Conflict

Gendered Preferences: How Women’s Inclusion in Society Shapes Negotiation Occurrence in Intrastate Conflicts

Citation:

Nagel, Robert Ulrich. 2020. “Gendered Preferences: How Women’s Inclusion in Society Shapes Negotiation Occurrence in Intrastate Conflicts.” Journal of Peace Research (April): 1-16.

Author: Robert Ulrich Nagel

Abstract:

To what extent do gender relations in society influence the likelihood of negotiations during intrastate disputes? A substantial body of literature recognizes gendered inequalities as integral to understanding conflict, yet they have received little attention in systematic studies of conflict management. I argue that patriarchal gender relations that reflect a preference for masculinity over femininity influence states’ propensity to negotiate with rebels. I draw on the concept of practices to explain how gender relations shape government preferences for negotiations. Specifically, I contend that practices of excluding women from fully participating in public life institutionalize violence as the preferred way of managing conflict. The implication is that countries with more patriarchal gender relations are less likely to engage in negotiations during intrastate conflicts. I test this argument on all civil conflict dyads between 1975 and 2014. The analyses show that countries that marginalize women’s participation in public life are significantly less likely to engage in negotiations. The results provide strong support for my theoretical argument and offer systematic evidence in support of core claims of the feminist peace theory.

Keywords: conflict, negotiation, gender inequality

Topics: Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Femininity/ies, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Patriarchy, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Peace Processes

Year: 2020

Feminism in Cyprus: Women’s Agency, Gender, and Peace in the Shadow of Nationalism

Citation:

Kamenou, Nayia. 2020. “Feminism in Cyprus: Women’s Agency, Gender, and Peace in the Shadow of Nationalism.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 22 (3): 359–81.

Author: Nayia Kamenou

Abstract:

This article explores the ways in which feminist and women’s agency is articulated in the Cypriot context through the paradigms of nationalism, peace, and conflict. It does so to broaden our understanding of gendered and peace agency in troubled and divided societies, in which complex and conflicting discourses meet. Analyzing data from interviews with feminist and women’s groups’ representatives, it examines how nationalism and women’s approaches to gender, politics, peace, and conflict enable or restrict feminist and women’s agency. It finds that a strategic essentialist approach has initiated a reconfiguration of gender(ed) power relations, women’s agency, and peacebuilding processes. It argues that when this approach is combined with feminist theory and praxis and the employment of transnational peace paradigms, the possibilities for feminist and women’s agency increase, as long as feminist scholarship and grassroots activism inform each other through dialogue. Therefore, it highlights the nuanced and complex dialectic between essentialist and anti-essentialist feminist gender discourses. Moreover, it challenges theories that posit a rigidly hierarchical relation between local and transnational gendered and peace agency paradigms, by demonstrating their malleability and reciprocity. Thus, it contributes to the debate about the modalities and possibilities of feminist sociopolitical intervention in nationalism- and conflict-ridden contexts.
 

Keywords: Cyprus, feminism, gender, nationalism and peace, women's agency

Topics: Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Nationalism, Peace Processes, Peacebuilding Regions: Europe, Southern Europe Countries: Cyprus

Year: 2020

Power and Rights in the Community: Paralegals as Leaders in Women’s Legal Empowerment in Tanzania

Citation:

Dancer, Helen. 2018. “Power and Rights in the Community: Paralegals as Leaders in Women’s Legal Empowerment in Tanzania.” Feminist Legal Studies 26 (1): 47–64.

Author: Helen Dancer

Abstract:

What can an analysis of power in local communities contribute to debates on women’s legal empowerment and the role of paralegals in Africa? Drawing upon theories of power and rights, and research on legal empowerment in African plural legal systems, this article explores the challenges for paralegals in facilitating women’s access to justice in Tanzania, which gave statutory recognition to paralegals in the Legal Aid Act 2017. Land conflicts represent the single-biggest source of local legal disputes in Tanzania and are often embedded in gendered land tenure relations. This article argues that paralegals can be effective actors in women’s legal empowerment where they are able to work as leaders, negotiating power relations and resisting the forms of violence that women encounter as obstacles to justice. Paralegals’ authority will be realised when their role is situated within community leadership structures, confirming their authority while preserving their independence.

Keywords: access to justice, legal pluralism, paralegals, Tanzania, women's land rights, legal empowerment

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Justice, Land Tenure, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Tanzania

Year: 2018

Displacement, Memory and Home(Less) Identities: Turkish Cypriot Women’s Narratives

Citation:

Aliefendioğlu, Hanife, and Pembe Behçetoğulları. 2019. “Displacement, Memory and Home(Less) Identities: Turkish Cypriot Women’s Narratives.” Gender, Place & Culture 26 (10): 1472–92.

Authors: Hanife Aliefendioğlu, Pembe Behçetoğulları

Abstract:

This study is an analysis of the narratives of Turkish Cypriot women in the north of Cyprus who were displaced during the ethnic conflict between the 1950s and 1974. We have conducted 21 interviews with Turkish Cypriot women who were living in different parts of Northern Cyprus. We used oral history, both as a method and as an epistemological stance to re-phrase the near past of Cyprus and the Cyprus issue from the perspective of gender/women’s studies. The study follows the traces of modernity, patriarchy, and nationalism in women’s narratives, about the place, home, belonging and homelessness. The narratives describe Turkish Cypriot women’s experiences of being a woman in conflict and displacement (‘göçmen olmak’ in daily talk in Turkish) making a home out of a house and undertaking daily routines for their families. The study also reveals that ethnic conflict and displacement have empowered women to a certain degree.

Keywords: Cyprus conflict, displacement, home, Turkish Cypriot women, women's narratives

Topics: Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Nationalism Regions: Europe, Southern Europe Countries: Cyprus

Year: 2019

From Homoerotics of Exile to Homopolitics of Diaspora: Cyberspace, the War on Terror, and the Hypervisible Iranian Queer

Citation:

Shakhsari, Sima. 2012. “From Homoerotics of Exile to Homopolitics of Diaspora: Cyberspace, the War on Terror, and the Hypervisible Iranian Queer.” Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 8 (3): 14-40.

Author: Sima Shakhsari

Abstract:

In this essay, I argue that during the post-September 11th “war on terror,” the Iranian homosexual became transferred from the position of the abject to the representable subject in transnational political realms. This shift involves Iranian opposition groups, transnational media, the “gay international” (in the words of Joseph A. Massad), and some Iranian diasporic queers who willingly insert themselves into national imaginations of the opposition in diasporic reterritorializations. This hypervisibility is enabled by massive mobilizations of universalized sexual identities on the Internet, discourses of protectorship, valorizations of mobility in cyberspace and diasporic imaginations, and the political and economic opportunities for neoliberal entrepreneurship and expertise during the war on terror. In this process, the normative Iranian homosexual is produced as a victim of backward homophobic Iranian-ness, awaiting representation and liberation by new media technologies, while the Iranian citizen is disciplined through cybergovernmentality as a heterosexual subject who is expected to reject tradition, tolerate or defend homosexuals, and avoid perversion.

Topics: Conflict, Ethnicity, Media, LGBTQ, Sexuality Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq

Year: 2012

Restrained or Constrained? Elections, Communal Conflicts, and Variation in Sexual Violence

Citation:

Krause, Jana. 2020. “Restrained or Constrained? Elections, Communal Conflicts, and Variation in Sexual Violence.” Journal of Peace Research 57 (1): 185–98.

Author: Jana Krause

Abstract:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that sexual violence varies significantly across cases of election violence and communal conflicts but systematic research is scarce. Post-election violence is particularly likely if electoral mobilization further polarizes longstanding communal conflicts and political elites do not instruct security forces to intervene decisively. I comparatively analyse two prominent cases of post-election violence in Kenya (2007/8) and Nigeria (2008) that exhibit stark variation in sexual violence. Patrimonial networks and norms of violent masculinity that increase the probability of (gang) rape were present in both cases and do not explain variation. Civil war research has identified three explanations for the variation in sexual violence: situational constraints; ordered sexual violence or restraint; and bottom-up dynamics of sexual violence or restraint. I examine these for the context of post-election violence. I argue that the type of communal conflict triggered by electoral mobilization explains variation in sexual violence. In Kenya, pogroms of a majority group against a minority allowed for the time and space to perpetrate widespread sexual violence while in Nigeria, dyadic clashes between similarly strong groups offered less opportunity but produced a significantly higher death toll. These findings have important implications for preventing election violence. They demonstrate that civilian vulnerability is gendered and that high levels of sexual violence do not necessarily correspond to high levels of lethal violence. Ignoring sexual violence means underestimating the real intensity of conflict and its impact on the political process.

Keywords: communal conflict, election violence, Kenya, Nigeria, rape, sexual violence

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Conflict, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Governance, Elections, Sexual Violence, Rape, Violence Regions: Africa, East Africa, West Africa Countries: Kenya, Nigeria

Year: 2020

Sister Citizens: Women in Syrian Rebel Governance

Citation:

Gilbert, Victoria. 2020. “Sister Citizens: Women in Syrian Rebel Governance.” Politics & Gender, 1–28. doi:10.1017/S1743923X20000136.

Author: Victoria Gilbert

Abstract:

In the rich literature on women and conflict, many scholars have assumed that the outbreak of civil war suppresses women’s political involvement. However, during Syria’s civil war, there was significant subnational and temporal variation in the involvement of women in the institutions established by armed groups and civilians in rebel-held areas. Why were some Syrian women able to secure a place for themselves in insurgent governance? How were they able to influence the form of local institutions to secure a role for women? Bringing together the scholarship on social movements and rebel governance, this article argues that two factors determine whether women were able to mobilize politically during conflict: the organizational capacity of women and the strength and ideology of locally active armed groups. The article leverages data on local organizations and institutions in Syria, Syrian news sources, and correspondence with several women’s organizations operating in Syria in 2017. By doing so, this article strives to bring attention to the role of gender in the expanding literature on rebel governance. It also highlights the significance of armed groups’ ideologies, an aspect often dismissed in the literature in favor of a focus on material factors.

Keywords: gender, rebel, rebel governance, insurgent governance, civil war, conflict, institutions, Syria, conflict processes, comparative politics, women, middle east, institutional design

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Conflict, Gender, Women, Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Political Participation Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Syria

Year: 2020

Lebanon, UNSCR 1325, and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda

Citation:

Zaiter, Manar. 2018. "Lebanon, UNSCR 1325, and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda." Al-Raida Journal 42 (1): 39-50.

Author: Manar Zaiter

Abstract:

The Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 1325 (31 October 2000) constitutes an advancement in the international protection of women and girls in times of conflict. It is the first public, legal instrument issued by the Security Council, calling warring parties to respect women’s rights and support their participation in all stages and contexts of conflict prevention, conflict resolution, peace talks, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, humanitarian response, and post-conflict reconstruction. In view of the situation in the Arab region and of the political, security, economic, cultural, and social context that affects women, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda is of great importance to the entire Arab region.

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Girls, Humanitarian Assistance, Peace and Security, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Peace Processes, Rights, Women's Rights, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325 Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Lebanon

Year: 2018

Of Vulnerability and Coercion: A Study of Sex Trafficking in Assam

Citation:

Ray, Sawmya. 2015. "Of Vulnerability and Coercion: A Study of Sex Trafficking in Assam." Sociological Bulletin 64 (3): 305-24.

Author: Sawmya Ray

Abstract:

This paper discusses the political, economic, and socio-cultural context within which trafficking of women and girls take place for commercial sexual exploitation in Assam. Specifically, it examines the relation between existing gender norms, prevailing conflict, and sex trafficking. It is based on data collected from rescued trafficked women, state and non-state anti-trafficking personnel, and case studies collected from NGOs. It argues that gendered norms intersect with existing political economy factors to doubly disadvantage women vis-à-vis trafficking, both during times of normalcy and conflict.

Keywords: Assam, gender norms, sex trafficking, sex work, violence

Topics: Economies, Conflict, Gender, Women, Girls, NGOs, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Trafficking, Sex Trafficking Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2015

(Re)Productive Discourses: Media Coverage of Children Born of War in Colombia

Citation:

Parra, Tatiana Sanchez, and Sergio Lo Iacono. 2019. "(Re)Productive Discourses: Media Coverage of Children Born of War in Colombia." Bulletin of Latin American Research 39 (1): 22–36.

Authors: Tatiana Sanchez Parra, Sergio Lo Iacono

Abstract:

Children born as a result of wartime sexual violence have not gained a place in the stories covered by the Colombian media. Based on an extensive content analysis (using the software MAXQDA 12) of newspaper articles published between 1990 and 2015, ethnographic content analysis, and drawing upon feminist critical discourse analysis, this paper explores how information about these children is presented as part of storylines that use the explanatory framework of sexual violence as a weapon of war. In those storylines, children emerge not as independent subjects but as part of social representations of female victims of wartime sexual violence and male perpetrators.

Keywords: children born of war, content analysis, Colombia

Topics: Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2019

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