Recovering from Conflict: Does Gender make a difference?

Many discussions on relief to countries in armed conflict and post-conflict reconstruction have not considered gender. Among relief practitioners, the issue of gender has often been seen as a secondary priority and postponed to the development phase. Academics have failed to incorporate a gender perspective, as they have relied on gender-blind theories and conceptualizations of war to peace transitions. However, over the past few years, a steadily growing body of field studies has demonstrated the salience of gender in conflict and post-conflict situations, and forced gender and women onto the international agenda.

Existing material on gender can be divided into documentation of the gendered impact of war and of how women make a useful contribution to post-war political, economic and social reconstruction.

The internal wars that have followed in the wake of decolonialization and the dismantlement of the bipolar cold war world order share the feature that they all involve civil populations in an unprecedented manner. But in our dismay over the cruelty with which these wars are being fought, we should not forget to analyze more carefully the way in which their actions and implications are gendered. The most obvious example of this is the way in which women have become targets of politicized sexual violence, because they are regarded as the embodiment of a group's cultural identity. As an indication of the general militarization of State and society, women are also exposed to violence and abuse by members of their own communities. This, for instance, happens when they transgress established gender boundaries, even when this is done in an effort to assist in the restoration of livelihoods. But violence is not the only example of gendered impacts. We know that gender is important in defining people's entitlements to resources and their social mobility. And this means that displacement and disintegration of communities may hit women harder.

Why? Because they lose access to resources essential for their survival and well-being. Apart from determining the vulnerability of women during crisis, such experiences of course also play an important part in defining the issues that women would like to see addressed during the reconstruction period.

The documentation of the gendered impact of war has tended to reinforce a perception of women as helpless and passive victims. But experiences from war-affected countries give ample evidence of women's engagement and perseverance in the rebuilding process. As individuals and as members of the communities and grass-roots organizations, they have played a significant role in political, economic and social reconstruction. While women have been largely excluded from formal peace negotiations, they have been a dominant force in grass-roots movements, working for peace and human rights. At the local level, women have organized, sometimes across ethnic divisions, in order to put pressure on male relatives to seek a political solution. At the national level, they have tried to hold the political leadership accountable for human rights violations and fought against the conscription of their sons and the army's culture of violence. But, at this point, their political activities have mostly taken place outside the formal political structures.

In the economic field, women have also played a prominent role. Wars always impose new hardships and constraining factors, but they have demonstrated an amazing capability to adjust to the changing conditions of a war economy. Many women of a rural background have sought to meet their new responsibilities for the household and other dependants by staying and cultivating the family's land. But landmines, the lack of seeds and tools, destroyed infrastructure and disappearing markets have constituted severe constraints.

And for women who used to be employed in the urban areas, hardships have been no less, as companies have closed down and employers moved. A common strategy for rural and urban women alike has been to engage in petty trade and small business activities within the so-called informal economy. With varying success, they have tried to exploit regional differences in supply and demand in a number of different arrangements, ranging from a small stall at the local market to regional and even cross-border wade networks involving a Large number of people, and trading in any sort of scarce, precious or illegal products. Women have been crucial for the economic survival of households and communities, and they have often developed a new self-awareness through this process, which has challenged the existing division of labour and association of women with the domestic space. However, in the reconstruction period, it seems that they find it difficult to defend their position.

Though social reconstruction tends to receive less attention overall, we have many examples of how women have contributed to social security, reconciliation and integration. In the absence of health and education facilities, they have played an important role as caretakers and teachers. They often take on their shoulders the responsibility for the most vulnerable members of society, such as orphans and disabled persons. And by organizing cultural and religious events at the community level, they have created welcome opportunities for people to rebuild a sense of identity and belonging.

In most cases, women's work for social reconstruction has been voluntary, and as it resembles what they do in their capacity as wives and mothers, there has been a tendency also to take it for granted and not to reward it. But as recent analyses suggest, this may indeed add to the burden that they already have to carry in the war to peace transition.

This now leads to the question of how to conceptualize women's contributions to societies' recovery after war. One important point that has come out quite dearly in women's own accounts is that post-war reconstruction cannot be separated from gender issues. If reconstruction is to generate social peace and pave the ground for sustainable development and democracy, gender relations need to undergo transformation. And where most donor organizations and Governments tend to address issues of development and democracy at the macro-level, women understand them on the basis of their experiences, and argue that development and democracy depend on changes in attitudes and practices at the local level.

What we can learn from this is that gender is not a secondary issue. And dichotomies which separate public from private, national from local, fail to capture both women's experiences and their roles in reconstruction.

Point of Fact: "Civil wars are fought among those who know each other well, among enemy brothers and enemy sisters. They pit compatriot against compatriot, neighbour against neighbour. A key feature of these struggles is a demonization of the so-called enemy community, often defined in religious, ethnic, racial or regional terms. In the intense and intimate setting of today's internecine warfare, the village has become the battlefield, and civilian populations its primary target. It is against this background that today up to 90 per cent of casualties in ongoing conflicts around the world are civilians, the vast majority of whom are women and children. This is the world upside down."

- Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict

Professor Birgitte Refslund Sorensen is the author of an Occasional Paper on "Women and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Issues and Sources ", published by the War-torn Societies Project of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva (http://www.unrisd.org/).