ABSTRACT
The gap between promises of a more gender-equal future and realities on the ground during and after conflicts has become a critical concern of feminist security scholars and many policy makers. Indeed, as Sondra Hale laments, “It does not bode well for any group of liberated women in a post-revolutionary situation that to date, no liberation or revolutionary war, no matter how progressive its ideology regarding the emancipation of women – from Russia and China to Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, and the Palestinian intifada – has empowered women and men to maintain an emancipating atmosphere for women after the military struggle and brief honeymoon are over.”1 More recent conflicts in Africa have also produced little change in post-conflict gender relations.2 In Latin America, the “temporary guerrilla femininities” that emerged during conflicts in Peru, Colombia and El Salvador have been systematically undermined by patriarchal mechanisms that were “adapted, reinstalled and perpetuated in transitional contexts.”3 Similar scenarios have emerged around the world.4
