Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations and the Inclusion of Gender Provisions

Are peace agreements more likely to include gender provisions if women participate in the peace negotiations? The international community, national governments and civil societies around the world have assumed that women’s inclusion in peace negotiations result in higher quality peace agreements, where women’s interests are better taken into consideration. To date, there is a lack of empirical underpinning of the assumption. This study uses a twofold research design, combining statistical and qualitative methods to examine the interrelation between women’s descriptive and substantive representation in peace negotiations in the post-Cold War era. First, the statistical analysis suggests that peace agreements are more likely to include at least one gender provision referring to women’s rights and security if women participate in the negotiation. At the same time, the agreements are not more likely to address a higher number of different areas for increased rights and security measures for women. Second, the qualitative analysis examining the mechanisms shows that there is no guarantee that women will push for gender provisions, but that their particular experiences and interests in conflict, and the expectations from others give them strong reasons to do so. Important factors for women to successfully push for gender provisions have to do both with their individual will and personal ability, and external factors relating to the presence of traditional gender norms and the power balance between men and women in the country of conflict