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The Mechanisms of Exclusion: Women in Conflict

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Abstract

Women across geographical and temporal locations have faced similar experiences in conflict and post-conflict situations due to broad conceptualisations of gender and its perceived implications, which play out within all conflict dynamics. This article draws on case studies from the work of WOMANKIND Worldwide, a UK-based international women’s human rights and development organisation, to outline the challenges faced by and innovative strategies used by women’s organisations internationally to ensure their participation, voice and rights and the role of the women’s movement in uniting disparate groups and individuals. It recognises that women are not a homogenous group and that their experiences differ widely across geographical and temporal locations. To guard against biological foundationalism and to ensure a comprehensive approach to peace-building, both a human-rights approach and a gender analysis are therefore required. Only then will sufficient voice, resources, participation, services, support, reparations, documentation and respect for human rights be ensured—both for women and men.

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Notes

  1. See www.gadnetwork.org.uk.

  2. See www.baag.org.uk/.

  3. As outlined in her lecture by Hilary Charlesworth. Other academics such as Pankhurst (2004) and Moser (2001), for example, also note that women are more often than not excluded (or minimally represented) from conflict transformation and peace talks at international, national and local level.

  4. See, for example, ‘Cherie ‘lifts veil’ for Afghan women’, BBC news, 19 November 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1665017.stm (accessed 10 September 2008).

  5. UN Security Council Resolutions 1325 (passed 2000) and 1820 (passed 2008) specifically address the impact of war on women, and women’s contributions to sustainable peace and conflict resolution and call for increased action to promote women’s human rights and ensure their participation and protection. The Rome Statute (1998) helped ensure that sexual violence is conceptualised not only as rape, but as “rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilisation, or any form of sexual violence of comparable gravity”. Broadening conceptions of sexual violence beyond rape is crucial in ensuring that other human rights abuses are also recognised in legal cases.

  6. WOMANKIND’s partner DEMUS for example, is a women’s rights organisation that works in Peru to facilitate the recovery and rehabilitation of rape victims and uses innovative and sensitive techniques to explore the causes and impact of sexual violence against women before, during and after the civil war: see www.demus.org.pe.

  7. For example, CEDAW confirms that states should “take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women” (Article 2(f)) and “should modify the social and cultural patterns of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women” (Article 5(a)).

  8. See www.awec.info.

  9. See http://ecwronline.org.

  10. See www.sswcsom.org.

  11. See www.wipsu.org.zw.

  12. See www.itwwsindia.org.

  13. Men and boys, for example, are also at greater risk of suicide due to mental health problems, have greater exposure to dangerous pesticides, are more at risk from HIV infection due to virility, and can also be affected by gendered labour practices (see Cleaver 2002).

  14. Such as ‘feminising the enemy’ using castration, homosexual rape, insults and intimidation (Goldstein 2003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. WOMANKIND Worldwide, Development House, 56–64 Leonard Street, London, EC2A 4LT, UK

    Kathryn Lockett

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  1. Kathryn Lockett
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Correspondence to Kathryn Lockett.

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Kathryn Lockett MSc is Senior Programme and Planning Manager at Womankind, Worldwide managing their South Asia programme. WOMANKIND Worldwide is a London-based international women’s human rights and development agency. See www.womankind.org.uk.

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Lockett, K. The Mechanisms of Exclusion: Women in Conflict. Fem Leg Stud 16, 369–376 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-008-9103-4

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