Negotiating Women’s Representation

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Abstract

A number of recent studies on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) highlight the latent potential of peace processes to improve women’s security situations (e.g. Anderson and Swiss 2014; Chingono 2015; Arostegui 2013). This potential, however, has not yet consistently materialized in concrete measures to ensure women’s comprehensive security in post-conflict states. This paper examines the effects of including women in peace negotiations on one facet of women’s security in post-conflict states: political representation.

Women’s political representation is not only an important component of women’s security in and of itself, it is also correlated with reduced violence and prolonged peace in general (for example in Caprioli and Boyer 2001; Demeritt et al. 2014; Melander 2005). While studies have found that conflict presents an opportunity for improvements in women’s political empowerment (e.g. Hughes 2009) and that ending conflict with a negotiated settlement improves women’s representation more than other means of conflict resolution (e.g. Shair-Rosenfield and Wood 2017), there remains substantial variation in this outcome among post-conflict states over the past 30 years. This paper argues that local women’s active participation in peace processes is a key factor in improving women’s representation in national legislatures in post-conflict states. Using a novel dataset of peace processes from 1991 to 2018, I conduct multivariate linear regression analysis to reveal the effects of local women’s participation in peace negotiations, international pressure, and demographic change during conflict on the change in women’s political representation in post-conflict states. I then review two case studies to examine qualitatively the roles local women played in securing large improvements in women’s political representation in Burundi, and the obstacles they faced in failing to achieve that goal in the DRC.

Author

• Kristen Aanstoos, University of California, Irvine