The concept of war and peace is not binary. The absence of war is not the same as peace. Peace is also the economic development of societies, which can be facilitated by local practices of post-conflict communities and their existing or changing gender structures.
This is written in the foreword to the book Gender in Peacebuilding, titled “ “Local Peacebuilding through a Gender Lens,” by the project lead of “Caring to Survive, Surviving to Care,” Elizabeth Püegel, co-authored with Rahel Kunz, Mimidoo Achakpa, Henri Myrttinen, Joy Onyesoh, Arifah Rahmawati, Christelle Rigual, and Wening Udasmoro.
People and communities around the world have a wealth of competence in managing and transforming violent conflicts. They foster links across religious, ethnic and ideological divides; bring to bear their authority as family members or government or community leaders to counteract enmity; creatively disrupt conflict and build relationships through their art; and organise politically to achieve inclusive societies, the article says.
They emphasize that a feminist approach to peacebuilding studies pays special attention to the significance of gender, age, religion, and other social dynamics, the interweaving of which is used as a resource for peacebuilding. It focuses on everyday life and household dynamics. But local actors, initiatives, and processes for establishing peace in communities often remain invisible. And while external engagement in post-conflict reconstruction professes feminist approaches, they often take the form of “gender mainstreaming,” favoring technical solutions and failing to delve into local power relations.
These processes have been examined in more detail in the case of Indonesia and Nigeria, which have active civil societies and a diverse landscape of local peacebuilding.
Сommunity leaders in Delta State in Nigeria emphasised the importance of caring relations for peace and saw a particular role for mothers in helping to achieve ‘harmony’. Yet peacebuilding activists working in Delta encountered threatening behaviour when appearing to usurp power, and it was considered inappropriate for women to join vigilante groups (Bulduk, Onyesoh and Achakpa, this volume). In Aceh, women’s secondary status during the insurgency became visible when female ex-combatants were excluded from economic and political benefits in post-conflict reintegration programmes unless they were close to elite men (Rahmawati, this volume). The structuring logic of gender thus (re)creates a division of labour and power in peacebuilding, where economic and political participation is reserved for men while women are denied jobs and are relegated to informal processes and to working at the grassroots level., the article says.
However, despite this structuring logic of gender that generates inequality, it can also sometimes enable women to act independently, where patriarchal gender constructions grant women special powers. For example, in Jos, Nigeria, women spoke of their power as mothers and wives over men within the family, which prevented them from joining violence in the community. Sometimes gendered roles in peacebuilding settings are reversed, and, for example, female ex-combatants refuse to return to traditional orders after the cessation of hostilities and seek political activism, as in the case of the Inong Bali tribesmen in Aceh.
It is also the case for anti-land grab activists in East Java who disrupt conservative gender orders that relegated them to the domestic sphere by engaging in public protests and in sabotage against companies (see Udasmoro and Prügl, this volume). In both instances new opportunities emerge for shaping understandings and practices of peacebuilding in conjunction with redefinitions of femininity, the article says.
In the case of East Java, women were invited to the forefront of protests against land grabbing in order to reduce violence against protesters. And although they were thus tried to be used for other purposes, women were able to expand their political activities. At the same time, in some cases, the process of reintegration has benefited only a few. For example, in Aceh, although female ex-combatants do not face social stigma, their access to the benefits of economic and political reintegration is highly dependent on proximity to men in power. And in the Delta, gender logics lead to privileged labor
In conclusion, the review of different reconstruction practices identified gender-equitable economic development as an important area for peacebuilding.
Enabling women’s economic participation had the effect of shifting local gendered norms: women beneficiaries of the co-operative initiative felt more confident in challenging leadership in their communities and collectively making their voices heard. Gender was thus reconstructed, and new power relations emerged for a newly gendered peace, the article emphasizes.