Central America

Untapped Resources for Peace: A Comparative Study of Women’s Organizations of Guerrilla Ex-Combatants in Colombia and El Salvador

Citation:

Dietrich Ortega, Luisa Maria. 2015. “Untapped Resources for Peace: A Comparative Study of Women’s Organizations of Guerrilla Ex-Combatants in Colombia and El Salvador.” In Female Combatants in Conflict and Peace, edited by Seema Shekhawat, 232–49. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Author: Luisa Maria Dietrich Ortega

Abstract:

Over the past decades, the international community has increased efforts to enhance spaces of women’s meaningful participation in all spheres of conflict to post-conflict transition. The acknowledgement of women as essential actors for sustainable peace has prompted advocacy activities to include women in planning, implementing and monitoring of peace-building efforts. Despite significant advances in the field, the challenge remains to overcome stereotypical notions that associate women as passive bystanders or only as bearers of the violent consequences of armed conflicts, while ignoring the role women play as political actors. A step towards a more inclusive and holistic transition consists of exploring contributions the female actors in armed conflict can bring to peace-building. Female ex-combatants have played active political and military roles in insurgent organizations. Besides their first-hand experience in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes, some of them maintain connections with former insurgent groups and may influence processes from within. In that sense, organizations of female ex-combatants constitute an untapped resource for the promotion of gender-responsive transitions. (Abstract from Springer)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, DDR, Gender, Women, Peacebuilding, Political Participation, Post-Conflict Regions: Americas, Central America, South America Countries: Colombia, El Salvador

Year: 2015

Western Hemisphere: A Survey of Gender Budgeting Efforts

Citation:

Perez Fragoso, Lucia, and Corina Rodriguez Enriquez. 2016. “Western Hemisphere: A Survey of Gender Budgeting Efforts.” IMF Working Paper No. 16/153. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund.

Authors: Lucia Perez Fragoso, Corina Rodriguez Enriquez

Abstract:

Gender budgeting is an approach to fiscal policy and administration that integrates considerations of women's equality and advancement into the budget. Latin American countries have undertaken diverse gender budgeting initiatives, most of them addressing public expenditures. This paper surveys and assesses some key initiatives, including those in Mexico, Mexico City, Ecuador, Bolivia, and El Salvador, and briefly summarizes others. The five key initiatives offer different perspectives on how countries approach gender budgeting. We find that these initiatives are contributing to the reduction of gender inequality and the advancement of women in Latin America, though there is scope to strengthen them.

Keywords: gender budgeting, fiscal policy & administration, Latin America, gender inequality

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Budgeting, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality Regions: Americas, Central America, North America, South America Countries: Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico

Year: 2016

Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding: Illuminating the Unseen

Citation:

Marshall, Katherine, and Susan Hayward, eds. 2015. Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding: Illuminating the Unseen. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.

Authors: Katherine Marshall, Susan Hayward

Abstract:

Many women working for peace around the world are motivated by their religious beliefs, whether they work within secular or religious organizations. These women often find themselves sidelined or excluded from mainstream peacebuilding efforts. Secular organizations can be uncomfortable working with religious groups. Meanwhile, religious institutions often dissuade or even disallow women from leadership positions. Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding: Illuminating the Unseen shows how women determined to work for peace have faced these obstacles in ingenious ways—suggesting, by example, ways that religious and secular organizations might better include them in larger peacebuilding campaigns and make those campaigns more effective in ending conflict.
 
The first part of the book examines the particular dynamics of women of faith working toward peace within Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism. The second part contains case studies of women peacebuilders in Africa, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, detailing how their faiths have informed their work, what roles religious institutions have played as they have moved forward, what accomplishments have resulted from their efforts, and what challenges remain. An appendix of interviews offers further perspectives from peacebuilders, both women and men.
 
Ultimately, Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding is a call to change the paradigm of peacebuilding inside and outside of the world’s faiths, to strengthen women’s abilities to work for peace and, in turn, improve the chances that major efforts to end conflicts around the world succeed. (United States Institute of Peace)
 

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

1. Religious Women’s Invisibility: Obstacles and opportunities
Susan Hayward and Katherine Marshall

2. Part I: Women Peacebuilders: Distinctive Approaches of Different Religious Traditions
Susan Hayward and Katherine Marshall

3. Catholic Women Building Peace: Invisibility, Ideas and Institutions Expand Ideas
Maryann Casimano Love

4. Muslim Women’s Peacebuilding Initiatives
S. Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana

5. Creating Peaceful and Sustainable Communities through the Spiritual Empowerment of Buddhism and Hinduism
Dena Merriam

6. Jewish Women in Peacebuilding: Embracing Disagreement in the Pursuit of “Shalom”
Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen

7. Part II Women and Faith in Action: Regional Case Studies
Susan Hayward and Katherine Marshall

8. An All-Women Peacekeeping Group: Lessons From the Mindanao People’s Caucus
Margaret Jenkins

9. Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding in Kaduna State, Nigeria
Bilkisu Yusuf and Sr. Kathleen McGarvey

10. The Politics of Resistance: Muslim Women Negotiating Peace in Aceh, Indonesia
Etin Anwar

11. Women Reborn: A Case Study of the Intersection of Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding in a Palestinian Village in Israel
Andrea K. Blanch, with coauthors Esther Hertzog and Ibtisam Mahameed

12. Women Citizens and Believers as Agents of Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Zilka Spahic Šiljak

13. Women Peacebuilders in Post-Coup Honduras: Their Spiritual Struggle to Transform Multiple Forms of Violence
Mónica A. Maher

14. Women, Religion and Trauma Healing: A Case in India
Anjana Dayal Prewitt

15. Strengthening Religious Women’s Work for Peace
Jacqueline Ogega and Katherine Marshall

16. Conclusion: Seeking Common Ground
Susan Hayward and Katherine Marshall

17. Appendix: Scholars and Practitioners Engaged with Women, Religion, and Peace

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Peace Processes, Religion Regions: Africa, MENA, West Africa, Americas, Central America, Asia, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Israel, Nigeria, Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories, Philippines

Year: 2015

Rebuilding With or Without Women?

Citation:

True, Jacqui. 2012. “Rebuilding With or Without Women?: Gendered Violence in Postconflict Peace and Reconstruction” In The Political Economy of Violence Against Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author: Jacqui True

Abstract:

Chapter 8 examines the spike of sexual and gender-based violence in postconflict and peace-building environments. Despite recent UN Security Council resolutions, the invisibility of this violence against women during and after conflict marginalizes women in postconflict state-building and economic reconstruction processes. This economic and political marginalization of women exacerbates violence after conflict and hinders these peace-building efforts. The first part of the chapter applies the political economy approach of the book to reveal how gendered peacekeeping economies exacerbate violence against women. It critiques the prioritization of law and order over social and economic opportunities. The second part examines the role of women in peace-building decision making and economic reconstruction in places as diverse as East Timor; Aceh, Indonesia; Mindanao province in the Philippines; Iraq; Afghanistan; Colombia; Guatemala; the Congo; and Darfur. The chapter concludes by critically assessing two approaches to postconflict prevention of violence against women: the “good practice” of placing women peacekeepers in postconflict zones and the role of reparations in ensuring women's equal access to postconflict development.

 

Keywords: post conflict, peacekeeping economies, reparations, peacebuilding, economic reconstruction

Topics: Armed Conflict, Development, Economies, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Peace Processes, Political Economies, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, Violence Regions: Africa, MENA, Central Africa, East Africa, Americas, Central America, South America, Asia, Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania Countries: Afghanistan, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iraq, Philippines, Sudan, Timor-Leste

Year: 2012

"Subjects of Change": Feminist Geopolitics and Gendered Truth-Telling in Guatemala

Citation:

Patterson-Markowitz, Rebecca, Elizabeth Oglesby, and Sallie Marston. 2012. “‘ Subjects of Change’: Feminist Geopolitics and Gendered Truth-Telling in Guatemala.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 13 (4): 82.

Authors: Rebecca Patterson-Markowitz, Elizabeth Oglesby, Sallie Marston

Abstract:

This paper explores the often-undervalued role of gender in transitional justice mechanisms and the importance of women's struggles and agency in that regard. We focus on the efforts of the women's movement in Guatemala to address questions of justice and healing for survivors of gendered violence during Guatemala's 36-year internal armed conflict. We discuss how the initial transitional justice measures of documenting gendered war crimes in the context of a genocide were subsequently taken up by the women's movement and how their endeavors to further expose sexual violence have resulted in notable interventions. Interviews with key organizational activists as well as testimonies given by victims of sexual violence during the conflict suggest that transitional justice mechanisms, extended by women's movements' efforts, are creating conditions for the emergence of new practices and spaces that support the fragile cultivation of new subjectivities. Sujetas de cambio (subjects of change) are premised not on victimhood but survivorhood. The emergence of these new subjectivities and new claims, including greater personal security and freedom from everyday violence, must be approached with caution, however, as they are not born automatically out of the deeply emotional struggles that play out around historical memory. Still, their emergence suggests new ways for women to cope not only with the sexual violence of the past but also to work against the normative violence that is part of their present.

Keywords: gendered violence, historical memory, transitional justice

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Genocide, Justice, Transitional Justice, Rights, Human Rights, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women, Violence Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Guatemala

Year: 2012

Gender, Health, and Fairtrade: Insights From a Research-Action Programme in Nicaragua

Citation:

Hanson, Lori, Vincent Terstappen, Christopher M. Bacon, Jannie Leung, Alejandra Ganem-Cuenca, Sandro Raúl Díaz Flores, and María Asunción Meza Rojas. 2012. “Gender, Health, and Fairtrade: Insights From a Research-Action Programme in Nicaragua.” Development in Practice 22 (2): 164–79. doi:10.1080/09614524.2012.640981.

Authors: Lori Hanson, Vincent Terstappen, Christopher M. Bacon, Jannie Leung, Alejandra Ganem-Cuenca, Sandro Raúl Díaz Flores, María Asunción Meza Rojas

Abstract:

The present article provides evidence from a collaborative research programme in Nicaragua that suggests that Fairtrade is falling short of its equity-promoting potential. Providing an alternative framing of Fairtrade based on the gendered social determinants of health, it suggests how Fairtrade can be optimised towards equity. The programme is based on experiences of community-based organisations and women coffee producers who perceive contradictions in the rhetoric of gender equity in Fairtrade. To orient future action and research towards more equitable and empowering possibilities for Fairtrade coffee producers, the framework illuminates the gendered nature of the contexts, activities, and impacts of Fairtrade.

Keywords: civil society, gender and diversity, Globalisation, Labour and livelihoods

Topics: Economies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Equity, Health Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Nicaragua

Year: 2012

Telling Stories—Rethreading Lives: Community Education, Women’s Development and Social Change Among the Maya Ixil

Citation:

Lykes, M. Brinton, Ana Caba Mateo, Jacinta Chávez Anay, Ana Laynez Caba, Ubaldo Ruiz, and Joan W. Williams. 1999. “Telling Stories—Rethreading Lives:Community Education, Women’s Development and Social Change Among the Maya Ixil.” International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice 2 (3): 207–27.

Authors: M. Brinton Lykes, Ana Caba Mateo, Jacinta Chávez Anay, Ana Laynez Caba, Ubaldo Ruiz, Joan W. Williams

Abstract:

Peace negotiations culminating in accords signed between the Guatemalan government and guerrilla forces (URNG) on 29 December 1996 have ‘ended’ nearly 36 years of war in Guatemala and afforded new spaces in which survivors testify to horrific violence including massacres, military occupation, internal displacement, extreme poverty and exile. In this paper we describe the development of a women's organization in rural Guatemala that was created to respond to some of the psychological, economic and educational consequences of this war. The Association's genesis and current work reflect collaborative processes of interethnic and transnational non-formal education, community organizing and leadership development. While responding directly to social injustices—including centuries of discrimination and marginalization of indigenous peoples—and the multiple effects of war, the Association provides a context wherein rural Maya women are enhancing self- and community-confidence to act on their own behalf in the development of action plans for change within their local community. In this paper we discuss some of our experiences as insiders in a rural area deeply impacted by war, state violence and poverty, and as outsiders who seek to accompany them in constructing peace with justice at a local level. We document some of the challenges experienced in collaborations across multiple differences as well as their contributions to women's development and to their creation of more just and equitable educational programmes for themselves and children in their communities.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Occupation, Development, Economies, Poverty, Education, Gender, Women, Indigenous, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Violence Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Guatemala

Year: 1999

Possible Contributions of a Psychology of Liberation: Whither Health and Human Rights?

Citation:

Lykes, M. Brinton. 2000. “Possible Contributions of a Psychology of Liberation: Whither Health and Human Rights?” Journal of Health Psychology 5 (3): 383–97.

Author: M. Brinton Lykes

Abstract:

This article explores the possible contributions of a psychology of liberation for the practice of health psychology. It explores alternative psychological 'practices', for example participatory action research, with groups historically marginalized from access to power and resources. Selected lenses for crafting a liberatory psychology include: discourse of human rights and mental health; cultural and constructivist psychological theory; and reflexivity. Specific examples from the author's work with Mayan women in rural Guatemala in the context of ongoing war and subsequent efforts at peace building are discussed to clarify possible contributions of psychologists committed to accompanying local communities in creating more just futures. Selected challenges and contradictions encountered in this work are discussed.

Keywords: health, human rights, liberatory psychology

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Health, Mental Health, Peacebuilding, Rights, Human Rights Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Guatemala

Year: 2000

Gender and Agrarian Reforms

Citation:

Jacobs, Susie. 2013. Gender and Agrarian Reforms. New York: Routledge International Studies of Women and Place.

Author: Susie Jacobs

Abstract:

The redistribution of land has profound implications for women and for gender relations; however, gender issues have been marginalised from theoretical and policy discussions of agrarian reform. This book presents an overview of gender and agrarian reform experiences globally. It also includes case studies from Latin America, Asia, and Africa (WorldCat).

Annotation:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Theoretical perspectives

Chapter 2: Debates over agrarian reform

Chapter 3: Concepts for a gendered analysis of agrarian reform

Chapter 4: The gendered effects of household models of land reform

Chapter 5: Collectives and decollectivisations

Chapter 6: Gender and agricultural collectives : Soviet-type economies

Chapter 7: China : from collectivisation to the household responsibility system

Chapter 8: Viet Nam : egalitarian land reform

Chapter 9: Household models of reform and alternatives

Chapter 10: Mobilisation and marginalisation : Latin American examples

Chapter 11: Land reforms, customary law, and land titling in sub-Saharan Africa.

Topics: Agriculture, Gender, Women, Men, Gender Roles, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Americas, Central America, South America, Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe Countries: China, Vietnam

Year: 2013

Labour Migration and Gendered Agricultural Relations: The Feminization of Agriculture in the Ejidal Sector of Calakmul, Mexico

Citation:

Radel, Claudia, Birgit Schmook, Jamie Mcevoy, Crisol Mendez, and Peggy Petrezelka. 2012. “Labour Migration and Gendered Agricultural Relations: The Feminization of Agriculture in the Ejidal Sector of Calakmul, Mexico.” Journal of Agrarian Change 12 (1): 98–119. 

Authors: Claudia Radel, Birgit Schmook, Jamie Mcevoy, Crisol Mendez, Peggy Petrezelka

Abstract:

We examine the nature of the ‘feminization of agriculture’ in the semi-subsistence, peasant production sector of southeastern Mexico, as associated with male labour out-migration. Presenting findings from empirical work with smallholder producers, we discuss the impact of men's migration to the United States on women's participation in agriculture and gendered relations of agricultural production. In 2007, we conducted a survey of 155 semi-subsistence, smallholder households in six ejidos. This survey was supplemented by ethnographic research in a single ejido. Our findings demonstrate the need to distinguish between farm labour and management in this sector, and the potentially significant (but focused) changes in the local relations of agricultural production wrought by gendered patterns of labour migration – specifically in tenure, land-use decision-making and the management of hired labour.

Topics: Agriculture, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Gender, Gender Roles, Women, Land Tenure Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2012

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