A Pending Revolution: Continuity and Change in Gender Orders After War in Colombia

• In Event: 50455 - Open Session on Issues in Peace, War and Social Conflict

Abstract

Research on gender and war has documented how conflicts have the potential for postwar gender transformation and how they can be detrimental or beneficial for women ex-combatants. However, most of these studies do not account for a theory of change or persistence in postwar gender orders. Similarly, research has not analyzed the links between war and gender transformation by following up on women ex-combatants in transitional times and spheres other than in public life. I fill these gaps by looking at both the organizational and household spaces of ex-combatants of the FARC (former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which shows a more nuanced picture of the effects of wars on gender orders, allowing for the development of mechanisms of change at the micro- and meso-levels. In this paper, I ask how and to what extent war gender orders change during ex-combatants' transition to peacetime and what processes explain these changes. I draw on 112 interviews and ethnographic observations carried out in eight zones in Colombia during 2018-2019 and 2022-2023. I found that, unlike in their time in the war, today, women are the primary caretakers in domestic and organizational spheres, while couples are engaged in traditional domestic decision-making. However, the transition opened possibilities for semi-egalitarian decision-making in organizational spaces. Three mechanisms explain continuity and change in postwar gender orders: the disruptions of sacred gender beliefs during the war, the dismantlement of gendered guerrilla organization, and the legacies of war-gendered hierarchies.

Author

• Natalia Duarte-Mayorga, University of Pittsburgh