Is there a right time for gender-just peace? Feminist anti-war organising revisited

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper addresses the question of totalising gender-power relations that have led to and shaped the wars of the 1990s in Yugoslavia and the emerging ethno-national states on the ‘periphery’ of Europe. I argue that the same type of gender-power relations continue to dominate the region, notably Serbia, and to perpetuate gender inequalities and gender-based violence (GBV) in its many everyday and structural forms, causing profound levels of human insecurity. This analysis aims to set in motion a debate around how to tackle these continuing gender inequalities and GBV in post-war societies. In so doing, I propose a shift from focusing on the hierarchy of victimisation that has characterised much of the feminist analyses, activism, and scholarly work in relation to these (and other) conflicts, to a relational understanding of the gendered processes of victimisation in war and peace, that is – of both women and men. Such an approach holds a potential to undermine the power systems that engender these varied types of victimisation by ultimately reshaping the notions of masculinity and femininity, which are central to the gender-power systems that generate gender-unjust peace.