Gender Empowerment and United Nations Peacebuilding
| Author | Theodora-Ismene Gizelis |
| Published date | 01 July 2009 |
| Date | 01 July 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0022343309334576 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
505
© The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions:
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vol. 46, no. 4, 2009, pp. 505 –523
Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,
Singapore and Washington DC) http://jpr.sagepub.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343309334576
Gender Empowerment and United Nations
Peacebuilding*
THEODORA-ISMENE GIZELIS
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent
Previous studies have suggested that societies where women have higher social and economic status
and greater political representation are less likely to become involved in conflict. In this article, the
author argues that the prospects for successful post-conflict peacebuilding under the auspices of the
United Nations (UN) are generally better in societies where women have greater levels of empower-
ment. Women’s status in a society reflects the existence of multiple social networks and domestic capac-
ity not captured by purely economic measures of development such as GDP per capita. In societies
where women have relatively higher status, women have more opportunities to express a voice in the
peacemaking process and to elicit broader domestic participation in externally led peacekeeping opera-
tions. This higher level of participation in turn implies that UN Peacekeeping operations can tap into
great social capital and have better prospects for success. An empirical analysis of post-conflict cases with
a high risk of conflict recurrence shows that UN peacekeeping operations have been significantly more
effective in societies in which women have relatively higher status. By contrast, UN peacekeeping opera-
tions in countries where women have comparatively lower social status are much less likely to succeed.
Introduction
Research on post-conflict settlement empha-
sizes how societies must overcome the danger
of sliding back into violence (see e.g. Doyle &
Sambanis, 2000; Walter, 2002). The ability
to maintain a stable peace hinges on a coun-
try’s abilities to construct well-functioning
political institutions and vibrant civil soci-
ety. In particular, Doyle & Sambanis (2000)
have found that peacekeeping operations
tend to be more successful in fostering peace
in societies that are able to democratize, and
where higher levels of economic develop-
ment enhance the strength of institutions
and decrease scarcity as a source of conflict.
In this article, I extend work on the social
requisites of peacebuilding by focusing on the
relationship between female empowerment
and United Nations (UN) driven peace-
building operations. Research on gender and
development has shown that providing basic
rights and entitlements to women can have
large positive effects on economic develop-
ment (Barro, 1997; Sen, 1999; Byrne, 1995,
1996). Moreover, researchers have shown that
female empowerment reflects a dimension
of domestic capacity and development that
is distinct from, and partly independent of,
economic development as per capita income
(see Hughes, 2001; Caprioli, 2003).1
* I would like to thank Victor Asal, Han Dorussen, Joshua
Goldstein, Birger Heldt, Peter Trumbore, Nicholas Sambanis,
David Sanders, and Leonard Wantchekon for very useful
comments. The data used in this article can be found at http://
www.prio.no/jpr/datasets. The analysis was conducted using
STATA version 8. Correspondence: I.Gizelis@kent.ac.uk.
1 Caprioli (2000) argued that societies that afford women
greater equality and greater political representation are less
likely to become involved in violent confl ict with other
states, while Melander (2005a) argued that societies with
greater equality tend to have greater protection of human
rights.
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 46 / number 4 / july 2009
506
I argue that a society where women do
comparatively better will have improved
prospects for successful peacebuilding opera-
tions under the auspices of the UN, because
it is easier for women to express a voice in the
peacemaking process and to elicit broader
domestic participation. Operations under
the UN have many advantages that can help
strengthen the effectiveness of peacebuild-
ing efforts, but the promise of these efforts
will depend on a society’s domestic capacity
and social capital. I examine empirically how
the relative status of women can enhance the
effectiveness of UN peacemaking operations
in a comparative analysis of post-conflict
situations with a high risk of conflict recur-
rence after 1945.
My findings suggest that the effectiveness
of UN peacekeeping operations is increased
by the relative status of women: whereas
United Nations peacekeeping has good pros-
pects for success in countries where the status
of women is comparatively high relative to
men prior to the conflict, operations in states
where women have poor social standing rela-
tive to men are much more likely to fail.
United Nations and Peacebuilding
Traditional UN peacekeeping operations
aimed at securing that neither party in a
conflict situation would violate a political
agreement and refrain from the use of direct
violence (Goulding, 1993). The end of the
Cold War, however, brought a fivefold
increase in UN peacekeeping operations
and the evolution of traditional peacekeep-
ing operations into more comprehensive
peacebuilding missions. Diminished strate-
gic competition between the major powers
in the 1990s stimulated demands for stron-
ger human rights protection in international
law and calls for limits to state sovereignty.
Similarly, a new neo-liberal internationalism
gained ground, especially among practitio-
ners in international relations, emphasizing
the connection among underdevelopment,
lack of democratic institutions, and human
rights violations (Duffield, 2001). Whereas
states have traditionally intervened in other
states’ domestic affairs primarily to defend
their strategic interests, humanitarian con-
cerns, such as preventing human suffer-
ing in severe civil wars, have increasingly
become cited as a rationale for involvement
in other states, as witnessed by interven-
tions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and
Somalia. Thus, protecting human rights
and fostering political settlements have
increasingly become central objectives in
peacekeeping operations. The concept
of peacebuilding, which is the main con-
cern in this article, is incorporated into
second- and third-generation peacekeep-
ing operations (PKOs) (Goulding, 1993).
Second- and third-generation PKOs seek
to assist the implementation of agree-
ments and settlements and/or engage in
peace enforcement to protect humanitar-
ian concerns, which is a radical departure
from the initial neutral and limited scope of
first generation PKOs. Examples of second-
and third-generation peacebuilding opera-
tions include the UN Transition Assistance
Group (UNTAG) in Namibia, overseeing
the withdrawal of South Africa, the UN
Operation ( ONUMOZ) in Mozambique,
focusing on de-mining and policing, and
the UN Observer Mission (ONUSAL) in
El Salvador, which oversaw implementa-
tion of the peace agreement, reform of
the legal system, and the construction of a
new civilian police force. As a result of
this turn to peacebuilding, UN missions
have become more comprehensive, while
long- established forms of conflict manage-
ment and security have become inadequate
responses at best and obsolete at worst
(Martin & Mayer-Rieckh, 2005).
Progress and advances in conflict reso-
lution methodology and theory offer new
tools and perspectives on UN missions.
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