Women, Gender Equality, and Post-Conflict Transformation

This book builds on the existing feminist international relations literature as well as lessons of past cases that reinforce the importance of including women in the post-conflict transition process, and are important to our general understanding of gender relations in the conflict and post-conflict periods.'Kaufman and Williams have given us a richly contextualized gender analysis of post-war patriarchy's stubborn "sustainability". They and their knowledgable contributors have also revealed what women, when organized and powered by feminist analytical curiosity, can do to expose that unjust and wasteful faux "peace". This is a wonderfully valuable book.' - Cynthia Enloe, author of Globalization and Militarism (updated 2nd edition, 2016) 'In the last fifteen years, enthusiasm over the United Nations Security Council resolution on women, peace, and security has turned to disappointment. This valuable collaborative study explains why. Theoretical chapters identify how policies failed to anticipate the role of gender in post-conflict situations. A return to "normal" expectations of masculinity and feminity has hindered postwar reconstruction in many ways. Women, whose behavior and responsibilities were often transformed during the conflict, found their postwar opportunities limited, for example, by job training that focused on traditional activities, while neglecting their new abilities and needs. When the connection between masculinity and force goes unrecognized, then even the demobilization of male soldiers will not necessarily lead to "peace," if women face a continued threat of domestic violence. Many more such insights are explored in detailed cases that range from Africa (Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Africa) to Latin America (El Salvador, Guatemala) to Europe (former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland). Here the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, as the volume marks important advances in theory, integrates original empirical material, and proposes key policy initiatives.' - Matthew Evangelista, author of Gender, Nationalism, and War: Conflict on the Movie Screen