A weapon for a seat? Militarised masculinities as a barrier to women's meaningful participation in peace processes

Sammanfattning

Despite efforts to include women in peace processes following the UN Resolution 1325, most peace negotiations remain male-dominated environments. Militarised masculinities have been increasingly highlighted as a potential barrier to women’s meaningful participation, but this claim has never been empirically investigated. This study fills this gap and argues that higher levels of militarised masculinities are likely to result in entrenched norms of protector-protected, legitimising men as the key actors in negotiations, resulting in exclusionary behaviours that preclude women’s meaningful participation. To test this, I construct an original index of militarised masculinities and test it on data recording women’s participation in intrastate peace processes from 1991 to 2020, finding directional support for my argument. A structured focused comparison of the Philippines-MILF negotiations in 2012-2014 and the Sri Lanka-LTTE negotiations in 2002-2003 using secondary sources and original interviews further supports the causal mechanism. An additional finding is that the nature of barriers to women’s participation may matter as much as their presence: interpersonal and ad-hoc barriers in the Philippines allowed for women to contest exclusion and influence the negotiations, while structural barriers in Sri Lanka precluded women’s participation from the start.