Barriers to Women’s Security in Post-conflict States

• In Event: Research Frontiers on Gender Equality in Contentious Politics

Abstract

What barriers exist that prevent the advancement of gender equality in post-conflict states? Evidence suggests that the end of civil war can lead to changing gender roles for women, increased political representation and inclusion. Conflict shapes gender relations between individuals, as well as state-society relationships, such as the ability to gain state benefits and re-integrate into society as survivors of sexual violence, or as ex-combatants. However, there is extensive evidence that women face barriers across and within cases to meaningfully participate in society and advance gender equality in post-conflict states. I argue that there is an additional mechanism driving this variation that relates directly to post-conflict domestic political competition. In this paper I focus on the broad concept of security of everyday women, which I conceptualize as freedoms from everyday structural harm related to their gender identity. Freedom from everyday harms for ordinary women include things such as the ability for widows to inherit land and for women to pass citizenship along to their children. To demonstrate the variation in post-conflict states with extensive gendered and intersectional dimensions to their conflict, I compare the case of post-conflict Rwanda and Nepal. Following a most-similar case design, I demonstrate that low competition in Rwanda led to fewer positive outcomes for women, relative to Nepal that experienced more positive outcomes for women.

Author

• Taylor Vincent, University of Maryland, College Park