Author: Juan Camilo Franco (Bogotá, Colombia)
At present, gender studies have become more and more recurring in academia, especially in social studies. Among these studies, one that stands out in the field of International Relations is peacebuilding. According to Lisa Schirch (2004), peacebuilding refers to every activity that aims to improve the quality of life by reducing and transforming violence in all of its forms. Taking this into account, gender studies become an important tool for peacebuilding by understanding the distinct kinds of victimization that people can suffer, especially women. Furthermore, gender studies take the relevant task of not only studying the victimization but the role of individuals and their efforts towards peacebuilding in post conflict contexts. This essay applauds a discipline which highlights the importance of women, who have been historically relegated, but argues that gender studies need to consider the inclusion of non-traditional gender roles for them to be even more effective in the field of peacebuilding.
Several academics have stated that for there to be a sustainable and lasting peace, every form of discrimination and inequality must be eliminated. Following this line of thought, structural violence (which can be interpreted as every situation where social norms or structures harm people or prevent them from fulfilling their needs) can be taken as the last and most important hurdle towards achieving positive and negative peace, referring to not only the lack of violence, but also the constructive resolution of conflicts (Galtung, 1969; Lederach, 1998).
As such, it becomes important to talk about the cis/hetero/patriarchy, a system deeply rooted in every corner of society. This system of exclusion and oppression can be defined according to Rafael Silva (2015) as:
(...) the acceptance of a single universal family model, traditionally composed of a heterosexual couple and their possible children, as well as the perpetuation, distribution and social legitimation of a series of roles for men and women, which continue to be reproduced in our current societies.
Said system that seeks social, political, cultural and economic oppression is not rooted in a specific geographic space, but rather afflicts society at a global level, while communities around the world apply this system to a greater or lesser degree, explicitly or implicitly. This oppression occurs precisely insofar as there is a differentiation of the roles assigned to the individuals that make up society based on gender. The problem is that, as Butler (1990) argues, gender is simply a social construct, arbitrarily created and that perpetuates a system of segregation based on the roles assigned to an individual. Similarly, there is segregation in that within society there is also negative discrimination against the trans community and non-traditional gender identities, relegating them to a precarious position in terms of the benefits of full citizenship.
According to Popov-Momčinović (2021), gender violence can be partly explained by the perpetuation of the gender hierarchy, which values men and masculinity above women and femininity, relegating the female counterparts to a second place. By doing so, the very system itself, and eventually traditional gender studies, makes invisible every gender identity that expresses itself in the spectrum between male and female, and the ones that are outside binary genders.
Undoubtedly, gender studies have redeemed women in the field of peacebuilding by openly stating and denouncing gender based violence during the conflicts, but more importantly, by exposing the intrinsic nature of women as peacemakers and change actresses (Popov-Momčinović, 2018, p. 222); in spite of this fact, the spectrum of gender studies should be as broad as the existing spectrum of gender identities. The disregard of non-traditional gender identities implies that the making of targeted policies is harder. Furthermore, when there is no recognition of certain demographic groups there will not be any research regarding the role of these people from different parts of society, including NGOs, social leaders, reconciliation projects, etc.. Also, as mentioned before, one of the important tasks related to gender studies in peacebuilding, include the recognition of the victims.
As a manner of conclusion, this essay has analysed several perspectives to explain why the gender studies in peacebuilding need to change: Firstly, the cis/hetero/patriarchy need to be identified as an impediment to achieving a sustainable peace, as it can be considered a deeply rooted form of structural violence. Secondly, the recognition of non-traditional gender identities permits gender studies to make a more thorough explanation of the phenomena it concerns.
Bibliography
Butler, J. (2017). El género en disputa (3rd ed.). Madrid: Paidós.
Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191. http://www.jstor.org/stable/422690
Lederach, J. P. (1998). Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington, DC.
Popov-Momčinović, Z. (2021). Peacebuilding in divided society from gender perspective [PowerPoint slides]. Moodle@Peace Academy. https://www.mirovna-akademija.org/cms/
Popov-Momčinović, Z. (2018). Žene i procesi pomirenja u Bosni i Hercegovini: Izazov rodnim ulogama, usta(nov)ljenim narativima i performativnim praksama S osvrtom na religiju. Sarajevo: Fondacija CURE : Centar za empirijska istraživanja religije u Bosni i Hercegovini. https://kvinnatillkvinna.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/12-Patriotism-and-patriarchy-ENG.pdf
Schirch, L. (2004). Women in Peacebuilding Resource & Training Manual (1st ed.). Eastern Mennonite University.
Silva, R. (2015). En que consiste el modelo heteropatriarcal. Actualidad Política y cultural. http://rafaelsilva.over-blog.es/2015/09/en-que-consiste-el-modelo-heteropatriarcal-i.html
