Gender Analysis

De la Guerra a la Esperanza: Las Estrategias de Afrontamiento de Reintegrados de las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia

Citation:

Echeverry, Paula Andrea Cárdenas, Ana Milena Montoya Ruiz, y Olga Cristina Gutiérrez. 2018. "De la Guerra a la Esperanza: Las Estrategias de Afrontamiento de Reintegrados de las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia." Opinión Jurídica 17 (35): 93-116.

Authors: Paula Andrea Cárdenas Echeverry, Ana Milena Montoya Ruiz, Olga Cristina Gutiérrez

Abstract:

SPANISH ABSTRACT:
El presente artículo es producto del estudio exploratorio “Estrategias personales en hombres y mujeres excombatientes de las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia y resignificación de su proyecto de vida” realizado en la ciudad de Medellín, Colombia, el cual a partir de los testimonios de dos excombatientes, identificó y analizó las estrategias de afrontamiento incorporadas en su proceso y que han incidido en la resignificación de sus experiencias de vida en la guerra. La investigación usó la metodología del estudio de caso, aplicada en un hombre y una mujer excombatientes de las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) que culminaron su proceso de reintegración −promovido por la Agencia Colombiana para la Reintegración− y que decidieron participar de la investigación voluntariamente. A partir de sus testimonios se realizó un acercamiento a algunas experiencias compartidas por hombres y mujeres en la guerra y se dio cuenta de la influencia que tienen las condiciones socio-históricas y de género para reconstruir un proyecto de vida en la legalidad. Finalmente, como producto de este diálogo se formulan algunas propuestas para las intervenciones de excombatientes del conflicto armado en Colombia como aportes al proceso de reincorporación actual.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT:
This paper is a product of the exploratory study “Personal strategies in men and women, ex-combatants of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia and the resignification of their life project”, carried out in the city of Medellín, Colombia, based on the testimonies of two ex-combatants. It identifies and analyses the coping strategies incorporated in the process that have influen-ced the resignification of their life experiences in the war. The methodology applied was case studies with ex-combatants, a man and a woman, of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) who completed their reintegration process, promoted by the Colombian Agency for Re-integration and who voluntarily participated in the investigation. With their testimonies, an ap-proach to some of the experiences shared by men and women in the war was possible, and the influence of socio-historical and gender conditions to reconstruct a life project in legality was made evident. Finally, some proposals are formulated for the interventions of ex-combatants of the armed conflict in Colombia as contributions to the current reincorporation process.
of the armed conflict in Colombia as contributions to the current reincorporation

Keywords: conflicto armado en Colombia, Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, reintegración y reincorporación de excombatientes, estrategias personales de afrontamiento, enfoque de género, armed conflict in Colombia, reintegration and reincorporation of excombatants, personal coping strategies, gender approach

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, DDR, Gender, Gender Analysis, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Paramilitaries Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2018

Past Wrongs and Gender Rights: Issues and Conflicts in South Africa's Land Reform

Citation:

Jacobs, Susie. 1998. "Past Wrongs and Gender Rights: Issues and Conflicts in South Africa's Land Reform." European Journal of Development Research 10 (2): 70-87.

Author: Susie Jacobs

Abstract:

South Africa's agrarian situation presents a range of daunting issues, including extreme rural poverty & a government hindered by severe financial constraints. At the same time, the country's attempts to incorporate gender issues into land reform are virtually unique. Discussed here are several major issues confronting the present pilot programs operating in 9 provinces & any future reform: demand for land; demand for services; the issue of "the household"; traditional authorities; forms of land tenure; & the nature of public participation. It is stressed that all of these are gender issues, as is the extent of conflict raised through overt discussion of gender processes. None of these questions has a straightforward answer, but their consideration is likely to raise additional questions.

Topics: Agriculture, Economies, Poverty, Gender, Gender Analysis, Land Tenure, Households, Political Participation, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 1998

African Democracy and Development: Challenges for Post-Conflict African Nations

Citation:

Veney, Cassandra Rachel, and Dick W. Simpson, ed. 2013. African Democracy and Development: Challenges for Post-Conflict African Nations. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Authors: Cassandra Veney, Dick Simpson

Annotation:

Summary:
Various African nations have undergone conflict situations since they gained their independence. This book focuses on particular countries that have faced conflict (civil wars and genocide) and are now in the process of rebuilding their political, economic, social, and educational institutions. The countries that are addressed in the book include: Rwanda, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In addition, there is a chapter that addresses the role of the African Diaspora in conflict and post-conflict countries that include Eritrea, Liberia, and Somalia. The book includes an examination of the various actors who are involved in post-conflict rebuilding and reconstruction that involves internal and external participants. For example, it is clear that the internal actors involve Africans themselves as ordinary citizens, members of local and national governments, and members of non-governmental organizations. This allows the reader to understand the agency and empowerment of Africans in post-conflict reconstruction. Various institutions are addressed within the context of the roles they play in establishing governance organizations such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone, the African Union, chiefs in Liberia, and non-governmental organizations. Furthermore, the external actors who are involved in post-conflict reconstruction are examined such as international non-governmental organizations and the African Diaspora. They both have their own constituents and agendas and can and do play a positive and negative role in post-conflict reconstruction. It is obvious that countries that are addressed in the book are in dire need of financial assistant to rebuild much needed infrastructure that was destroyed during the conflict. All of the countries covered in the book need schools, medical facilities, roads, bridges, airports, ports, and the government does not have the money to provide these. This is where the international non-governmental organizations and the African Diaspora play an important role. The chapters that address these issues are cognizant of their importance and at the same time, the authors realize that sovereignty can be undermined if Africans are not in the forefront of policy and decision making that will determine their future. There are chapters that provide a gendered analysis of post-conflict when it is appropriate. For example, it is clear that women, men, boys, and girls experienced conflict in different ways because of their gender. They all participated in the conflict in various ways. Consequently, the efforts at peace building are given a gendered analysis in terms of what has happened to women and girls in the demobilization and rehabilitation period including an excellent analysis of land reform in Rwanda and how that affects women and members of a certain ethnic group that are often overlooked in the examination of the 1994 genocide. In sum, this book provides a very good contribution to the literature on conflict and post-conflict African countries because of its depth and the vast topics it embraces. It provides an analysis of the internal and external actors, the role of gender in post-conflict decision making, and it provides the voices of ordinary Africans who were affected by the conflict, and who are determined to live productive lives. (Summary from Google Books)
 
Table of Contents:
1. No Justice, No Peace: The Elusive Search for Justice and Reconciliation in Sierra Leone
Sylvia Macauley
 
2. The Role of Ex-Combatants in Mozambique
Jessica Schafer
 
3. Memory Controversies in Post-genocide Rwanda: Implications for Peacebuilding
Elisabeth King
 
4. Land Reform, Social Justice, and Reconstruction: Challenges for Post-genocide Rwanda
Helen Hintjens
 
5. Elections as a Stress Test of Democratization in Societies: A Comparison of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
John Yoder
 
6. Partners or Adversaries?: NGOs and the State in Postwar Sierra Leone
Fredline A.O. M'Cormack-Hale
 
7. Chieftancy and Reconstruction in Sierra Leone
Arthur Abraham
 
8. The Role of African Diasporas in Reconstruction
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
 
9. The Role of the African Union in Reconstruction in Africa
Thomas Kwasi Tieku
 
10. Governance Challenges in Sierra Leone
Osman Gbla
 
11. Challenges of Governance Reform in Liberia
Amos Sawyer
 
12. Achieving Development and Democracy
Dick Simpson

 

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Combatants, DDR, Gender, Gender Analysis, Girls, Women, Genocide, Governance, Infrastructure, International Organizations, Justice, NGOs, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa Countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia

Year: 2013

Partners in Conflict: the Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1973

Citation:

Tinsman, Heidi. 2002. Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1973. Durham: Duke University Press.

Author: Heidi Tinsman

Annotation:

Summary:
Partners in Conflict examines the importance of sexuality and gender to rural labor and agrarian politics during the last days of Chile’s latifundia system of traditional landed estates and throughout the governments of Eduardo Frei and Salvador Allende. Heidi Tinsman analyzes differences between men’s and women’s participation in Chile’s Agrarian Reform movement and considers how conflicts over gender and sexuality shape the contours of working-class struggles and national politics.
Tinsman restores women to a scholarly narrative that has been almost exclusively about men, recounting the centrality of women’s labor to the pre-Agrarian Reform world of the hacienda  during the 1950s and recovering women’s critical roles in union struggles and land occupations during the Agrarian Reform itself. Providing a theoretical framework for understanding why the Agrarian Reform ultimately empowered men more than women, Tinsman argues that women were marginalized not because the Agrarian Reform ignored women but because, under both the Frei and Allende governments, it promoted the male-headed household as the cornerstone of a new society. Although this emphasis on gender cooperation stressed that men should have more respect for their wives and funneled unprecedented amounts of resources into women’s hands, the reform defined men as its protagonists and affirmed their authority over women.
This is the first monographic social history of Chile’s Agrarian Reform in either English or Spanish, and the first historical work to make sexuality and gender central to the analysis of the reforms. (Summary from Duke University Press)
 
Table of Contents
1. Patrón and Peón: Labor and Authority on the Great Estates 
 
2. Binding Ties: Campesino Sexuality and Family Negotiations
 
3. Making Men: Labor Mobilization and Agrarian Reform
 
4. Promoting Gender Mutualism: Rural Education, Mothers Centers, and Family Planning
 
5. Struggling for Land: Worker Bosses and Campesina Militants
 
6. Revolutionizing Women: Popular Unity and Female Mobilization
 
7. Coming Apart: Struggle, Sex, and Social Crisis
 

 

Topics: Agriculture, Conflict, Resource Conflict, Education, Gender, Women, Men, Gender Analysis, Households, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights, Sexuality Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Chile

Year: 2002

Syrian Refugees: Thinking Beyond Gender Stereotypes

Citation:

Lokot, Michelle. 2018. "Syrian Refugees: Thinking beyond Gender Stereotypes." Forced Migration Review 57: 33-35.

Author: Michelle Lokot

Annotation:

"The dominant gender narratives among NGOs responding to Syrian refugees, and their subsequent interventions, are based on sometimes simplistic understandings of the 'traditional' Syrian household and power dynamics" (Lokot 2018, 33). 

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Households, NGOs Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Syria

Year: 2018

Renegotiating Gender and the State in Tunisia between 2011 and 2014: Power, Positionality, and the Public Sphere

Citation:

Antonakis, Anna. 2019. Renegotiating Gender and the State in Tunisia between 2011 and 2014: Power, Positionality, and the Public Sphere. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.

Author: Anna Antonakis

Annotation:

Summary:
Anna Antonakis’ analysis of the Tunisian transformation process (2011-2014) displays how negotiations of gender initiating new political orders do not only happen in legal and political institutions but also in media representations and on a daily basis in the family and public space. While conventionalized as a “model for the region”, this book outlines how the Tunisian transformation missed to address social inequalities and local marginalization as much as substantial challenges of a secular but conservative gender order inscribed in a Western hegemonic concept of modernity. She introduces the concept of “dissembled secularism” to explain major conflict lines in the public sphere and the exploitation of gender politics in a context of post-colonial dependencies. 
 
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
 
2. Positionalities, Modernity, and the Public Sphere
 
3. Constructing an Empirically Grounded Framework
 
4. The Nation State within the Matrix of Domination
 
5. Detecting the Matrix of Domination: a Historical Perspective
 
6. Counterpublic Resistance under Ben Ali's Rule
 
7. Challenging the Matrix of Domination
 
8. The Structural Dimension of the Public Sphere
 
9. The Representational Dimension of the Public Sphere
 
10. The Interactional Dimension of the Public Sphere
 
11. Conclusion
 
12. Outlook: Negotiating Homosexualities in Tunisia: Inclusions and Exploitations in the Hegemonic Public Sphere after 2014

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Media, Post-Conflict, Sexuality Regions: Africa, MENA, North Africa Countries: Tunisia

Year: 2019

Gender, Development and Security in Yemen's Transition Process

Citation:

Christiansen, Connie Carøe. 2019. "Gender, Development and Security in Yemen's Transition Process." Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 13 (2): 197-215.

Author: Connie Carøe Christiansen

Abstract:

How policies at international level approach the gender dimension becomes salient, even urgent, for women whose countries are immersed in war and conflict, and who without effective governance at more local levels, rely entirely on these policies. The way Yemen is presented in the documents and media reports from selected members of the 'Friends of Yemen' donor group is in this study discussed in light of a range of narratives identified by Stern and Öjendal (2010) 2005; Cockburn 2007; Henry 2007; Shepherd 2008), 'gender' seems to be relevant to international and put into a feminist security perspective. The further aim is to reflect on the inter-linkages of gender, security and development at the level of donor motivations for aid, given on the one hand the recent prominence of the security agenda in the policy discourses of international interventions, and on the other the international attention to women's contribution to development in Yemen. I ask if a gender dimension is highlighted, subsumed, or absent. Despite feminist analyses of security as deeply gendered (e.g. Tickner 1992) 'gender' seems to be relevant in international security policies by implication only: Since it is necessary to include and consider gender in development processes, gender is relevant for the security-development nexus. This is how 'gender' feeds smoothly into existing policy discourses which claim that development is dependent on security in the country that needs to develop and vice versa; its security is dependent on development.

Keywords: conflict, feminist scholarship, Gender, security policies, narrative frameworks, donor motivations

Topics: Armed Conflict, Development, Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Peace and Security, Security Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Yemen

Year: 2019

Crossing the Gender Boundaries or Challenging Masculinities? Female Combatants in the Kenya Defense Forces' (KDF) War Against Al-Shabaab Militants

Citation:

Ombati, Mokua. 2015. "Crossing Gender Boundaries or Challenging Masculinities? Female Combatants in the Kenya Defence Forces’ (KDF) War against Al-Shabaab Militants." Masculinities and Social Change 4 (2): 163-85.

Author: Mokua Ombati

Abstract:

Few institutions have historically presented more defined gender boundaries than the military. This study examines gender and war through the lens of military combat roles. Military combat roles have traditionally relied on and manipulated ideas about masculinity and femininity. Women arrive in the army with different types of capital and bring with them a shared cultural ‘tool kit’ (womanhood). Following the military’s labour allocation process, they are assigned combat roles, which is at variance to their gendered character. Assignment in non-traditional feminine roles means crossing gender boundaries. Ethnographic studies of the Kenya Defence Forces operations in Somalia reveal the different gendered characteristics of the military roles as reflected in the women’s soldiery experiences. The encounter with military power and authority challenges the women soldiers to redefine their feminine capital, to interpret the military reality via a gendered lens and, therefore, to critically (re)examine the patriarchal order. Grounded on the twin theoretical frameworks of socio-cultural capitals and cultural scripts, and structured on a gender framing of women’s military roles, the study illustrates the complex and contradictory realities of women in the army. The study unpacks the relationship between masculinity and femininity, and, war and the military. It underpins the value of the female soldier as a figurative illustration of the complex interrelations between the gendered politics of masculinity and femininity. It considers what the acts, practices and performances constitutive of female soldiering reveal about particular modes of governance, regulation and politics that arise from the sacrifices of soldiers in combatant.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya, Somalia

Year: 2015

Gender-Sensitive Conflict Analysis: A New Training Method for Practitioners

Citation:

Close, Sophia, and Hesta Groenewald. 2019. "Gender-Sensitive Conflict Analysis: A New Training Method for Practitioners." Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 14 (3): 304-17.

Authors: Sophia Close, Hesta Groenewald

Abstract:

The authors have co-designed and co-facilitated an innovative training method and approach to gender-sensitive conflict analysis. International organisations rarely undertake gendered conflict analysis as it is perceived to be difficult, with unclear or inconvenient actions identified. Yet the authors’ practice-based research shows it is essential to understanding and transforming the gendered root causes, discriminatory gender norms, and differentiated effects of violence and conflict. In this article, the authors share the lessons from workshops they conducted across multiple conflict-affected contexts. They detail the participatory process undertaken involving diverse gender groups from civil society and policymakers working in conflict-affected contexts and provide data on the effectiveness and sustainability of this innovative training approach.

Keywords: gender sensitive, Gender, peace, peacebuilding, participatory, systems, conflict, analysis

Topics: Civil Society, Conflict, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, International Organizations, Peacebuilding, Political Participation, Peace Processes

Year: 2019

Women, Gender and Peacebuilding

Citation:

Pankhurst, Donna T. 2000. "Women, Gender and Peacebuilding." Centre for Conflict Resolution Department of Peace Studies Working Paper 5, University of Bradford, Bradford. 

Author: Donna T. Pankhurst

Annotation:

Summary:
"Any policy paper on peacebuilding comes up against the problem that we understand far more about how to promote conflict than even how to conceive of peace, let alone build it. To many people, peace is an inverse, or even a mere corollary, of conflict, but such a vague notion does not lead to clear understandings or definitions of what it is that people are trying to promote or achieve in peace building. This paper therefore begins by setting out a framework for concepts and understandings of conflict and peace, which can assist in formulating peacebuilding policies.

Most approaches to peacebuilding have either ignored or marginalised issues of gender and women.Women consistently remain a minority of participants in peacebuilding projects; receive less attention than men in peacebuilding policies; and gender analysis rarely informs peacebuilding strategies. This is in spite of the fact that there have been many United Nations and European Commission resolutions which, for more than a decade, have criticised such marginalisation and neglect, and which have called for gender issues and women's needs to be given much more serious attention in all policies relating to conflict and peace.  Such resolutions were not drawn out of thin air, but built on at least two decades of practical experience in, and evaluation of, gender and women-focused policies in the area of development.

This paper charts a path for concrete, peacebuilding policies which take their key from these international resolutions and recommendations, and which would begin to redress this persistent gender inequality and widespread failure to tackle issues relating to women. It is founded on the view that groups of women often have a stronger commitment to the ending of violence and the maintenance of long term peace than groups of men, and thus often constitute a highly motivated and able group of stakeholders for peacebuilding, who nonetheless are often ignored.

By way of background, the paper also reviews the range of women's experiences during conflict; the usefulness of a gender analysis of conflict; and a gender analysis of peacebuilding, before drawing out the recommendations for future peacebuilding policies" (Pankhurst 2000, 1).

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Organizations, Post-Conflict, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes

Year: 2000

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