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Title [sv]
Kvinnor, krigstrauma och fredsbyggande: en studie av attityder i Sierra Leone och Liberia
Title [en]
Women, War Trauma, and Peace Building: Gendered Attitudes in Sierra Leone and Liberia
Abstract [sv]
The ´women and peace´ hypothesis has long been an important influence in both scholarly and popular thinking around gender and conflict, suggesting that women hold more pacific attitudes than men. However, this hypothesis has until recently never been studied in countries that have been torn by internal armed conflict. Building on findings from a recent study on Rwanda, the present proposal suggests, counter to the hypothesis, that due to the different types and levels of trauma exposure women and men are subjected to in war, women will have significantly more negative attitudes than men to issues of relevance for peacebuilding. In essence, we suggest that there is a gendered effect on peacebuilding attitudes that go through exposure to war-related trauma and psychological health. Using a cross-disciplinary approach, combining peace research with psychology, this project will conduct surveys, focus groups, and in depth interviews in Sierra Leone and Liberia, to explore the challenges of and attitudes towards post-conflict peacebuilding among women and men. The project will make a unique contribution theoretically but also practically by increasing our knowledge of women´s and men´s experiences of and attitudes to peacebuilding in post-conflict settings, and the reasons for these attitudes, which will provide critical information for understanding the challenges of peace-building, and ultimately for improving the prospects for peace.
Publications (1 of 1) Show all publications
Brounéus, K., Forsberg, E., Bhattarai, P., de Mel, N., Lonergan, K., Peiris, P., . . . Wanasinghe-Pasqual, M. (2024). Women, peace and insecurity: The risks of peacebuilding in everyday life for women in Sri Lanka and Nepal. PLOS ONE, 19(5), Article ID e0303023.
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Women, peace and insecurity: The risks of peacebuilding in everyday life for women in Sri Lanka and Nepal
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2024 (English)In: PLOS ONE, E-ISSN 1932-6203, Vol. 19, no 5, article id e0303023Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Truth telling processes, initiatives to prosecute war-time perpetrators, and ex-combatant reintegration are examples of common peacebuilding practices after war. Yet, little is known of how women are affected by peacebuilding initiatives such as these, or how they perceive these initiatives for peace. For many women, peace after war does not bring peace to everyday life; research shows that domestic violence increases during and after war. In addition, some peacebuilding measures have been found to increase risk and insecurity, not least for women. To better understand the interconnections between gender and post-conflict attitudes to peacebuilding, we asked 2,041 women and men in Sri Lanka and Nepal of their views on post-war peace initiatives. In line with our expectations, we find that women are more skeptical than men towards peacebuilding measures that involve increased risk in everyday life, such as truth-telling and coexisting with former adversaries and warring groups reintegrating in local communities. There are no gender differences pertaining to peacebuilding initiatives that take place far away at the national level, for example, concerning accountability or, in the case of Nepal, the peace agreement. Our findings suggest that international peacebuilding practice is blind to the everyday insecurities of women after war. That a basic gendered lens is missing from most peacebuilding designs is both alarming and deeply troubling, but identifying this critical aspect provides the opportunity for imperative change. By shedding light on the challenges women face after war, we hope this article contributes to finding ways to mitigate unknown and unintended side-effects of peacebuilding efforts, and thereby to the development of better, evidence-based peacebuilding practice–of benefit to both men and women.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2024
Keywords
War and civil unrest, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Peacebuilding, Violence
National Category
Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Research subject
Peace and Conflict Research
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-530094 (URN)10.1371/journal.pone.0303023 (DOI)001236995300017 ()38809820 (PubMedID)
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 348-2014-03780
Available from: 2024-05-31 Created: 2024-05-31 Last updated: 2024-08-16Bibliographically approved
Principal InvestigatorBrounéus, Karen
Coordinating organisation
Uppsala University
Funder
Period
2015-01-01 - 2018-12-31
National Category
Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Identifiers
DiVA, id: project:5503Project, id: 2014-03780_VR