Suchergebnisse

A recent call by some feminist conflict mediation practitioners proposes to rename power-sharing: either by prioritizing sharing over power or by replacing 'power' with the word 'responsibility'. The purpose of these discursive reformulations is to move beyond just adding women to power-sharing institutions; instead, these proposals signal a desire to promote inclusion through a feminist emphasis on sharing in power-sharing systems above a masculinist emphasis on power. Inspired by these proposals and reflecting on the experiences of gender mediation experts, I work through critical feminist theories of intersectionality and feminist empowerment to show how power-sharing theory can be reimagined so that power is not just understood as coercive or as a finite resource that can only be divided between a limited number of privileged groups; rather, power can also be productive, as well as a central feature of all hierarchical relationships. I also explore how a feminist care ethic can offer alternative ways of conceiving of sharing in governance. My objective is to demonstrate how feminist approaches can provide a new language of both power and sharing to illuminate pathways through the 'exclusion amid inclusion' dilemma in power-sharing theory.

Feminist cross-community initiatives, which emerged in Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine in the 1980s, are frequently lauded in the gender and conflict literature as evidence of the ways in which women can work across ethnonational boundaries. In particular, the theory of 'transversal dialogue', developed by Nira Yuval-Davis and adopted by other feminist scholars and activists, suggests that participants have developed a mode of dialogue that enables them to acknowledge differences while developing common goals. In ethicized conflict, transversal politics is understood as an alternative to the essentializing of 'identity politics' as well as their undemocratic character. The empirical research, however, suggests that identity politics remains relevant for participants, particularly when cross-community dialogue is limited by external political realities and internal community divisions. In my view, understanding the ways in which identity politics contributes to the development of feminist goals related to women's inclusion in peace processes and post-conflict peace-building is not at odds with transversal politics; rather, women use both modes of politics to build feminist networks and tackle women's marginalization in hyper-masculinized and militarized zones of ethnicized conflict. Adapted from the source document.