Ending Violence…Creating Peace? Rediscovering the Connections Between The Women´s Movement and a Culture of Peace in Nicaragua

My project, Ending Violence…Creating Peace?: Rediscovering the Connections between the Women’s Movement and a Culture of Peace in Nicaragua, explores, both in theory and practice, the relationships between the Nicaraguan women’s movement and building a culture of peace. Through an extensive literature review that covered everything from history to feminist and peace theories and from reconciliation and peacebuilding to the militarization of society. Through the process of the literature review, I was fully able to make the theoretical connections between feminism and peace which then allowed me to establish a framework for my research and fieldwork. To investigate the links between the Nicaraguan women’s movement and building a culture of peace, I completed a typology—through personal interviews and document and website research—of women’s organizations based on their organization type, goals, methods, strategies and structures. From the typology interviews, I was also able to learn how the organizations saw themselves as contributing to a culture of peace in Nicaragua. Through the typology, I discovered many common themes between the organizations. Then using the theoretical framework of feminism and peace, I was able to come to various conclusions about how the women’s movement connected and contributed to the construction of a culture of peace in Nicaragua