How can the EU and other donors support increased women’s political participation in post-conflict situations? What can be done to ensure that this results in meaningful change for women in general? This paper from the Initiative for Peacebuilding recommends practical strategies for the EU and other donors to guide the consideration of gender issues into their post-conflict governance interventions.
Gender roles can change considerably during armed conflict, and post-conflict reform of political institutions provides an important opportunity to increase women’s political voice and influence. However, women’s rights organisations argue that a gender dimension is largely absent from the Paris Declaration and the new aid effectiveness architecture. The EU and other donors must therefore make a conscious effort to support women’s rights. At the same time, it is important to remain conscious that external development assistance can have complicated and ambiguous impacts on conflict, governance and gender dynamics.
The EU can help increase women’s participation in post-conflict politics in four ways:
- Consolidating opportunities created by peace negotiations: When peace negotiations begin it is nearly always men who participate, while women struggle to make their voices heard. The EU should support women’s participation in both official and Track II diplomacy, through technical support and political pressure
- Increasing women’s access to political spaces: Economic dependence, low literacy levels, and traditional male dominance often inhibit women’s access to political spaces, as candidates, politicians, and voters. Practical measures are proposed to help overcome this, including proportional representation, quotas, training for female politicians, and steps to increase women’s voting.
- Promoting women’s voices in civil society: International funding is vital for CSOs in conflict-affected countries, but women’s organisations must be locally led. The EU can support such work by providing accessible funding for CSOs, including small women’s groups.
- Promoting gender-sensitive policies: Female politicians may not necessarily advance the interests of women in general. The EU can help ‘turn numbers into policy transformation’ through emphasising gender equality in policy discussions, capacity-building women’s agencies, promoting sex-disaggregated statistics and providing technical assistance.
The author proposes several specific actions, and a number of gender-sensitive indicators, in each of the four areas. Key recommendations are that the EU should:
- Promote political participation for women and gender-sensitive policy in its political dialogue with partner governments, to ensure women are better-represented in peace negotiations, and to ensure gender is on the policy agenda.
- Provide technical assistance and resources to partner governments to support gender-sensitive design of electoral systems and development of policies and plans.
- Support local CSOs, especially women’s groups, through accessible funding and capacity-building.
- Mobilise the support of men at all levels.
- Support research and data collection, including integration of gender indicators into M&E.
- Ensure that a commitment to women’s participation is reflected in all the EU’s own policy, programming and practice.
