![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
Despite the attention to gender and conflict in empirical positivist peace research, and the interest in local agency in recent peacebuilding literature, women’s understandings and lived experiences of peacebuilding are not necessarily well accounted for. This article, drawing on interviews, focus groups and observation research with 57 female victims/survivors of post-election violence in Kenya, provides an ethnographic study of women’s largely informal peacebuilding activities, ranging from mediation and dialogue to economic empowerment. It analyses women’s constructions and ways of making sense of being peacebuilders, demonstrating that, while participants employed dominant gender frames, they exerted considerable transformative agency in their communities. It argues that their ‘gendered responsibility for peace’ at community level is simultaneously empowering and disempowering. The research aims to increase understanding of the gendered nature of peacebuilding and the ways in which women exercise peacebuilding agency through a focus on their own voices and lived experiences.
Notes
1 The research focus does not imply that the PEV did not affect men, boys and gender minorities. Neither does it seek to suggest that women in conflict settings are always victims, or that their victimhood ought to be opposed, in a binary fashion, to a conception of men as perpetrators (or indeed, to women as perpetrators).
2 Fischer, “Electoral Conflict and Violence.”
3 Robins, “Live as Other Kenyans.”
4 Human Rights Watch, “I Just Sit and Wait.”
5 De Smedt, “No Raila, No Peace.”
6 Amnesty International, “Crying for Justice.”
7 Björkdahl and Selimovic, “Gendering Agency,” 166.
8 Olsson and Gizelis, “Advancing Gender Research”; but see Porter, Peacebuilding, on women peacebuilders at grassroots levels.
9 Ruddick, Maternal Thinking; also see Tessler et al., “Further Tests,” for an overview of the women and peace hypothesis. Ruddick argued that mothering and its distinctive ways of thinking and social practices provided an alternative to male global politics, but importantly held that mothering did not have to be female.
10 Buckley-Zistel and Zolkos, “Introduction”; Charlesworth, “Are Women Peaceful?” Research on women’s agency and violence moreover problematises the gendered associations of women with victimhood or peace and demonstrates that dominant narratives such as ‘the mother’, ‘the monster’ and ‘the whore’ curtail the agency of female perpetrators (Sjoberg and Gentry, Mothers, Monsters, Whores).
11 Tessler et al., “Further Tests”; Bjarnegård and Melander, “Disentangling Gender.”
12 Charlesworth, “Are Women Peaceful,” 348.
13 Gizelis, “Gender Empowerment”; Melander, “Gender Equality”; Bjarnegård and Melander, “Disentangling Gender.”
14 Bjarnegård et al., “Gender, Peace, Armed Conflict,” 106.
15 Gizelis, “Gender Empowerment.”
16 Mac Ginty and Richmond, “Local Turn in Peace Building”; Mac Ginty, “Everyday Peace.”
17 Mac Ginty and Richmond, “Local Turn in Peace Building,” 770.
18 Kappler, “Dynamic Local,” 876.
19 Mac Ginty, International Peacebuilding.
20 Millar et al., “Peacebuilding Plans.”
21 Richmond, “Pedagogy of Peacebuilding.”
22 Paffenholz, “Unpacking the Local Turn.”
23 Mac Ginty and Richmond, “Local Turn in Peace Building.”
24 Kappler, “Dynamic Local.”
25 Björkdahl and Selimovic, “Gendering Agency,” 167.
26 Millar, “Key Strengths,” 11.
27 Blaikie, Designing Social Research.
28 Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory.
29 Mac Ginty, “Everyday Peace,” 549.
30 Interview 13, 25 January 2017, Cheptais.
31 Interview 21, 4 February 2017, Kibera.
32 Interview 4, 23 January 2017, Eldoret.
33 Robins, “Live as Other Kenyans.”
34 Interview 15, 26 January 2017, Kapenguria.
35 Interview 10, 24 January 2017, Eldoret.
36 Brewer, Peace Processes.
37 Interview 16, 29 January 2017, Kisumu.
38 Paffenholz, “Unpacking the Local Turn.”
39 Interview 5, 23 January 2017, Eldoret.
40 Interview 12, 25 January 2017, Cheptais.
41 Interview 2, 21 January 2017, Kuresoi.
42 Interview 11, 25 January 2017, Cheptais.
43 Buckley-Zistel and Zolkos, “Introduction.”
44 Kabeer, “Resources, Agency, Achievements.”
45 Kabeer, “Gender Equality,” 14.
46 Cornwall and Rivas, “From ‘Gender Equality.’”
47 Whether empowerment is a discourse that was ultimately brought about by engagement with global actors is not a question that my data allows me to answer.
48 Focus group 2, 28 January 2017, Kisumu.
49 Interview 21, 3 February 2017, Kibera.
50 Focus group 3, 28 January 2017, Kisumu.
51 Interview 10, 24 January 2017, Eldoret.
52 Focus group 3, 28 January 2017, Kisumu.
53 Tessler et al., “Further Tests.”
54 Brewer, Peace Processes, 78.
55 Ibid.
56 Otto 2006, cited in Charlesworth, “Are Women Peaceful?”
57 Interview 11, 25 January 2017, Cheptais.
58 Brewer, Peace Processes.
59 Kappler, “Dynamic Local,” 876.
60 Lonsdale, “Moral Ethnicity,” defined tribalism as the use of ethnic identity in political competition with other groups.
61 Interview 9, 24 January 2017, Burnt Forest.
62 Interview 4, 23 January 2017, Eldoret.
63 Fiske and Shakel, “Gender, Poverty,” 111.
64 Myrttinen et al., “Re-thinking Gender.”
65 Focus group 2, 28 January 2017, Kisumu.
66 Pankhurst, “Women, Gender.”
67 Millar, “Key Strengths,” 1.
68 Pankhurst, “Women, Gender.”
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Natascha Mueller-Hirth
Natascha Mueller-Hirth is Lecturer in Sociology at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. Her research utilises qualitative, often ethnographic, methodologies to examine issues around peace, conflict, development and gender in South Africa and in Kenya. She has published on time and temporality in transitional societies, NGOs and civil society, the governance of development and corporate social responsibility. She is co-editor of Time and Temporality in Transitional and Post-Conflict Societies (2018) and co-author of Victim Centred Peacebuilding: Everyday Life Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka (2018) and The Sociology of Everyday Life Peacebuilding (2018).