Are Women Peacekeepers More Effective Than Men?

Another way to ask the question posed in the headline is: does it really matter if women or men make and maintain peace? According to a growing consensus among experts in the fields, it does, to the extent that the United Nations has intensified selective recruitment of women peacemakers for missions globally.

If women have earned themselves the highest positions in business and government, surely they can in peacemaking. But the gender theories upon which these research-backed decisions are made are highly controversial if also well-intentioned, and raise issues best thought through if not resolved before entering battlefields, no matter what your genitalia.

The biosophical logic is that because men are "naturally" more aggressive due to higher levels of adrenalin and testosterone, women have had to gain skills in reconciliation and relationship-maintenance, which makes them better peacemakers today. Another explanation is that men tend to act more considerately when women are present no matter what their roles.

Acknowledging, respecting or subverting (as the case may be) the power asymmetries between men and women is usually key to all gendered peacemaking theories to some degree. Yet another is that women are "naturally" more docile and so have a deep-seated penchant toward nonviolence, and concomitant social skills, men generally lack (enter typecasts of LGBT people here). Of course, all of these gender theories rest on stereotypes of men and women that beg to be, and often are, broken.

Nevertheless, some major U.S. and global peace organizations, like the International Fellowship of Reconciliations (IFOR), strongly believe that gender cannot be overlooked if peacemaking ventures are to be successful. They held a workshop on "Exploring Masculinities, Violence and Peace" late last year, and part of its official statement reads:

"Gender lies at the root of war and peace and it is increasingly being recognized that issues of masculinities need to be addressed in the field of peacebuilding and active nonviolence. WPP is convinced that in order to transform cultures of war and violence, women peace activists need to work together with male allies on these issues."

In response, IFOR has organized a Women Peacemakers Program (WPP) upon the belief that "programs that specifically empower women peacemakers, and encourage women and girls to become involved in peacebuilding and civil society building, are essential for development." Such gender-specific programs generally hold that women's role in peace processes start before wars begin and continue into the peacebuilding or nation-building process, as in Liberia. Other organizations have held for even longer that women have a unique and irreplaceable role to play in peace processes.

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), founded by another Chicagoan and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jane Addams, meant to attract women often excluded from peace activism into the organized peace movements of the 20th century. Among the WILPF's greatest successes was championing the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security, the first resolution passed by the Security Council that specifically addresses the impact of war on women, and women's contributions to conflict resolution and sustainable peace.

"Building Bridges, Crossing Borders: Gender, Identity, and Security in the Search for Peace," is the theme of this year's annual conference of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, co-sponsored with Canadian Mennonite University’s Menno Simons College and the University of Winnipeg Global College in Manitoba, Canada, to be held October 1-2, 2010. Perhaps the most pressing role women as peacemakers are playing is "building bridges" between women themselves in war and post-war zones, networks of survival and empowerment fueled by women-focused initiatives in microlending, education and health care. It is also important to note that there are few male-focused programs and conferences, presumably because "they all are" except these ones.

So while it is too early (some would say, narrow-minded) to say whether women are more effective peacemakers than men, it is safe to assert that having both men and women in peace processes dramatically changes their dynamics . And by all accounts, except those of the machismo persuasion who feel their masculinity is at stake and male supremacists who still believe women's place is in the kitchen, this is a welcome change opening possibilities for peace that have yet to be fully explored.

Photo credit: isafmedia (Afghan National Policewoman (ANP))