Suchergebnisse

Theories of social movement emergence posit "threat" as an important concept in explanations of mobilization. This article uses the case of the 1994 Rwandan genocide to investigate whether threats that stem from mass violence can also have a mobilizing effect. Drawing from interviews with 152 women in Rwanda, I reveal how threatening conditions created by the genocide and civil war initiated a grassroots mobilization process among women. This mobilization featured women founding and joining community organizations, engaging in new forms of claims making toward state institutions, and eventually running for political office. Two mechanisms facilitated this process: the social appropriation of feminine values for the reconceptualization of women as legitimate political actors, and the brokerage of connections between individual women, organizations, and government institutions by foreign actors. I conclude by suggesting that this mobilization served as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the meteoric rise of women in Rwanda's politics.

There is an emerging consensus that women must play a more substantial role in transformations from violence to stability. The UN Women, Peace, and Security framework recognizes the unique challenges women face during war and affirms the important role they play in the prevention and resolution of conflicts. Despite this framework and other related efforts, peace remains elusive for many who have lived through armed conflict. What prevents formal, internationally led peacebuilding efforts from fostering sustainable peace in ordinary citizens' lives? Put differently, despite the variety of peacebuilding mechanisms offered, what prevents peace from taking hold, for women in particular? In this paper, we focus on two postwar cases: Bosnia and Nepal. Drawing on interviews with more than seventy women in both countries, we identify five barriers that prevent women from feeling at peace in their daily lives: economic insecurity, competing truths, hierarchies of victimhood, continuums of violence, and spatial and temporal dislocation. We conclude by outlining ways that women in both countries work to overcome those barriers by pioneering innovations in peacebuilding, which may reveal possibilities for future interventions.

AbstractExtensive research has affirmed the potential of gender quotas to advance women's political inclusion. When Kenya's gender quota took effect after a new constitution was promulgated in 2010, women were elected to the highest number of seats in the country's history. In this article, we investigate how the process of implementing the quota has shaped Kenyan women's power more broadly. Drawing on more than 80 interviews and 24 focus groups with 140 participants, we affirm and refine the literature on quotas by making two conceptual contributions: (1) quota design can inadvertently create new inequalities among women in government, and (2) women's entry into previously male-dominated spaces can be met with patriarchal backlash, amplifying gender oppression. Using the ongoing process of quota implementation in Kenya as a case to theoretically question inclusionary efforts to empower women more generally, our analysis highlights the challenges for implementing women's rights laws and policies and the need for women's rights activists to prioritize a parallel bottom-up process of transforming gendered power relations alongside top-down institutional efforts.