'You will go far but no further': Applying a gendered lens to the women peace and security agenda in post-conflict Liberia

Abstract

This thesis explores how the UN Women Peace and Security (WPS) policy, formalised in UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) and expanded in an additional eight resolutions, is developed and implemented at the global, national and local levels of political action. In particular, the thesis builds on the scholarly literature that demonstrates how the language of the resolutions and in particular feminist concepts of gender, can inhibit the transformative aspirations of the feminist project embodied in the production of the WPS policy. These aspirations centre on the notable achievement of placing gender on the international security agenda and the disruption of the male norm in international security discourse. Recognising that various strands of feminism inform the text of the WPS policy (Pratt 2013), the central argument of this thesis contends that the way gender is constructed in WPS policy, at the global, national and local levels, can enable and constrain its practical outcomes within the post-conflict context. The thesis recognises the link between gender constructs and policy outcomes, theorising an alternative explanation for the slow implementation of the WPS agenda. It does this through applying the analytical tool of the three-legged gender stool where each leg of the stool represents a different gender perspective (gender-as-equality, gender-as-difference, gender-as-diversity) based upon the feminist equality/ difference debates and the emergence of a diversity/intersectional approach (Booth and Bennett 2002). As an analytical tool, the gender stool demonstrates how sites of gender inequality are addressed in distinctive ways, depending on which gender perspective informs the individual policy clauses and the strategies for their implementation. It also recognises how the gender perspectives are interconnected, encouraging the view that the broader agenda for gender equality should be informed by a mix of gender perspectives within the context of country specific gender equality practice history (Booth and Bennett 2002). This thesis argues that the conceptual understanding that different gender perspectives shape the global WPS policy has real implications for its implementation in post-conflict settings where political, economic and social structures have been devastated, creating a window of opportunity to transform traditional inequality regimes (Meintjes, Turshen and Pillay 2001). Fieldwork conducted in Liberia (2014) provides the post-conflict context to explore how different gender perspectives can both positively and negatively impact the WPS implementation outcomes at the local level. Dialogues with respondents provide insight into how ‘everyday’ experiences of peace and security in Liberia are shaped by the construction of gender in the global WPS policy, national frameworks and local practice. Within the post-conflict landscape, while traditional gender norms can be unsettled, change is constrained by a number of factors. In particular, the translation of global policy into local practice is impacted by the liberal peacebuilding project and donor-country agendas, which are layered on top of local notions of gender, creating a complex web of competing and contradictory perspectives and outcomes. The gender stool analysis undertaken reveals that a gender-as-difference perspective is predominant at the global, national and local levels, supported by a gender-as-equality perspective, closely aligning to the strands of feminism that Pratt identifies in the production of UNSCR 1325 (2013: 773-774). Interestingly, the analysis reveals that while a gender-as-difference perspective is predominant at all three levels, the implications of focusing primarily on a difference perspective engenders diverse implementation outcomes depending on which level (global, national or local) is invoking that perspective.