Rising from Conflict? : A Quantitative Analysis of Power Shifts in Gender and Marginalized Groups Following Armed Conflict

Sammanfattning

Armed conflicts are often associated with profound social and political transformations,including shifts in power relations that may affect women and other marginalized groups.While existing research has examined the gendered consequences of conflict, less is knownabout how political empowerment evolves in the period following conflict termination acrossdifferent dimensions of empowerment.This study examines whether the political empowerment of women and other marginalizedgroups changes in the years following the end of armed conflict. Using cross-national data onarmed conflict termination and political empowerment indicators, the study comparesaverage levels of political empowerment before and after conflict termination and contraststhese changes with broader temporal trends observed during non-conflict periods. Theanalysis is descriptive in nature and does not claim causal identification.The study employs a difference-in-differences–inspired comparative framework to assesspost-conflict changes in political empowerment relative to broader temporal developments.The findings indicate substantial cross-national variation in post-conflict empowermenttrajectories, suggesting that post-conflict periods may be associated with shifts in politicalinclusion, but not in a uniform or deterministic manner.The results show modest post-conflict increases in political empowerment across threedimensions—gender, social group, and socioeconomic position—with the most consistentpatterns observed for women’s political empowerment. However, these changes are notstatistically robust, and similar trends are observed during non-conflict periods. Takentogether, the findings suggest that while conflict termination may create openings consistentwith theories of structural disruption and political transition, such openings do notsystematically translate into political empowerment across groups or contexts.