Mobilizing Gender for Conflict Prevention: Women’s Situation Rooms

ABSTRACT

In West Africa, women’s organizations have created the Women’s Situation Room (WSR) – a mechanism aimed at preventing and responding to episodes of violence and instability. Drawing on experiences from Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria, the article explores how strategies developed and deployed by WSRs use gender as a productive force to counteract violence. We identify three ways in which WSRs take advantage of gendered constructions: feminist organizing creates the political networks that make the WSRs possible; women’s location outside formal politics gives them legitimacy; and maternal constructions of femininity give them the power to disrupt and coopt potentially violent actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Conflict prevention
• Women, Peace and Security
• motherhood
• networks
• West Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 We would like to thank Yvette Chesson-Wurreh, Bineta Diop, Gifty Mensah, and Joy Onyesoh for not only participating in (sometimes more than one) interview, but also commenting on an earlier draft of this paper.

2 In Senegal and Ghana, the WSR also secured support from local business owners, such as CCBM electronics and Airtel Business. This support was critical to equip the project with cell phones, internet connection and other supplies (Interview with Bineta Diop, 6 March 2015; WSR Ghana 2016, 18).

3 These were Abantu for Development, the Women’s Manifesto Coalition, Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), Gender Centre for Empowering Development (GenCED), and Ghana Federation of Disability Organizations.

Additional information

Funding

Paula Drumond has been supported by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), Finance Code 001; and Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), Grant Number E26/010.001641/2019; and Elisabeth Prügl has been supported by a grant from the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development co-funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Swiss National Science Foundation, Grant Number 400240.

Notes on contributors

Paula Drumond

Paula Drumond is a tenured Assistant Professor at the Institute of International Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (IRI/PUC-Rio). She also works as Deputy Director of the Global South Unit for Mediation (GSUM) and serves as member of the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom Academic Network. Paula holds a PhD in International Relations/Political Science from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID, Geneva). Her publications in English and Portuguese center broadly on gender, peace and security.

Elisabeth Prügl

Elisabeth Prügl is Professor of International Relations and Co-Director of the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva. Her research and teaching focus on feminist International Relations, in particular gender politics in international governance. She has published on feminist theory and methodology in IR; gender mainstreaming and gender expertise in international governance; the neoliberalization of feminism; atypical forms of women’s labour and their international regulation; and peacebuilding from a feminist perspective. She is an incoming co-editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics.

Maria Consolata Spano

Maria Consolata Spano is an MA graduate in International Affairs, with a major in Global Security, from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID, Geneva). She also holds a BA with Honors in War Studies from King’s College (KCL, London). She is currently working as an intern at the NATO Defense College in Rome focusing on issues of international and regional security as well as NATO partnerships. Previously, she filled several internship positions at the strategic and operational level in international organizations and diplomatic missions, focusing on security issues, humanitarian affairs and migration – such as the UNODC and UNESCO, the South African Human Rights Commission and the Sovereign Order of Malta Permanent Observer Mission to the UN in New York and Geneva.