender of Ethnic 

Nationalism: A Comparative Study (USIP-048–01S), is one of the few grantees to examine the 

interplay between masculinity and conflict. His research examined how unrealized expectations of manhood can contribute to the rise of extremist groups. He found that extremist 

groups in the United States, Sweden, and the Muslim world were drawn in large part from 

“downwardly mobile” young men whose goals of being able to support themselves and their 

families were frustrated by globalization and changing gender norms. In this context, extremist 

groups that assert male domination in the process of denigrating the enemy are attractive to 

men who seek to reclaim the prominent role they consider to be theirs in society.193 Although 

Kimmel’s research does not necessarily challenge the dominant narrative of men as aggressive 

and women as peaceful, his results were significant in documenting how societal expectations 

of masculinity can indirectly contribute to violent behavior.

The support for Bayard de Volo and Kimmel’s projects resulted in contributions to the 

empirical research literature that advanced understandings of gender identities in conflict. An 

evolution, perhaps more subtle, is likewise evident in grant-funded practitioner work, which 

incorporates recent trends, albeit without dramatically breaking conventions.

One example is a project of the IANSA Women’s Network, funded in 2010, on Enhancing 

Women’s Participation in Peacebuilding in the Niger Delta (SG-221–10). This initiative seeks to 

build the conflict resolution capacity of women, who “by virtue of their customary role as caregiver and the respect they command . . . are well-placed to act as change agents and lead efforts 

to restore peace and security in the region.”194 The training curriculum, developed by IANSA, 

brings a gender perspective to a number of different issues, including early warning systems 

and small arms control. The curriculum also includes a Gender Dialogue for Peacemakers, during which male and female participants engage each other and discuss the gendered effects of 

conflict, the different ways men’s and women’s organizations engage in peacebuilding, and how 

peacebuilding initiatives can contribute to gender equity.

Sexual Violence

All of the grants for work on the analysis, prevention, and reporting of sexual violence have 

been made in the past fifteen years. This situation is not surprising because the time frame 

coincides with increased international attention to the subject following the mass rapes in 

and subsequent ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, which the report describes (8). 

Although the Grant Program has supported some recent work that broadens the spectrum of approaches to sexual violence, the majority of the funded projects concern female 

victims, seeking either to provide services to victims or to understand the scope of rape in 

particular contexts. Three noteworthy examples of women-centered work are grants to Opportunities Industrialization Centers International, the Jerusalem Rape Crisis Center, and 

an Iraqi organization.195

Opportunities Industrialization Centers International received funding in 2002 for the 

project Emergency Response to Support Women and Girl Survivors of Sexual Violence in Sierra 

Leone (SG-156–00). The primary purpose was to train counselors, who then provided psychosocial support to seventy-five female victims of sexual violence. After the trainings, the project 

team compiled a guide on the phenomenon of sexual violence in Sierra Leone and specific 

strategies for helping women and girls overcome trauma. The initiative reached only a tiny 

fraction of those who had been victimized. Thus, whether the project made an appreciable impact on the ground is open to interpretation. Regardless, this project deserves praise for having 

Extremist groups in the 

United States, Sweden, 

and the Muslim world 

were drawn in large 

part from “downwardly 

mobile” young men 

whose goals of being 

able to support 

themselves and their 

families were frustrated 

by globalization and 

changing gender norms. 

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provided a much-needed response, however limited, in the context of an embryonic transition, 

a fragile peace, and a severe humanitarian crisis.

Sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war far less frequently in the Israeli-Palestinian 

conflict, but the abuse of women is nonetheless a persistent social problem in this setting. Responding to the concern, the Jerusalem Rape Crisis Center initiated Joint Forces for Social Change 

with USIP funding in 2006 (USIP-141–05S). The project aimed to “create and train a cadre of 

Palestinian and Israeli student volunteers who will sustain long-term professional contact following their participation in a comprehensive educational project addressing sexual violence.” 

A group of twenty Jewish and twenty Arab youth—all students at Hebrew University—participated in a year-long course on human rights, women’s rights, and the relationship between 

conflict and sexual violence, and subsequently collaborated on a campaign to raise awareness 

about sexual violence in more than fifty youth clubs and high schools in Jerusalem. Although the 

project addressed rape in the context of everyday life rather than as a weapon of war, the macrocontext—a protracted conflict with intermittent episodes of serious violence—may conceivably 

have contributed to a higher incidence of rape. The domestication of violence following armed 

conflict discussed in the report (6) could logically be observed in the Israel-Palestine context, 

where young men who are mobilized for conflict return to their families during the calmer interludes. In addition to addressing a concrete social problem that is plausibly exacerbated by the 

conflict context, this grant project served as a medium for people-to-people peacebuilding by 

bringing together Palestinians and Israelis to work on a problem of common interest.

Another example of USIP funding of women-centered projects on sexual violence is a 

current grant to an Iraqi organization that is working with female prisoners, a relatively small 

population in Iraq that until recently had not received much attention. In response to reported 

rapes in a particular facility, the grantee organization is carrying out a campaign to educate 

600 local police officers on the proper treatment of women in prisons, and has formed a team 

of practitioners to visit the women, monitor their treatment, and report instances of abuse. 

The project team is also seeking to mitigate the practice of shunning rape victims, a common 

problem in Iraq, by facilitating family visits to the women detainees.

These three grants, all thoughtful projects that responded to real needs on the ground, 

concentrate on female victims of sexual violence. Theidon and Phenicie (24), although acknowledging the importance of continued research and practice in this vein, encourage 

more attention to some of the less-explored areas of gender-based violence, namely temporal and geographic variation in the prevalence of sexual violence, women as agents of violence, and male rape victims. They point out how female perpetrators and male victims can 

tend to challenge societal gender roles. The typical result is not long-term change but rather 

a backlash, reflected in the extreme stigmatization of male rape victims, as well as disbelief 

or disgust regarding women who inflict violence. Two recent USIP grants in particular, to 

Elisabeth Wood (Yale University) and Colombia’s Historical Memory Commission, have 

yielded research that broadens our understanding of sexual violence and provides promising avenues for future work.

Theidon and Phenicie acknowledge Wood’s USIP grant (USIP-070–06F) for the project Sexual Violence During War: Understanding Variation and stress the importance of her 

work in dispelling the myth that wartime rape is inevitable and universal. They review some 

of her hypotheses on variation in sexual violence (21), and Wood’s work also merits recognition for her attention to male rape victims and her discussion of the numerous forms of 

sexual violence other than rape. These two facts, which historically have not received sufElisabeth Wood’s work 

merits recognition 

for her attention to 

male rape victims and 

her discussion of the 

numerous forms of 

sexual violence other 

than rape. 

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

ficient recognition, are crucial considerations in providing appropriate services for victims 

and adequate justice for perpetrators.

Whereas Wood’s work spans numerous conflicts, a recent grant (SG-147–08) supports a 

detailed inquiry by Colombia’s Historical Memory Commission into gender-based violence 

in one specific context: Northern Colombia between 1995 and 2008. The first stage consisted 

of historical memory workshops, led by a team of professionals, for several groups of women 

who had been victimized in some of most brutal and notorious cases in the region. The testimonies from the workshops will be included in a forthcoming report, which discusses a 

number of less-explored elements of the Colombian conflict, including women’s participation 

in armed groups and variation in the type and extent of sexual violence inflicted by individual, 

paramilitary, and guerilla units. Another important contribution of this project is a toolkit for 

conducting historical memory workshops, which the commission has distributed to other 

Colombian organizations that work with victims. Although testimonies gathered during this 

project are not intended for official truth and justice proceedings in Colombia, the more 

private nature of the historical memory workshops could hold promise as an alternative to 

traditional court proceedings that may risk retraumatizing victims, a concern that Theidon 

and Phenicie also isolate (28).

Women’s Rights and Empowerment 

The grants in this category are especially eclectic, with varied goals, methods, and target beneficiaries that reflect the diversity Theidon and Phenicie identify among the work on women’s 

advancement, where definitional clarity and agreement on approaches are still largely absent 

in spite of consensus on the importance of empowering women. USIP has funded projects 

on women’s empowerment that seem to have been influenced as much by local political and 

cultural contexts as they were by internationally accepted norms. The different reference points 

are evident in three grants to the League of Women Voters for projects in Europe, a grant to 

Human Rights Education Associates to research gender equity in Moroccan textbooks, two 

grants to Iraqi organizations for work with war widows and disabled women, a current grant 

to the Hunt Alternatives Fund to empower women leaders to moderate extremism in Pakistan, and a grant to Isobel Coleman (Council on Foreign Relations) to investigate the role of 

women in rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan.

The grants to the League of Women Voters were made during the early 1990s, amid democratization in Eastern Europe and the conflict and subsequent peace processes in the Balkans. A pair of the grants supported similar projects in Poland in 1992–1993 (USIP-057–91F) 

and Hungary in 1994–1995 (USIP-014–93F), which sought to offer “emerging women leaders . . . opportunities to learn the various techniques of citizen participation in a democratic system.” These initiatives responded to an unusual opening to increase women’s participation that 

was created by rapid changes to the political arena as these countries transitioned from communism to democracy. A third grant in 1998 (USIP-031–98S) funded a project to strengthen 

a newly established chapter in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to enable its members to take a 

more active and equal role in both the peace process and upcoming elections by building the 

capacity of women leaders to articulate a gender perspective.

Whereas these projects were motivated by new spaces resulting from transitions to democracy and away from an armed conflict accompanying the creation of a new state, the 2004 grant 

(SG-187–04S) to Human Rights Education Associates was spurred by liberalizing reforms 

in Morocco. In particular, a new family code that afforded women increased social, political, 

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PEACEWORKS 76

and economic rights had passed amid significant controversy, with little agreement about how 

it should be implemented. This project, therefore, sought to assess gender inequality in school 

curricula and textbooks, with an eye toward improving tolerance and respect for women’s equality in the educational system. The findings of the study were in keeping with what one would 

expect in a society that had not historically prioritized women’s rights: among other things, men 

constituted 86 percent of textbook writers and 95 percent of the writers referenced within textbooks, and 29 percent of the images of women and girls in textbooks depicted them performing 

household chores, versus a scant 3 percent of the images of men and boys.196 Ultimately, the 

findings and a series of recommendations on promoting gender equity were shared with the 

Moroccan Ministry of Education. Although this study yielded useful information on gender 

equity, its link to USIP’s mandate is less direct and obvious than in most other funded projects.

The same cannot be said of a recent grant (SG-135–10) to Hunt Alternatives Fund’s 

Institute for Inclusive Security, which has worked to stimulate women’s leadership in a variety 

of active conflict zones in Pakistan and is now partnering with PAIMAN, a local NGO, to empower women to moderate extremist violence. Fifteen female civil society leaders are receiving 

training in leadership and advocacy, at the conclusion of which they are expected to establish a 

coalition to develop and pursue a concrete agenda on reducing extremism. In the process, the 

project aims to leverage mothers’ unique ability to influence their sons’ receptiveness to extremist ideologies, which Theidon and Phenicie cite as an emerging trend in gender studies (17).

Some of USIP’s grantmaking in Iraq embraces a similar theory of change. In particular, 

two Iraqi organizations have recently received funding to work with disadvantaged groups 

whose ranks have expanded rapidly as a result of war and sectarian strife. One organization 

is providing literacy training to war widows and their families to help them participate more 

effectively in the national Iraqi reconciliation process. The widows are also receiving legal guidance in reclaiming lost property and accessing other benefits provided by the Iraqi government. 

A final element of this project is community-level dialogues that seek to mitigate the sectarian 

divides that tend to affect widows disproportionately. The other organization is carrying out 

an equally multifaceted project focusing on disabled women. Four hundred women are being 

trained to advocate for their equal rights as citizens in a society where they have traditionally 

been treated only as objects in need of protection and assistance. The organization is also holding conferences to raise disability awareness among other NGOs and the general public. The 

project will culminate in facilitated meetings between the disabled women trainees and Iraqi 

legislators. By providing the women the opportunity to meet with lawmakers and advocate for 

themselves, the project team is cementing participants’ learning and undertaking a key step in 

changing perceptions of disabled women. More significant for the purpose of USIP’s mandate, 

given disability affects society at large and is therefore a unifying issue, are the relationships 

formed among the participants that can help reduce sectarian tensions.

International trends in practice likely influenced these two projects, as the grantees are 

well-networked organizations run by individuals with broad experience. At the same time, 

both arose from the particularities of a violence-ravaged Iraq where marginalized women saw 

their rights even further imperiled by the rise of conservative religious thought. This context is 

ably documented in Coleman’s project, supported by a grant in 2005 (USIP-155–04S), to examine the history of women’s rights in Iraq and discuss the prospects for empowering women 

in light of reforms that followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. She points to positive 

developments for gender equality, such as a quota system allotting 25 percent of the seats in 

the legislature to women. Yet she also underlines the challenges of guaranteeing freedoms for 

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

women in a setting where opposing factions in government hold different interpretations of 

the Iraqi family code.197

Grant-Funded Projects for Which Gender Is Secondary

Additional projects overtly incorporated women into broader initiatives on themes other than 

gender. In most of these instances, women were listed as one of a number of constituencies (for 

example, religious leaders, human rights activists) whose voices should be heard or who could 

play some sort of role in peacebuilding efforts. Women also appear in certain grants as one of 

several groups (for example, children, orphans, refugees) deemed to be uniquely vulnerable in 

armed conflict. An argument in favor of projects having a secondary gender focus is that it 

achieves a degree of gender mainstreaming, which remains the conventional model of advancing the status of women and girls. Yet Theidon and Phenicie (31) oppose treating gender in 

such a simplistic fashion, warning that “the insights that gender studies offer policymakers, 

scholars, and practitioners working on the issues of conflict and peacebuilding are impoverished when gender is reduced to women.” The inclusion of women in relatively crude ways 

tends to ignore their differences, as well as how conflict dynamics are a function of both men 

and women, the roles assigned to them by society, and the manner in which they interact. In 

particular, one-dimensional portrayals of women as victims, with a homogenous perspective, 

obscure their individual agency in exacerbating violence or promoting peace.

Grants to Organizations that Focus on Women

Thirteen grants have been made to organizations for which women are central to their mandate. Gender was a primary emphasis in only five of the funded projects, and a secondary 

element in eight. The distribution suggests that a majority of these grantees have pursued and 

been successful in building a more diverse portfolio of work. This transition can be challenging, 

because organizations with a focus on women often encounter questions about their desire and 

capability to work on other thematic areas.

Conclusion

This appendix has summarized and given illustrative highlights of USIP’s grantmaking in the 

field of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding. The review, considered in conjunction with the 

body of the report, leads to several final reflections and, in turn, to a series of recommendations 

for the Grant Program.

To begin with, it is immediately apparent that the profile of funded projects is not entirely 

in keeping with what Theidon and Phenicie advocate. These discrepancies do not necessarily constitute cause for major concern, however. In part, they arise because the grants were 

awarded over twenty-five years, during which time both the field and USIP’s grant competitions evolved significantly. Therefore, the potential is inherent that the overall orientation of 

USIP grantmaking and the individual grants could appear outdated and off base when viewed 

in retrospect, even if at the time they made reasonable sense in light of the state of the field and 

institutional parameters.

At least some evidence actually suggests a different, more favorable picture: certain projects 

supported by USIP funding provided impetus for advances in research and practice that are 

important to the development of the field and to real-world engagement with central issues 

that Theidon and Phenicie discuss. In particular, grantees have made noteworthy contribuOne-dimensional portrayals 

of women as victims, with 

a homogenous 

perspective, obscure their 

individual agency in 

exacerbating violence or 

promoting peace.

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PEACEWORKS 76

tions concerning gender identities, sexual violence, and women’s empowerment. In these ways, 

grantmaking to date has proven to be a catalyst for novel and cutting-edge work rather than 

merely a mirror for current or obsolete conventions.

Yet the structure of the grant competitions and the high fraction of grants supporting 

practice-oriented projects constrain efforts to improve the standardization of the field and 

move it forward in a precise way. The awards in the Annual Grant Competition are given to a 

small set of the best projects from the large pool of unsolicited applications that are received 

each year. In any given year, there is no guarantee that a substantial share of the applications, 

let alone the projects USIP ultimately funds, will include significant gender aspects and plans 

to advance the field in new directions. The arrangements afford little opportunity for pursuing specific applicants and allow relatively modest input by program staff into grantees’ goals, 

underlying theories, and methods. Instead, this sort of targeting, intensive interaction, and 

strategic guidance is largely restricted to the Priority Grant Competitions, where staff regularly 

communicate with prospective applicants from the earliest stages of conceptualizing a project. 

Meanwhile, the grants for practice work are often made in response to urgent situations on 

the ground. Under these circumstances, addressing the intersection of gender and conflict in 

a sophisticated, nuanced way is not always a consideration or even feasible. In sum, the Grant 

Program has limited scope for making gender a point of emphasis, much less for defining specific courses of action and research, aside from responding favorably to proposed projects that 

happen to integrate this angle constructively and creatively.

Looking ahead to the future, the Grant Program can realistically aim to take account of 

Theidon and Phenicie’s observations and support work at the leading edge of the field of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding and still operate within the confines of the existing grantmaking structure and of USIP’s mandate. With these goals in mind, I recommend that the Grant 

Program should move forward on the following efforts:

■ Institute a new Priority Grant Competition that would focus on gender. Absent such a dedicated grantmaking process, past experience indicates that relatively small shares of the 

proposed and funded projects will include gender dimensions, especially as a central feature. A Priority Grant Competition on Gender could provide a useful vehicle for staff to 

actively solicit and assist applicants who are capable of making innovations in the field.

■ Emphasize funding projects concerning gender identities and sexual violence. USIP has made 

notable grants for projects on these two topics, supporting work that emerged as influential in the field. It makes sense to continue to fund these areas of strength and to find 

means of aggregating insights and impact, including via projects that connect the themes, 

that is, exploring the impact of sexual violence on gender roles and vice versa.

■ Encourage the implementation of gender-related projects that include boys and men. The 

field of conflict resolution and peacebuilding is boosted by research and practice that 

considers how both genders experience and contribute to conflict. This broader interest would not necessarily imply, however, that all funded projects with explicit gender 

dimensions must give equal attention to both genders. For example, it is well established that the victims of wartime sexual violence are overwhelmingly female. As a 

result, grants for work with victims of sexual violence might plausibly concentrate 

largely or entirely on women and girls.

■ Support projects involving gender equality and women’s rights and empowerment only when the 

conditions targeted for improvement are a direct result of or have a bearing on the potential for 

armed conflict. Although changing structural discrimination and disparities in participation based on gender are laudable objectives, USIP has a specific, restricted mandate that 

must be respected in the grantmaking process. In this context, a project that addresses 

Grants are often made in 

response to urgent 

situations on the ground. 

Under these circumstances, 

addressing the intersection 

of gender and conflict in a 

sophisticated, nuanced 

way is not always a 

consideration or 

even feasible. 

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

gender biases or is implemented by a women’s organization does not warrant interest 

unless some strong association is drawn to conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

■ Promote more extensive linkages among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Progress 

on this front can be achieved in several ways. One way is to retain the preference for 

funding projects that foster such relationships across segments of the field, for example, 

practitioner projects that incorporate rigorous research and evaluation methods and 

research projects involving fieldwork and the collection and analysis of primary empirical 

data that have a clear relevance to practitioners and policymakers. Another way is to 

convene public events at which grantees can share their experiences and insights with one 

another and other interested parties, as well as consolidate understandings about best 

practices, including those concerning gender sensitivity, security for vulnerable populations, and ethics. Staff can also make additional efforts to connect grantees that would 

benefit from learning about each other’s work, receiving guidance, and collaborating.

■ Last, the Grant Program should remain responsive to the new challenges and areas of work that 

will inevitably materialize and grow in prominence as the field continues to develop.

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Notes

1. UN Doc A/51/322, September 3, 1996.

2. See Kimberly Theidon, “Domesticando la Violencia: Alcohol y las Secuelas de la Guerra,” Ideele: Revista del 

Instituto de Defensa Legal 120 (July 1999): 56–63; and “Gender in Transition: Common Sense, Women and 

War,” Journal of Human Rights 6, no. 4 (2007): 453–78. The latter article was a product of a USIP grantfunded project.

3. Mark Ellis, “Breaking the Silence: Rape as an International Crime,” Case Western Reserve Journal of 

International Law 38, no. 2 (2006–07): 225–47.

4. Ellis, “Breaking the Silence,” 228.

5. Catherine N. Niarchos, “Women, War, and Rape: Challenges Facing the International Tribunal for the 

Former Yugoslavia,” Human Rights Quarterly 17, no. 4 (1995): 649–90. On the absence of rape in the 

Nuremberg Charter, see also Theodor Meron, “Rape as a Crime Under International Law,” American Journal 

of International Law 87, no. 3 (1993): 424–28.

6. Natalie Florea Hudson, “Security Discourse as a Political Framework for Action: A Comparative Analysis 

of Children and Women in the UN Security Council” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the 

International Studies Association, New York City, February 15, 2009.

7. Ellis, “Breaking the Silence,” 229.

8. Articles in the Geneva Convention that protect women, as indicated by Ellis (“Breaking the Silence,” 

236–37).

9. UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, its Causes 

and Consequences,” Yakin Ertürk, “15 Years of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against 

Women, Its Causes and Consequences (1994–2009)—A Critical Review” panel discussion, UN Secretariat, 

New York, May 27, 2009, 21.

10. Niarchos, “Women, War, and Rape,” 674.

11. UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the Special Rapporteur,” 21–22.

12. United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, “Short History of the Commission on the Status of 

Women,” 4, www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/CSW60YRS/CSWbriefhistory.pdf.

13. Article 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted 

18 Dec. 1979, G.A. Res. 34/180, 34 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 46), U.N. Doc A/34/36 (1980), entered into 

force September 3, 1981.

14. “Outcomes on Gender and Equality,” www.un.org/en/development/devagenda/gender.shtml.

15. See UNIFEM website, www.unifem.org/about/faq.php.

16. Beijing Platform for Action, “Critical Areas of Concern,” Fourth World Conference on Women, September 

15, 1995, A/CONF.177/20/Add.1 (1995). See also Judith Gardam and Michelle Jarvis, “Women and 

Armed Conflict: The International Response to the Beijing Platform for Action,” Columbia Human Rights 

Law Review 3, no. 1 (2000–01): 4.

17. United Nations Economic and Social Council, “Gender Mainstreaming,” Extract from the Report of the 

Economic and Social Council for 1997 (A/52/3) September 18, 1997, at 2.

18. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, article 7, July 17, 1998.

19. Ellis, “Breaking the Silence,” 236.

20. Ibid., 226–27.

21. Kelly D. Askin, “Sexual Violence in Decisions and Indictments of the Yugoslav and Rwandan Tribunals: 

Current Status,” American Journal of International Law 93, no. 2 (1999): 98.

22. Hudson, “Security Discourse,” 5.

23. Ibid.

24. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted October 31, 2000, S/RES/1325 (2000).

25. UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the Special Rapporteur,” 25.

26. Christina Binder, Karin Lukas, and Romana Schweiger, “Empty Words or Real Achievement? The Impact 

of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women in Armed Conflicts,” Radical History Review 101 (Spring 

2008): 26.

27. United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, “Short History of the Commission on the Status of 

Women,” 13, www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/CSW60YRS/CSWbriefhistory.pdf.

28. Sylvia Chant and Matthew C. Gutman, Mainstreaming Men into Gender and Development: Debates, 

Reflections and Experiences (London: Oxfam, 2000), 6.

29. Sophie Richter-Devroe, “Gender, Culture, and Conflict Resolution in Palestine,” Journal of Middle East 

Women’s Studies 4, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 34.

30. Suzette Mitchell, “Gender and Development: A SAFE Recipe,” Development in Practice 6, no. 2 (May 

1996): 140.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

31. Hilary Charlesworth, “Not Waving but Drowning: Gender Mainstreaming and Human Rights in the 

United Nations,” Harvard Human Rights Journal 18, no. 1 (2005): 2.

32. Mitchell, “Gender and Development,” 140.

33. Anne Gallagher, “Ending the Marginalization: Strategies for Incorporating Women into the United 

Nations Human Rights System,” Human Rights Quarterly 19, no. 2 (1997): 288.

34. United Nations Economic and Social Council, “Gender Mainstreaming,” extract from the Report of the 

Economic and Social Council for 1997 (A/52/3) September 18, 1997, at 2.

35. WHO, “WHO Gender Policy: Integrating Gender Perspectives in the Work of WHO” (2002) 1, 

www.who.int/gender/documents/engpolicy.pdf.

36. Charlesworth, “Not Waving but Drowning,” 5–6.

37. Hannah Warren, “Using Gender-Analysis Frameworks: Theoretical and Practical Reflections,” Gender & 

Development 15, no. 2 (July 2007): 189.

38. Ibid., 190.

39. Among the most well-known gender options are the Harvard Framework; the People-Oriented Planning 

Framework; the Moser Framework; the Gender Analysis Matrix (GAM); the Capabilities and Vulnerabilities 

Framework; the Women’s Empowerment (Longwe) Framework; and the Social Relations (Kabeer) 

Framework. It is beyond the scope of this report to provide a detailed assessment of each approach, but 

suffice it to say that the variety of approaches, while not negative per se, reflects the lack of consensus on key 

concepts and methods, which may, in turn, obscure both means and ends.

40. Warren, “Using Gender-Analysis Frameworks,” 189.

41. Ibid.

42. Elaine Zuckerman, Wu Qing, Aida Orgocka, and Hilary Sims Feldstein, “Reforming the World Bank: Will 

the New Gender Strategy Make a Difference? A Study with China Case Examples” (Washington, DC: 

Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2003), 10.

43. Shahra Razavi and Carol Miller, “Gender Mainstreaming: A Study of Efforts by the UNDP, the World 

Bank and the ILO to Institutionalize Gender Issues,” occasional paper 4, United Nations Research Institute 

for Social Development and United Nations Development Program, 1995, iii.

44. Camille Pampell Conaway, “The Role of Women in Stabilization and Reconstruction,” report, United 

States Institute of Peace Stabilization and Reconstruction Series No. 3, August 2006, 1. This report is based 

on a series of consultations under the auspices of the Working Group on the Role of Women in Stabilization 

and Reconstruction Operations, chaired by Harriet Hentges, former USIP executive vice president, and 

Harriet C. Babbitt, senior vice president of the Hunt Alternatives Fund. More than fifty experts from the 

U.S. government and international and nongovernmental organizations were convened in 2004 and 2005 to 

identify best practices and select priority recommendations on the role of women in stabilization and 

reconstruction.

45. Conaway, “The Role of Women,” 5–6.

46. Zuckerman et al., “Reforming the World Bank,” 11.

47. Noëlle Quénivet, “The Dissonance Between the United Nations Zero-Tolerance Policy and the 

Criminalisation of Sexual Offences on the International Level,” International Criminal Law Review 7, no. 4 

(2007): 660.

48. Judith Gardam and Hilary Charlesworth, “Protection of Women in Armed Conflict,” Human Rights 

Quarterly 22, no. 1 (2000): 159.

49. Zuckerman et al., “Reforming the World Bank,” 10.

50. Hudson, “Security Discourse as a Political Framework,” 2.

51. Charlesworth, “Not Waving but Drowning,” 13.

52. Ibid., 18.

53. Warren, “Using Gender-Analysis Frameworks,” 189.

54. For a discussion of this dynamic in DDR programs, see Kimberly Theidon, “Reconstructing Masculinities: 

The Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration of Former Combatants in Colombia,” Human Rights 

Quarterly 31, no. 1 (2009): 1–34.

55. This approach has informed the structure of the Colombian National Commission on Reparations and 

Reconciliation (CNRR) as well. The DDR program appears as one area of intervention. The Gender and Specific 

Populations unit—defined to include women, children and indigenous populations—is another. Although one of 

the stated goals is to make gender a transversal theme, this is not a propitious way to begin.

56. Chant and Gutman, Mainstreaming Men, 4.

57. Ibid.

58. Feleke Tadele, “Men in the Kitchen, Women in the Office?” in Gender Works: Oxfam Experience in Policy and 

Practice, edited by Fenella Porter, Inés A. Smyth, and Caroline Sweetman (London: Oxfam Great Britain, 

1999), 33.

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PEACEWORKS 76

59. Ibid., 34.

60. Ibid., 35.

61. Although Tadele refers to both genders in his article, we prefer all genders to avoid the heteronormativity the 

former terms implies.

62. For an eloquent critique of Western feminism as a form of theoretical and discursive imperialism, see 

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse,” in Third 

World Women and the Politics of Feminism, edited by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes 

Torres (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991).

63. Usha Kar, “Much Ado About Knitting,” in Gender Works, 27.

64. Ibid.

65. Sophie Richter-Devroe, “Gender, Culture, and Conflict Resolution in Palestine,” Journal of Middle East 

Women’s Studies 4, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 7.

66. For more on this point, see Theidon’s various articles on gender, trauma, and social repair in Peru.

67. The classic work on this subject is Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense 

Intellectuals,” Signs 12, no. 4 (1987): 687–718.

68. Niarchos, “Women, War, and Rape,” 670.

69. Ibid. See also the analysis of the gendered language of nuclear weapons scientists in Cohn, “Sex and Death.”

70. See Theidon, “Reconstructing Masculinities,” 453–78.

71. Hugh Gusterson, “Anthropology and Militarism,” Annual Review of Anthropology 36 (2007): 165.

72. The legal theorist, and former Air Force ROTC officer, Elizabeth Hillman has produced a body of work 

on “blue on blue” violence, that is, violence that occurs within the military, involving soldiers sexually 

assaulting other soldiers. Hillman’s extensive publications can be found on her website at the University 

of California Hastings College of the Law (http://library.uchastings.edu/library/bibliographies/faculty/

Elizabeth-L.-Hillman/).

73. Cami R. Rowe, “‘That Whole Gender Paradigm’: Iraq War Veterans Embodying Feminist Approaches to 

Dissent,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, New York City, 

February 15, 2009.

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid.

76. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, “Women, Security, and the Patriarchy of Internationalized Transitional Justice,” 

Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 4 (2009): 1067.

77. Ibid., 1067.

78. Theidon, “Reconstructing Masculinities.”

79. See Colleen Duggan, “Foreword,” in What Happened to the Women? Gender and Reparations for Human Rights 

Violations, edited by Ruth Rubio-Marín (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2006), 18. 

80. Ní Aoláin, “Women, Security, and the Patriarchy,” 1072.

81. Ibid., 1060.

82. Ibid., 1062.

83. Ibid., 1072.

84. For example, see Catherine Lutz, Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century (Boston, MA: 

Beacon Press, 2001). In addition, see Cynthia Enloe’s body of work on militarization and gender.

85. Ní Aoláin, “Women, Security, and the Patriarchy,” 1065.

86. Valerie M. Hudson, Mary Caprioli, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Rose McDermott, and Chad F. Emmet, “The 

Heart of the Matter: The Security of Women and the Security of States,” International Security 33, no. 3 

(Winter 2008–09): 8.

87. Scott Coltrane, “Theorizing Masculinities in Contemporary Social Science,” In Theorizing Masculinities, 

edited by Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994).

88. Foster 2000: 223. Foster notes that the South African TRC’s Final Report acknowledged the commission 

had neglected to study masculinity and violence, which prompts him to pose a series of interesting questions: 

“What is it about masculinity that under certain circumstances render such an identity form so noxious? 

What are the circumstances? All of this awaits research,” 227. 

89. R. W. Connell, Masculinities, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 84.

90. Ibid., 76.

91. Among others, see Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa 

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

92. David H. J. Morgan, “Theater of War: Combat, the Military, and Masculinities,” in Theorizing Masculinities, 

edited by Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994), 165.

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gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

93. Hudson et al., “Heart of the Matter,” 15, 23. Theidon irreverently refers to this literature as the “But what about 

chimpanzees and testosterone?” approach to understanding gender inequalities. For a powerful critique of the 

inherent sexism that has influenced the primatology studies on which many of these theories are based, see 

Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Routledge, 1990).

94. Hudson et al., “Heart of the Matter,” 23.

95. The classic work on male fraternities is Peggy Sanday, Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood and Privilege 

on the College Campus (New York: New York University Press, 1990). On military socialization, the literature 

is vast. A good place to start is with Goldstein, War and Gender; Dave Grossman, The Psychological Cost of 

Learning to Kill in War and Society (New York: Little, Brown, 1996); and Richard Holmes, Acts of War: The 

Behavior of Men in Battle (New York: Free Press, 1985). For a fascinating analysis of how torture may be 

resignified as a source of pride and a route to male authority, see Julie Peteet, “Male Gender and Rituals of 

Resistance in the Palestinian ‘Intifada’: A Cultural Politics of Violence,” American Ethnologist 21, no. 1 

(1994): 31–49. In addition to academic and practitioner texts and documents, some of the finest work has 

been authored by former soldiers. For an overview of key texts, see Keith Brown and Catherine Lutz, “Grunt 

Lit: The Participant Observers of Empire,” American Ethnologist 34, no. 2 (2007): 322–28.

96. Preliminary findings from the Harvard University–funded project, “After the Truth: The Legacies of Sexual 

violence in Peru,” which involves ongoing research that Theidon is conducting with Edith Del Pino and Juan 

José Yupanqui.

97. For further discussion of these issues, see Kimberly Theidon, Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in 

Peru (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming). This book is a product of a USIP grantfunded project.

98. Hudson et al., “Heart of the Matter,” 24.

99. Ibid.

100. See Theidon, “Reconstructing Masculinities.” Another compelling example of this phenomenon can be 

found in Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City—A Diary, 2nd ed. (New York: 

Picador, 2006).

101. See Lorraine Bayard de Volo, “Mobilizing Mothers for War: Cross-National Framing Strategies in 

Nicaragua’s Contra War,” Gender and Society 18, no. 6 (December 2004): 715–34.

102. James M. O’Neil, “Summarizing 25 Years of Research on Men’s Gender Role Conflict Using the Gender 

Role Conflict Scale: New Research Paradigms and Clinical Implications,” Counseling Psychologist 36, no. 3 

(2008): 393.

103. Ibid.

104. Valerie Hudson and Andrea Den Boer, “A Surplus of Men, a Deficit of Peace: Security and Sex Ratios in 

Asia’s Largest States,” International Security 26, no. 4 (Spring 2002): 11.

105. Ibid., 17.

106. Ibid., 14–15.

107. The notion that men’s sexual needs must be satisfied, lest they pose a danger to the broader society, has been 

used to justify the establishment of brothels, recruitment of sex workers, and, at times, elaborate military 

planning for “servicing the troops.” See Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing 

Women’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

108. Ibid.

109. Connell, Masculinities, 260.

110. An excellent edited volume on women’s multiple roles is Meredith Turshen and Clotilde Twagiramariya, 

eds., What Women Do in Wartime (London: Zed Books, 1998).

111. We borrow this heading from Tara McKelvey, ed., One of the Guys? Women as Aggressors and Torturers 

(Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2007).

112. See, for example, Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Palo Alto, CA: 

Stanford University Press, 1999); Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 2006).

113. Charlotte Lindsey, “The Impact of Armed Conflict on Women,” in Listening to the Silences: Women and War,

edited by Helen Durham and Tracey Gurd (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2005), 22.

114. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 4.

115. Cheryl Toman, “Women, War, and Conflict,” Women’s Studies International Forum 32, no. 3 (2009): 326.

116. See Theidon, “Reconstructing Masculinities.”

117. Chris Coulter, Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women’s Lives through War and Peace in Sierra Leone (Ithaca, NY: 

Cornell University Press, 2009), 139–40. 

118. See, among others, ibid.; Vanessa Farr, Gendering Demilitarization as a Peacebuilding Tool, (Bonn: Bonn 

International Center for Conversation, 2002); Rachel Brett and Irma Specht, Young Soldiers: Why They 

Choose to Fight (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 2004); Dyan Mazurana and Susan McKay, Where Are the Girls? 

Girls in Fighting Forces in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique: Their Lives During and After War, 

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(Montreal: Rights and Democracy, 2004); and Natalia Springer, Desactivar la guerra: alternativas audaces 

para consolidar la paz (Colombia: Editorial Aguila, 2005).

119. Mats Utas, “Victimcy, Girlfriending, Soldiering: Tactic Agency in a Young Woman’s Social Navigation of 

the Liberian War Zone,” Anthropological Quarterly 78, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 406.

120. Nancy Caro Hollander, “The Gendering of Human Rights: Women and the Latin American Terrorist 

State,” Feminist Studies 22, no. 1 (1996): 62.

121. Utas, “Victimcy, Girlfriending, Soldiering,” 426.

122. Hollander, “Gendering of Human Rights,” 62.

123. See also Utas, “Victimcy, Girlfriending, Soldiering,” 407: “By employing a perspective that makes a woman 

exclusively a victim, researchers risk creating a permanent state of what Kathleen Barry calls victimism; i.e. 

a woman’s victim status ‘creates a framework for others to know her not as a person but as a victim, someone 

to whom violence is done.’”

124. For a discussion of this theme, see Elizabeth Wood, “Armed Groups and Sexual Violence: When is Wartime 

Rape Rare?” Politics & Society 37, no. 1 (2009): 131–62.

125. Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York: Ballantine Books, 1975), 24.

126. Wood, “Armed Groups and Sexual Violence,” 153.

127. Ibid.

128. Ibid.

129. One of the newest contributors of note is Dara Cohen, who was a USIP Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar 

in 2008–09.

130. Maria B. Olujic, “Embodiment of Terror: Gendered Violence in Peacetime and Wartime in Croatia and 

Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1998): 37.

131. Ibid., 35.

132. Ibid., 31.

133. Jelke Boesten, “Marrying Your Rapist: Domesticated War Crimes in Peru,” in Gendered Peace: Women’s 

Struggles for Post-War Justice and Reconciliation, edited by Donna Pankhurst (Geneva: Routledge & 

UNRISD, 2007), 205.

134. Ibid., 206.

135. Quoted in Julie Guillerot, “Linking Gender and Reparations in Peru: A Failed Opportunity,” in What 

Happened to the Women? 185.

136. UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Its Causes 

and Consequences,” Yakin Ertürk, “Addendum—Mission to the DRC,” A/HRC/7/6/Add.4, Summary, 

www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/women/rapporteur/annual.htm.

137. See Cynthia Cockburn, “The Gendered Dynamics of Armed Conflict and Political Violence,” in Victims, 

Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence, edited by Carolyn Moser and Fiona Clark 

(London: Zed Books, 2001).

138. Margaret Urban Walker, “Gender and Violence in Focus: A Background for Gender Justice in Reparations,” 

in What Happened to the Women? 23.

139. Roland Littlewood, “Military Rape,” Anthropology Today 13, no. 2 (1997): 13.

140. Ibid.

141. See Kimberly Theidon, Entre Prójimos: El conflicto armado interno y la política de la reconciliación en el Perú 

(Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2004 and 2009).

142. Vasuki Nesiah, “Discussion Line on Gender and Transitional Justice: An Introductory Essay Reflecting on 

the ICTJ Bellagio Workshop on Gender and Transitional Justice,” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 15 

(2006): 805.

143. Harry G. West, “Girls with Guns: Narrating the Experience of War of FRELIMO’s ‘Female Detachment,’” 

Anthropological Quarterly 73, no. 4 (October 2000): 181.

144. Interview with a communal authority in an unnamed community in central Ayacucho, July 2009. Theidon 

suspects that although soldiers were willing to be seen raping women, they were less inclined to publicly rape 

men for fear of being labeled homosexual.

145. Sandesh Sivakumaran, “Male/Male Rape and the ‘Taint’ of Homosexuality,” Human Rights Quarterly 27 

(2005): 1279.

146. Ibid., 1289.

147. Ibid., 1291.

148. Ibid.

149. Ibid.

150. Amnesty International, “Rape and Sexual Abuse: Torture and Ill-Treatment of Women in Detention,” ACT 

77/011/1991, at 1.

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49

gender, conflict, and peacebuilding: state of the field and lessons learned

151. See Michele Leiby, “Digging in the Archives: The Promise and Perils of Primary Documents,” Politics & 

Society 37, no. 1 (2006): 75–99.

152. This title is borrowed from Sheila Meintjes, Anu Pillay, and Meredeth Turshen, “There Is No Aftermath 

for Women,” in The Aftermath: Women in Post-Conflict Transformation, edited by Meredeth Turshan, Anu 

Pillay and Sheila Meintjes (London: Zed Books, 2002).

153. Rita Manchanda, “Ambivalent Gains in South Asian Conflicts,” in The Aftermath.

154. Borer, “Gendered War and Gendered Peace,” 1172.

155. Tristan Anne Borer, “Gendered War and Gendered Peace: Truth Commissions and Post-conflict Gender 

Violence: Lessons From South Africa,” Violence Against Women 15, no. 10 (2009): 1170.

156. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, UN Doc. S/RES/1325 

(2000).

157. Christine Bell and Catherine O’Rourke, “Peace Agreements or Piece of Paper? The Impact of UNSC 

Resolution 1324 on Peace Processes and their Agreements,” International Comparative Law Quarterly 59 

(October 2010): 941–80.

158. Bell and O’Rourke found that only 16 percent of peace agreements make any sort of reference to women 

(“Peace Agreements,” 968). They note that even the increase of 27 percent (up from 11 percent) following 

Resolution 1325 indicates a long way to go.

159. Ibid., 948.

160. United Nations Security Council, “The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict 

Societies: Report of the Secretary General,” S/2004/616 (2004).

161. Theidon, Entre Prójimos.

162. Cheryl McEwan, “Building a Postcolonial Archive? Gender, Collective Memory and Citizenship in PostApartheid South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 29, no. 3 (September 2003): 756.

163. Theidon, Entre Prójimos.

164. Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa (New York, 

Random House, 1998), 240, as quoted in Tristan Anne Borer, “Gendered War and Gendered Peace.”

165. Borer, “Gendered War and Gendered Peace,” 1180–181.

166. All of this information is based on the personal experience of Kelly Phenicie, who resides in Lima, Peru.

167. Judith Gardam and Hilary Charlesworth, “Protection of Women in Armed Conflict,” Human Rights 

Quarterly 22 (2000): 158.

168. James Mark, “Remembering Rape: Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary,” Past and 

Present 188 (2005): 151.

169. Littlewood, “Military Rape,” 13.

170. Catherine M. Cole, “Performance, Transitional Justice, and the Law: South Africa’s Truth and 

Reconciliation Commission,” Theatre Journal 59 (2007): 170.

171. Sidonie Smith, “Narrating the Right to Sexual Well-being and the Global Management of Misery: Maria 

Rosa Henson’s Comfort Woman and Charlene Smith’s Proud of Me,” Literature and Medicine 24, no. 2 

(2005): 168.

172. For example, the Commission on Illegal Detention and Torture in Chile, based on a close study of the modus 

operandi of various detention centers, presumed that whoever was shown to have spent time in certain detention centers during certain periods had been tortured and therefore deserved compensation. Sexual violence, of 

course, calls for creative evidentiary procedures. In many cases, there will be a pattern of sexual torture as part 

of abuse in detention centers. Other patterns can be context-specific, such as the systematic mass rape of 

women and girls by the army prior to massacres in Guatemala shows. See Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey, “Guatemala: 

Gender and Reparations for Human Rights Violations,” in What Happened to the Women?

173. Boesten, “Marrying Your Rapist,” 215.

174. Ní Aoláin, “Women, Security, and the Patriarchy,” 1059.

175. Guillerot, “Linking Gender and Reparations.”

176. Theidon, Entre Prójimos.

177. Fiona C. Ross, Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa (Sterling, 

VA: Pluto Press, 2003). 

178. See Theidon, Entre Prójimos.

179. Sidonie Smith, “Narrating the Right to Sexual Well-being and the Global Management of Misery: Maria 

Rosa Henson’s Comfort Woman and Charlene Smith’s Proud of Me,” Literature and Medicine 24, no. 2 

(2005): 168.

180. See generally Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, “Political Violence and Gender during Times of Transition,” Columbia 

Journal of Gender and Law 15, no. 3 (2006): 829–50.

181. See Ruth Rubio-Marín, ed., What Happened to the Women?; The Gender of Reparations: Unsettling Sexual 

Hierarchies While Redressing Human Rights Violations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

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PEACEWORKS 76

182. What Happened to the Women? 31.

183. Ibid.

184. For a ground-breaking study on children born of war, see R. Charli Carpenter, Born of War: Protecting 

Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2007). She uses the 

term to refer to persons of any age who were conceived as a result of violent, coercive, or exploitative sexual 

relations in conflict zones (3). As she also notes, to date there has been no systematic fact-finding mission at 

the global level to assess the needs and interests of these children with respect to advocating for them and 

ensuring their human rights (2).

185. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Eilish Rooney, “Underenforcement and Intersectionality: Gendered Aspects of 

Transition for Women,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 1, no. 3 (2007): 338–54.

186. Cheyanne Church, Mind the Gap: Research Impacting Policy (Ulster: INCORE, 2005), www.incore.ulst.

ac.uk/policy/rip.

187. Beatrix Schmelzle, Training for Conflict Transformation—An Overview of Approaches and Resources, www.

berghof-handbook.net/uploads/download/schmelzle_handbook.pdf; Craig Zelizer, Skills, Networks & 

Knowledge: Developing a Career in International Peace and Conflict Resolution (Alexandria, VA: Alliance for 

Conflict Transformation, 2003).

188. The Grant Program is responsible for only one element of USIP’s activities on the theme of gender and 

peacebuilding. Since the Institute was created in 1984, many of its programs have incorporated gender 

considerations into projects to analyze, prevent, and resolve conflict, as well as into educational programming with students and practitioners in the United States and overseas. In 2009, USIP systematized its 

efforts on this theme by creating the Gender and Peacebuilding Program (recognized in 2011 as one of the 

Institute’s Centers of Innovation), which works to convene experts, to promote policy change on gender 

through academic and practitioner work, and to increase the role of women and peacebuilding through 

training directed towards both women and men. Since its inception, the Gender and Peacebuilding Center 

has produced twelve publications and sponsored thirty-six public events featuring 245 panelists, including 

several current and former USIP grantees.

189. The Grant Program currently has two distinct vehicles for grantmaking: the Annual Grant Competition 

that receives unsolicited proposals from academics and practitioners worldwide, and a set of priority grant 

competitions centered on either countries (at present, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Sudan; in the 

past, Colombia and Nigeria) or themes (beginning this year, Communications for Peacebuilding). Of the 

country-focused competitions, the one for Iraq is by far the largest, having awarded seventy-three grants 

totaling more than $7.1 million to date.

190. Tamra Pearson d’Estree and Eileen F. Babbitt, “Women and the Art of Peacemaking: Data from IsraeliPalestinian Interactive Problem-Solving Workshops,” Political Psychology 19, no. 1 (March 1998): 185–209.

191. Lorraine Bayard de Volo, “The Nonmaterial Long-Term Benefits of Collective Action: Empowerment 

and Social Capital in a Nicaraguan Women’s Organization,” Comparative Politics 38, no. 2 (January 

2006): 161–62.

192. Lorraine Bayard de Volo, “Mobilizing Mothers for War: Cross-National Framing Strategies in Nicaragua’s 

Contra War,” Gender & Security 18, no. 6 (December 2004): 715–34.

193. Michael S. Kimmel, “Globalization and its Mal(e)contents: The Gendered Moral and Political Economy of 

Terrorism,” International Sociology 18, no. 3 (September 2003): 603–20.

194. IANSA grant proposal to USIP, 2010.

195. The identifying details of all Iraqi grantees have been intentionally omitted for security reasons.

196. Abderrahim Sabir, “Review of Moroccan Schoolbooks for Gender Equality and Human Rights: Project 

Results,” 2007.

197. Isobel Coleman, “Women and the New Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 1 (January/February 2006): 24–38.

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PW76_interior_3b.indd 52 9/22/11 5:19:3
About the Inst

itute

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan 

institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to 

help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, promote postconflict 

peacebuilding, and increase conflict management tools, capacity, and 

intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering 

others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by its direct 

involvement in conflict zones around the globe. Board of Directors

J. Robinson West (Chair), Chairman, PFC Energy, Washington, DC • 

George E. Moose (Vice Chairman), Adjunct Professor of Practice, The 

George Washington University, Washington, DC • Judy Ansley, Former 

Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor under 

George W. Bush, Washington, DC • Anne H. Cahn, Former Scholar in 

Residence, American University, Washington, DC • Chester A. Crocker, 

James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies, School of Foreign 

Service, Georgetown University, Washington, DC • Kerry Kennedy, 

President, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, 

Washington, DC • Ikram U. Khan, President, Quality Care Consultants, 

LLC., Las Vegas, NV • Stephen D. Krasner, Graham H. Stuart Professor 

of International Relations at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA • 

John A. Lancaster, Former Executive Director, International Council on 

Independent Living, Potsdam, NY • Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor of Law, 

George Mason University, Fairfax, VA • Judy Van Rest, Executive Vice 

President, International Republican Institute, Washington, DC • 

Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice President, Leadership Conference on 

Civil Rights, Washington, DC Members Ex Officio

Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, 

and Labor • James N. Miller, Principle Deputy Under Secretary of 

Defense for Policy • Ann E. Rondeau, Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy; President, 

National Defense University • Richard H. Solomon, President, 

United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting)

PW76_cover3C.indd 3 9/26/11 10:16:4
This report, the result of an initiative to reflect on developments in 

areas where USIP grantmaking has been concentrated, focuses on 

gender, which has been incorporated into more than one hundred 

USIP grant-funded projects to date. The Praxis Institute for Social 

Justice was commissioned to review the state of the field of gender, 

conflict, and peacebuilding, to identify lessons learned, and to 

contemplate future directions of work. The analysis describes how 

this field emerged, became institutionalized in law, policy, and practice, and has been studied in academic research. Both important 

progress and significant gaps are identified in the understanding 

and awareness of the gendered dimensions of conflict and its legacies. A parallel examination of USIP grantmaking highlights notable 

contributions to the field, as well as shortcomings in the extent of 

attention and impact.

Peaceworks • september 2011 • no. 76

Related Links 

■ Women and War: Power and Protection in the 21st Century ed. Kathleen 

Kuehnast, Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, and Helga Hernes (2011)

■ The Other Side of Gender: Including Masculinity Concerns in Conflict and 

Peacebuilding by Kathleen Kuehnast and Nina Sudhakar (Peace Brief, 

January 2011)

■ Security After the Quake? Addressing Violence and Rape in Haiti by Brooke 

Stedman (Peace Brief, January 2011) 

■ The Role of Women in Global Security by Valerie Norville (Special Report, 

December 2010)

■ Real Change for Afghan Women’s Rights: Opportunities and Challenges in the 

Upcoming Parliamentary Elections by Nina Sudhakar and Scott Worden, 

(Peace Brief, August 2010)

■ Rape in War: Motives of Militia in DRC by Jocelyn Kelly (Special Report, 

May 2010)

■ The Afghan Peace Jirga: Ensuring That Women Are at the Peace Table by 

Palwasha Hassan (Peace Brief, May 2010)

■ The Health Sector and Gender-Based Violence in a Time of War by Anjalee 

Kohli, Kathleen Kuehnast, Leonard Rubenstein (Peace Brief, April 2010)

■ Peace Education: State of the Field and Lessons Learned from USIP Grantmaking

by Mari Fitzduff and Isabella Jean (Peaceworks, September 2011)

United States Institute of Peace • 2301 Constitution Ave., NW • Washington, DC 20037 • usip.org 

PW76_cover3C.indd 4 9/26/11 10:16:4