S-CAR's Center for the Study of Gender and Conflict

Over the past decade, gender has emerged as a core global issue for the conflict analysis and resolution field. In 2000, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1325, calling for the integration of gender issues into all levels of peacebuilding practice as well as increased attention to the needs of women in conflict zones. Today, virtually all major international organizations engaged in conflict prevention and resolution incorporate gender into their projects, and a slate of international conventions, laws, and networks exist to promote attention to gender issues as key dimensions of conflict.

And yet, a quick glance around the peacebuilding arena reveals that there is still tremendous work to be done. Research by UN Women found that less than 8% of recent Track One negotiating teams included women, with less than 3% of peace agreements involving women signatories. Despite an abundance of evidence demonstrating the specific effects of armed conflict on women civilians and combatants, a similarly scant number of formal agreements address issues of central concern to women, including the prevalence of sexual assault as a strategy of warfare, the challenges women face reintegrating into societies in the aftermath of conflict, or the need to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment as central to thriving local mechanisms of conflict resolution. Peacebuilding work at the Track Two and grassroots levels has, arguably, gone further in integrating gender issues into programming, yet it has been slow to move past a paradigm that sees women as simply victims of conflicts waged by “men with guns,” rather than powerful social actors in their own right.

Perhaps even more troubling, our practices of conflict resolution have lagged behind our theorizing when it comes to recognizing that gender is not just about paying attention to women’s needs and potential, but deepening our understanding of how cultural and historical frameworks of masculinity and femininity help shape our sense of the possible. The field has overwhelmingly tended to reduce “gender” to “women,” which has helped keep the systemic exclusions undergirding structural violence invisible and blocked our engagement with some of the most exciting theoretical developments within gender studies. Innovative means of addressing the underlying power dynamics that marginalize women, the GLBTQ community, and other historically subjugated populations are needed to extend S-CAR’s long and vibrant tradition of exploring and addressing the structural roots of conflict.

This fall, S-CAR’s Dean and Faculty Board approved the creation of a new Center for the Study of Gender and Conflict (CGC). The CGC will seek to bridge these gaps, and serve as a link between the academy and the field to deepen and expand our understanding of the gendered dimensions of conflict. Building upon a decade of intensive faculty-student engagement in gender-related work at S-CAR, the CGC is positioned to become a global thought leader in an increasingly important field of concern. Recognizing that gender impacts all facets of life, the CGC represents not a boundary marking off a specialized set of interests, but a true center point around which a diverse group of faculty, students and international partners can cohere and collaborate.

The potentials of the CGC can be seen in the work undertaken by its affiliated faculty and students. This semester, we have undertaken several major initiatives, including securing and disseminating funding for students to present original research at conferences, co-sponsoring, along with the Center for Narrative and Conflict Resolution, a discussion with Vivienne Jabri following the Annual Lynch Lecture, and hosting an innovative “moderated conversation” panel on Gender and Genocide in collaboration with the Genocide Prevention Program. The Gender and Genocide event is the first in the CGC’s “Intersections” moderated conversation series. Each semester we will bring together members of the S-CAR community with leading gender scholars from around the world to push the theoretical boundaries on emergent issues. The moderated conversation, which is being held November 28, 2012 at S-CAR’s 7th floor atrium, illustrates both the collaborative partnerships CGC is committed to, as well as the potentials of applying gendered analytical frameworks. The conversation will move beyond discussions of sexual violence in war to explore gender as a central element that foments and justifies genocide. Our own Dean Andrea Bartoli will be joined by guest scholars Adam Jones, executive director of Gendercide Watch, and scholars from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience.

The CGC has also begun to collaborate with a range of partners to expand our theoretical and practical work. Along with S-CAR alumna Dr. Maneshka Eliatamby and S-CAR Ph.D. student Johnny Mack and their organization, Communities Without Boundaries International, we are developing a capacity-building program for grassroots peacebuilders that will offer students valuable experience working on gender issues in field settings. Directly undertaking a consultative role, we were invited to submit a working paper to the UN to assist in thinking through their agenda once the Millennium Development Goals draw to a close in 2015. Along with Dr. Thomas Flores and Dr. Sandra Cheldelin, we delivered a paper arguing for a need to innovate our measures of inequality, moving past the neoliberal assumptions that reduce equality and empowerment to narrow economic indicators. We will continue to build these external partnerships as a way to both expand our own base of knowledge and create a pipeline to employment for our graduating students.

In parallel with these public initiatives, much of the work that we believe will build S-CAR into the leading global institution for studying gender and conflict will happen in our classrooms. The increasing attention to gender in conflict at the UN, USIP, and other organizations has led to a need for highly skilled practitioners and scholars—a need that CGC is uniquely positioned to address. Over the next twelve months, we will be increasing our curricular offerings on gender and conflict research, theory, and practice. Through our specialized courses, along with the efforts we have undertaken to increase our students’ engagement in organizations working in the field, and our collaborations with scholars around the globe, the CGC is well poised to train and inspire the next generation of gender scholars and practitioners.