Abstract
Despite international frameworks such as the WPS agenda that promotes women’s inclusion and full participation, the structure of peace processes and the power dynamics they reflect continues to drive women’s de facto exclusion from them. While there is literature problematising women’s exclusion from formal peace processes, little knowledge exists on the more hidden and informal processes that drive these gendered exclusions. This article builds on the IR literature by also drawing insights from business and management literature—a sector which has advanced more rapidly than other sectors in acknowledging and breaking down the barriers to women’s advancement.
Based on interviews with people active in peace processes, this article indicates that male “homosociality” is expressed in how competence is defined and in access to informal meetings, which play a role in reproducing men’s overrepresentation in peace processes.
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Notes
- 1.
Studies and discussions on women’s participation in peace processes often refer to data conducted by UN Women showing that 4% of the signatories to the peace agreements between 1992 and 2011 were women, 2% were chief mediators and 9% of the negotiators were women. This data is bit old and needs to be updated, but for want of more recent data these figures still indicate the status of women’s participation. More recent figures from Aggestam and Svensson based on 36 cases from 1991 and 2014 show that women were actively engaged as mediators in 8% of the cases (Aggestam and Svensson 2018: 153; UN Women 2012).
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Yeonju Jung, research assistant at SIPRI, for her assistance with the background research as well as for providing wise comments on the article. The author would also like to thank Dr. Amiera Sawas, Researcher at SIPRI, and Dr. Manuela Scheuermann, Member of Faculty and Researcher, University of Würzburg, for comments that greatly improved this paper as well as the anonymous interviewees for sharing their experiences. Any errors are my own and are no reflection on these helpful contributions.
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Bjertén-Günther, E. (2020). Peace Processes: Business as Usual?. In: Scheuermann, M., Zürn, A. (eds) Gender Roles in Peace and Security. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21890-4_3
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