Women and conflict

Woman carrying a small child in South Sudan

Woman and child in South Sudan

With gender quotas in place, why do women in third world nations continue to remain the collective voiceless victimized? Dana Liebelson writes for Diplomatic Courier.

By Dana Liebelson for Diplomatic Courier

The two most famous women in American politics this year, Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton, also – coincidentally - happened to be two of the most polarizing. As the campaigns turned close and gritty, allegations of sexism were flung across party lines with increasing fervor - would a reporter ask Barack Obama how he was planning to balance work and family? Why was the press focusing on Sarah Palin’s fashion choices? With all the deliberation about the state of the glass ceiling, it was easy to forget that regardless of partisanship, women made unprecedented strides in politics. 2008 seemed to be the year where parents could tell their children - without fibbing - that regardless of race or gender, they could grow up and become President of the United States.

On the margins of the glowing headlines about women politicians in the industrialized world were the other stories - the women in the Congo traumatized by unspeakable sexual violence, an acid attack on a female teacher in Afghanistan, or a 13-year-old rape victim stoned to death in the top failed state of Somalia. While it is easy to embrace proof of women’s equality, it is also deceptively easy to unquestioningly accept women’s political role as victims of conflict, casualties caught up in a men’s war. The tendency to place women into the black and white categories of equal citizen or victim is an obstacle that must be overcome in order to resolve conflict.

“There is an under researched connection between violence on women and violence in a society,” said Virginia Bouvier, head of grants and a gender specialist at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. “Rethinking the relationship and focusing on gender is critical to peace building.”

Gender quotas in politics have been a popular way of ensuring women’s influence in government when they might not otherwise have the opportunity to participate. Fifty countries currently have quota laws, including half of those in Latin America. Additionally, in 2000 the UN Security Council adopted a landmark resolution, which affirmed women as being distinctly affected by armed conflict and urged women’s contributions in decision-making on all political levels. With the policy in place, why do women in third world nations continue to remain the collective voiceless victimized?

“[Resolution 1325] was pioneering, but the political will is still lacking when it comes to implementation. Women do the groundwork and mobilize on the grassroots level, but are absent when the accords are actually signed,” Bouvier said.

Quotas are ineffective in war-torn states because they often depend on the current executive, and a change in presidency can result in such laws disappearing or being ignored. Additionally, there can be strong opposition, such as the situation in Chile when the Secretary General for a right wing party criticized President Michele Bachelet’s support of gender laws as a “sickly obsession” that could potentially create a “risky and divisive discourse.”

However, this September in Rwanda, women proved that focusing on gender in peace building can be extremely beneficial, and demonstrated that the roles of victim and political leader are by no means mutually exclusive - in fact, the aftermath of the crippling genocide set the foundation for democratic participation. Rwanda’s post-genocide constitution ensures a 30 percent quota for female parliament members, a number that was surpassed this year when Rwandan women took 45 out of 80 parliaments seats, becoming the first country to hold a women majority in parliament. The Rwandan genocide murdered 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a brief 100 days, leaving gaping holes open for women participation.

“When we talk about gender and conflict, it is important to recognize that men are also victims of war, and as a result, women are forced into new positions of managing [society] without men,” Bouvier added.

For this reason, the percentage of women in the workforce has often been highest in failed, war-torn states. In 2006, the two nations with the highest number of women as a percentage of the labor force, according to a study based on GDP, were the states of Burundi and Mozambique - with several other failed states outnumbering their western counterparts.

With women already holding prominent roles in society, it is essential to focus on the bridge between the grassroots and political level. Concentrating on implementation of quota laws, developing a “pipeline of trained women” and continuing education and the support of civil society are the first steps. Some day perhaps, victimized women will no longer be patronized as needing their “voices” returned to them by do-gooders of the western world, but instead - will have the means to speak through their own political institutions.

One Rwandan woman interviewed on the day of the Parliamentary elections stated: “You see men, especially in our culture, used to think that women are there to be in the house, cook food, look after children…but the real problems of a family are known by a woman, and when they help - they help a country to get much better.”

These are words that both Mrs Palin and Mrs Clinton would undoubtedly stand behind.

Diplomatic Courier (DC)
This article was published originally at The Diplomatic Courier: A Global Affairs Magazine in Washington, DC. For more articles, special reports, and global resources please visit www.diplomaticourier.org.
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