ABSTRACT
We are overwhelmed with information about countries undergoing transition from conflict to post-conflict status with the assistance of the international community. Importantly, such a transition is not always a move from war to peace – consider Afghanistan, the Congo, Iraq, or arguably Sudan – but instead, from conflict to less conflict. In this chapter we seek to explore the role that gender plays in the construction and implementation of the post-conflict transitional process. We focus on examining the gendered dimensions of societies emerging from extreme, systematic and institutional violence by multiple parties. Our question in regard to all of these countries, in all of these varying transition processes, is what we term ‘the gender question’. Where are women to be seen, and how are they visible within the processes that define and shape the cessation of communal violence? How should peace processes approach the forms of masculinity that dominate in situations of endemic violence? How should peace processes address the emergence of ‘hyper’ masculinity in such contexts? What does the absence of gender signify, and how does such absence affect the substance of any particular agreement (whether local or international) to end violence? How does the failure to properly ask and answer ‘the gender question’ undermine the short-, mediumand long-term reconstruction of post-conflict societies?
