Current role of women in conflict prevention

Current Discourse on the Role of Women in Conflict Prevention and
Conflict Transformation: a Critique

Much of the recent discourse surrounding the role of women in conflict prevention and conflict transformation is shot through with contradictory assumptions used as the basis for the argument that women should play a greater role, women’s voices should be heard more and so on in these processes. While the desire for a more humane politics, for the insertion of the legitimacy of emotions and an ethic of care into our deliberations about the causes of conflict and its possible resolution, is to be welcomed, we need to theorise with greater care why we associate these positive social goods with women and what we mean when we talk about “women”. We need also to look at the implications of doing so and to ask ourselves why these values have been marginalized in the first instance. Calls for conflict prevention strategies to take into account a “gendered perspective” (and what...