ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of women's movements in Northern Ireland and Lebanon. It explores two interconnected phases of women's mobilization in peace processes. The first phase involves women mobilizing to encourage the warring militias and government leaders to cease violence and enter into peace negotiations. The second phase occurs in the aftermath of the peace agreement and during the consolidation of formalized ethnic power sharing. The chapter highlights the contrast between Lebanese women's movements that are co-opted and reproduce political sectarianism and those that participate in various forms of mobilization strategies to eradicate it. A cross-cleavage feminist movement in Northern Ireland was slow to develop as nationalist and unionist women constructed gender politics in relation to their ethnonational identities. Activists began to realize that a successful feminist movement in Northern Ireland would inevitably recognize and accommodate members with conflicting ethnonational aspirations.
