Women's Rights After War: On Gender Interventions and Enduring Hierarchies

Abstract

Postwar recovery efforts foreground gender equality as a key component of building more liberal democracies. This review explores the burgeoning scholarship on women's rights after war, first grappling with war as a period of possibility for building new gender-inclusive institutions. We review efforts in three arenas: increasing women's political representation in postwar democratic transitions; improving access to justice for women through the extension of property rights and bodily autonomy within systems of carceral justice; and integrating women into labor markets and security sectors through various components of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. Yet these inclusionary efforts have too often sought to dismantle one form of oppression (gender inequality) without challenging others. We document how projects to center women in liberal democratic reforms following war inadvertently overlook other manifestations of violence at the core of these institutions.