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Feminist Perspectives on Peacebuilding and Reconciliation

Conference Paper · May 2016

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Andrea García González

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FEMINIST APPROACHES TO PEACEBUILDING AND RECONCILIATION
Andrea Garcia Gonzalez.
Paper Feminist Review Early Careers workshop 10 May 2016.

As part of my current research, which analyses gender dynamics underlying the reconciliation
process in the Basque Country, I am interested in looking at the intersection of feminist theories and
peace and conflict studies. In this paper, I will first analyse the different challenges that feminist
scholars and practitioners have posed to peacebuilding policies and literature. Secondly, and linked
to that, I will examine the understanding of violence from feminist perspectives. Finally, I will explore
potential conceptualisations of peace drawing on reconciliation studies and feminist theories.

Questioning peacebuilding and reconciliation

The first and main critique from feminist analysis is that peacebuilding is gender blind (Strickland and
Duvvury, 2003, Sørensen, 1998). During many years, studies on armed conflict, international
relations and peacebuilding ignored the presence of women in conflict-affected contexts. This is not
surprising, as this invisibility has happened in many disciplines. Nonetheless, it placed feminism in
what could be deemed as a basic starting point, compelled to claim that women exist and must be
recognised. Since the 1980s, women writing on international relations and peace research made
women in conflict and peacebuilding visible (Mendia Azkue, 2013). The diverse activities and
experiences of women in different contexts began to be addressed. The differential effects of armed
conflicts on men and women were then raised.

Being sexual violence one of the most prominent and brutal forms of the violence suffered by
women during those conflicts, peacebuilding policies and conflict studies established the link
between women and victimhood as their primary representation. Women started to be visible as a
monolithic entity. They were depicted as sufferers of an evil and crazy violence that had no roots in
any kind of structure that sustained that sexual violence. In Sharoni’s words, ‘[u]sing the phrase
“rape as a weapon of war,” mainstream media accounts have done more to sensationalize these
crimes than to address their root cause or offer ways to resolve them’ (Sharoni, 2010).

The complexity of sexual violence rooted in patriarchy has been analysed by feminist scholars (such
as Reardon, 1985, Enloe, 2000). Feminist literature has raised Interesting points against one-
dimensional/simplistic/single accounts equating women to victims. Firstly, it points out the
relevance of structural violence suffered by women during the conflict. Feminist scholars argue that
transitional justice mechanisms have set a ‘gendered hierarchy of abuses’ that ignores ‘socio-
economic injuries suffered predominantly by women as internally displaced persons, heads of
households and refugees’ (Bell and O'Rourke, 2007). Secondly, institutional mechanisms themselves
have been deemed as insufficient in addressing the consequences of armed conflicts on women.
When they have been listened to, testimonies have been circumscribed to specific spaces (such as
Truth Commissions –Richters, 2004), and violence made visible was just the violence suffered in
public spaces (Hamber, 2009). ). In addition, concerns have been expressed that women’s accounts
can be used to enable the promotion of elite nation-building narratives (Bell and O’Rourke, 2007: 71)
rather than to challenge it.

Feminist research have emphasised that women are not just victims but agents, during and after the
armed conflict. On the one hand, some studies have focused on women involvement in the military

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and in other movements that have used armed struggle (Aretxaga, 1997, Hamilton, 2007). On the
other hand, studies on women and their opposition to violence have been numerous. The
misrepresentation of women as ‘natural’ peacemakers has been largely discussed among feminist
scholars (Reardon, 1985, Reardon, 1993, Ruddick, 1989, Aretxaga, 1997, Cockburn, 1998, Porter,
2008, Alison, 2010). It has been regarded as an essentialisation that can be ‘a dangerous political
force’, which sustains dominations, operating fixed and stereotyped dualism of ‘women victim, male
warrior’ (Cockburn, 1998: 13). On the other hand, it has also been claimed that, in working for
peace, women challenge authorities (Sørensen, 1998) develop different and sometimes risky
strategies, in what should be understood as an active effort and not a biological instinct (Mesa et al.,
2013).

Awareness of the need to incorporate women into conflict and post-conflict approaches has
increased during the years. Due to the work done by feminist practitioners and scholars, important
milestones as the Resolution 1325 adopted by the UN Security Council have been achieved (Sharoni,
2010). This resolution on Women, Peace and Security recognises the role of women as peacebuilders
and the importance of women participating in peace negotiations. The participation of women has
become a concern as part of the programs that increasingly incorporate ‘gender’ or ‘gender
equality’. However, feminist authors have criticised the terms on which inclusion is offered (Bell &
O’Rourke, 2007: 76). The claim for a transformative feminist approach underlies these critiques.

Violence and its roots

In peace studies, one of the most relevant theories on violence is the one developed by Johan
Galtung in the late 1960s. His work casts light on the importance to look beyond manifestations of
direct violence and pay attention to indirect violence, since it is both structural and cultural violence.
His approach was taken in the formulation of the concept of 'peacebuilding', which appeared in
discourse in the 'Agenda for Peace' report by Secretary-General of the United Nations, Boutros-
Boutros Ghali, in 1992. Since then, several studies and policies have included structural and cultural
change into reconciliation and peacebuilding processes. However, this structural change has been
frequently connected just to the inequalities between the two sides of the conflict (Hamber and
Kelly, 2005, Aiken, 2013). Social, economic, political change would only address the demand for a
better balance between divided groups. From this perspective, peace might merely mean liberal
peace; the system sustained in the violence criticised by Galtung would then not be transformed.

Galtung’s holistic approach on violence has been taken by feminist scholars and practitioners as a
useful starting point. Although some feminist approaches have analysed violence mainly focusing on
‘The’ conflict, several have questioned the violence that constantly permeates capitalist and
patriarchal societies. The concept of the continuum of violence has been raised by feminist scholars
(Reardon, 1993, Cockburn, 1998, Porter, 2008) and it may encapsulate the idea that violence against
women during armed conflict is committed not only by the ‘enemy’, and not only during the period
considered as the ‘conflict’. This concept enables a more complex analysis of the diverse violence
suffered by women and hightlights the continuity between types of violence and actors. As Cockburn
(2012) explains, the continuum of violence is a time continuum (pre-war, post-war, peacetime), a
continuum of place (home, street, battlefield), and a continuum of scale (from military and
paramilitary abuse to the institutional control over women’s bodies).

However, Galtung’s account suffers from an important lack of analysis of the gender system. He
relates male aggression with male sexuality (Galtung, 1996) in what has been criticised as essentialist

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and heteronormative: ‘The problem is that Galtung fails to explore the role of gender in the social
construction of violence’ (Confortini, 2006). The importance of using gender as an analytical tool to
uncover the distribution of power has been stressed by feminist approaches, especially in regards to
how in an intersectional analysis gender can reveal the unequal distribution of power and privilege
that lead to the escalation of the conflict (Sharoni, 2010.) Gender organises social life in hierarchical,
mutually exclusive categories, which are in a relationship of sub/super-ordination to one another
(Confortini, 2006). Dichotomous categories are the basis of this gender order: Man vs Woman,
Culture vs Nature, Public vs Private, Strength vs Weakness, Self-sufficiency vs Vulnerability, etc. In
those, categories associated with feminity are valued less than the ones associated with masculinity.
Ecofeminist theories point out the links between women, animals, nature and those ‘feminised’
others, all considered as inferior in order to legitimate their subordination under a militarised male-
dominant order (Gaard, 2011). Patriarchal values of destruction are imposed on the feminine
capacity to give life.

Hierarchical dichotomies establish a way to see the world, a ‘gender symbolism’ (Harding in
Confortini, 2006) that upholds logics of domination, oppression and hence violence. In armed
conflicts, these subordinated dichotomies work in the foundation of the cycles of violence based on
polarization and the consideration of the ‘other’ as a threat and inferior. As stated by Lederach
(2005) ‘cycles of violence are often driven by tenacious requirements to reduce complex history into
dualistic polarities that attempt to both describe and contain social reality in artificial ways’. In this
sense, for some feminist authors such as Porter, reconciliation as the ‘reconciliation of differences’
‘challenges the exclusivism of dualism’: ‘A society that takes reconciliation seriously does more than
tolerate other differences’, where ‘the harm of dualism can overcome’ (Porter, 2008).

Exploring peace

Peace might be a slippery concept difficult to represent and even more to define. I am not looking
for a definition here, but my aim is to start exploring how peace studies have approached peace and
to look at contributions from feminist theories in order to build some basis for the discussion.

In reconciliation studies, relationships have been highlighted as essential in the aim to avoid a return
to violence. Although the concept of reconciliation has remained ‘resistant to clear definition’
(Aiken, 2013: 18), it has been broadly accepted that relationships between those who have been
considered antagonists in a conflict is at its heart (Lederach, 1997, 2003, Bloomfield et al., 2003).
These are relationships that need to come from ‘hostility and resentment to friendly and
harmonious relations’ (Bar-Siman-Tov 2004 in Aiken, 2013). Building trust between those factions,
building a common identity and working towards a shared vision of ‘an interdependent and fair
society’ has been set as some of the elements needed in the reconciliation process.

Interdependency is another concept highlighted by key authors in peace studies such as Lederach or
Galtung. In one of Lederach’s most known works, Moral Imagination (2005), he stresses the
‘centrality of relationships’. Looking at this work, I might raise some points that I find problematic.
Although his writing is beautiful and compelling to broad audiences, his proposal is vague.
‘Transformative platforms’ in the context of post-armed conflict are those where ‘people in
relationship generate responsive initiatives for constructive change’ (Lederach, 2005:47).
Nonetheless, he does not define what that change means. Moreover, he does not explain what must
be changed apart from the division between those former enemies. Polarization and a dualistic view

3
of the society is criticised as the trigger of violence, but he does not refer to the gender system that
sustain those dualisms, neither to the capitalist system that upholds violence.

We might question why this interdependency is important and with what objective. Interestingly,
some feminist theories have worked deeper on the understanding of this concept. On the one hand,
interdependency related to social change has been used in feminist approaches to peace and
conflict. The controversial concept of ‘maternal thinking’ was raised by Sara Ruddick in the work of
that title (Ruddick, 1989) in connection to peace politics. She links that concept to a ‘commitment to
care’. Although she rejects the idea of mothers being naturally peaceful, the use of motherness for
making the point of an antimilitaristic stance has been highly criticised. However other authors used
it in their analysis. Elisabeth Porter links ‘maternal thinking’ to the development of a ‘compassionate’
society, which would be the ultimate objective of peacebuilding: a society where difference is
‘accepted unproblematically as part of life’s rich tapestry’ (Porter, 2008: 48, 67). Confortini and
Ruane (2014) claim the use of ‘maternal thinking’ as a feminist “weaving” epistemology’. According
to them, this concept may strengthen ways of knowing that support relationships of care over
dehumanization and violence on the path towards a ‘just peace’. Other authors have taken the
biological mothering element out of the concept and using the term ‘relatedness’ to refer to the
political value of the neediness of the body (Vaittinen, 2015).

In addition, feminist theories like politics of care, ecofeminism, feminist economics, or post-
structural feminism, have explored the potential of the idea of interdependency as transformative.
The fact that our bodies are vulnerable and need other bodies not only to physically survive, but also
to symbolically exist as individuals in the construction of our identities in connection with others, has
been raised by different philosophers (Butler, 2010, Taylor, 1985, Mead, 1934, Ricoeur, 1995). This
fact aims to raise awareness on the fallacy of the modern concept of the citizen as self-sufficient, a
fallacy in which capital market is based (as pointed out by feminist economics), a fallacy sustained
through the exploitation of non-recognised carers (politics of care) and of the nature (ecofeminism).
Drawing on Butler’s ideas (2010, 2006), the awareness of the vulnerability of the bodies might lead
to questioning why in the patriarchal and capitalist society some lives matter more than others,
some lives are the ones sustained through the exploitation and dismissal of other, some lives are the
ones being mourned. Feminist scholars place to the front the recognition of the need of care and
human vulnerability, an awareness that may lead to unveil the violence that is part of the everyday,
embodied in our daily acts. These approaches, breaking with the fallacy of the modern individual -
who has no one to care for other than himself, and no more worries than to compete with others
through force and violence, are challenging essential values of patriarchy and capitalism.

After reaching this awareness of interdependency, the question might be how we want to develop
relationships involved in care and in the sustainability of life. On the one hand, feminists have
warned on the idealisation of care and interdependency. The link to others might be the link for
transformation, but also the condition of violence, as Butler (Butler, 2006) states. The concept of
care might be used with caution. Care must not be understood as good in itself, be essentialised or
used to mystify feminity in its connection to care (Pérez Orozco, 2014). On the other hand, some
proposals have explored the transformative change that relationships could imply. Feminist
economist Perez Orozco (2014) proposes the development of interconnected structures to sustain a
life ‘that is worth living’; this notion of a good life is not already set or must not be taken for granted,
but it needs to be defined through collective discussion. This idea connects with Galtung’s late
definition of positive peace as ‘the enhacement of life as the end, and as the means’ (1996: 7),
where well-being, freedom, participation, cooperation, the promotion of a culture of peace and in
partnership with nature would be elements of it. Ecofeminists Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva are

4
close to this line of thought as they affirm that ‘an ecofeminist perspective propounds the need for a
new cosmology (…) which recognises that life in nature (which includes human beings) is maintained
by means of co-operation, and mutual care and love’ (Mies and Shiva, 1993). Peace might exist in a
society where the concept of a good life will not be based ‘on the exploitation and domination of
nature and other people’ (Ibid. 322).

Contrary to a patriarchal devalued notion of peace seen as unattainable and unrealistic (Milner,
2010), peace might not solely be an ideal, but an everyday practice. Practices that, such as some
feminist have raised (Hernández Morales and Jaramillo Guijarro, 2000), may name and therefore
break with the normalisation of violence. Practices that open conflicts that are part of human lives
without resort to violence. Practices working to break violent hierarchical dichotomies. Practices
that recognise our vulnerability, our need and desire to relate with others.

CONCLUSIONS AND OPEN QUESTIONS

We have seen how different forms of feminism have navigated through the different approaches to
peacebuilding rejecting the instrumentalisation of women’s voices. Feminism in relation to armed
conflict and peace might be understood as a proposal that raises the importance of gender as an
analytical tool. It allows critically looking at hierarchical dichotomies and examining power
relationships. Feminist approaches propose breaking with binaries, highlighting the consideration of
violence as a continuum and pointing out the roots of that violence entrenched in a system that
must be subverted. In a change of paradigm, life (including human and non human animals and the
nature) might be put at the core of a new system in opposition with the destruction of life that the
current capitalist system develops.

In her analysis of the heteropatriarchal system, feminist economist Amaia Perez Orozco (2014)
defines her proposal as framed within ‘rupturist feminist economics’. This approach argues that the
sustainability of life is incompatible with the logic of capital accumulation. For her, the evidence of
that irresolvable conflict reveals that trying to achieve equality without a radical transformation of
the system is no more than a chimera (2014, 49). In line with this point of view, I wonder whether a
reconciliation process might be radically transformative. On the one hand, authors as Porter (2008)
indicate that challenging the perception of the ‘other’ might be essential in the creation of a
different society not based in binaries. On the other hand, my concern is whether this process might
focus just on the understanding of violence as that one related to the armed conflict, and might
hence perpetuate a restrictive conception of violence. Paraphrasing Perez Orozco, peace might be
chimerical if it does not tackle the roots of the violence based on gender system. This peace that
Galtung may call ‘negative peace’ in his early writings (1969), I would name it as ‘pacification’ or
‘domesticated peace1’. It stays circumscribed to the patriarchal order.

Claiming for the subversion of the socioeconomic order during peace processes could seem
unrealistic. However, daily practices of peace might be working on that direction. Paying attention
to those practices could give feminist scholars and practitioners more clues about how relationships
might develop in the creation of a different, non-violent, society. The so-called post-conflict contexts
may hold unique experiences in relation to this. In those scenarios, spaces of encounter might be
created where conceptualisations of peace and reconciliation are performed in the everyday. How

1
Peace, such as other attributes socially linked with ‘feminity’ (like care, empathy, motherhood…) seem to be
valued in the patriarchal system when this system benefits from them. That is what I would call
‘domesticated’.

5
the participants of different initiatives understand their current practices linked with the future they
want to build, the transformations that they are leading in this society, the impact of their discourses
and activities, withdrawals and contradictions in processes of consensus, are some of the questions
needed to be explored. The idea that ‘women’s peace activism provides lessons for understanding
how the practices through which we pursue politics matter to the kinds of politics we pursue’
(Confortini and Ruane, 2014) must be contrasted with our research in order not to idealise and to
give complexity to understandings of peace, violence and the diverse experiences of women.

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