ABSTRACT
The literature on peacebuilding and women is clear. Women continue to be excluded from formal peacemaking structures and institutions, to be the targets of gender-based violence and to suffer disproportionality from large scale organized violence as both direct victims and from the insecurities that result from displacement, poverty, and the destruction of family and community. The discourse on women as peacebuilding leaders often presents women as peacemakers by virtue of their nature and/or roles as mothers. Essentializing women as natural peacemakers is often coupled with a dualistic gender representation of women as victims and men as warriors/saviors. Women are victims who need to be saved. Women’s access to leadership and power is often contingent upon relationships with men. Poverty, violence, and structural inequalities may make it virtually impossible for women to move into public spaces that render traditional masculine defined forms of leadership visible.
