Women, Religion, Peace report with Berkley Center
(00021015).DOC
World Faiths Development Dialogue
Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and
The United States Institute for Peace
Women, Religion, and Peace: Exploring an Invisible Force
Katherine Marshall and Susan Hayward
December, 2010
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Introduction: Why can women be so invisible in the quest for
peace? Does it matter?2. Framing the issue: How should we define
peace and why is the definition relevant?
Box 1: Spotlight on women working for peace3. Women and
Peacebuilding
Womens different experience
Womens defining attributes
Box 2: Interfaith womens movement in Liberia employed tradition
and taboos in work for peace
Gender roles, characterizations, and stereotypes
4. Women and Religious Peacebuilding
The growing exploration of religion and peacebuilding
Women, religion, and peacebuilding
Religiously motivated peacebuilding
Womens marginalization in formal religious spaces
Religious leadership vs. religious representation
Opportunities for womens action in a religious context
Women in formal religious leadership roles
Box 3: Working with the Aleemat in the Philippines - Amina
Rasul-BernardoWomens organizations working to combat violence
Box 4: Confronting gender-based violence in DRC
Box 5: Intersecting womens networks and approaches in the midst
of war in Sri LankaBuilding stronger links between religious and
secular women
Box 6: Building bridges in Iraq: Manal Omar
Trauma healing and reconciliation work
Womens perspectives and priorities
Challenges for female religious peacebuilders
5. Priorities for Research and Action
Documenting experience, action and ideas
Supporting effective networks
Supporting work to challenge theological approaches that exclude
or downplay women
Other recommendations
Questions for reflection
Acknowledgements
Women, Religion, and Peace: Interviews cited
References cited
Women, Religion, and Peace: Exploring an Invisible Force
Preface/About the ReportWomens roles in the work of peace are
often neglected, as is the part played by religious institutions
and ideas. Where women and religion are engaged, the situation
borders on invisibility. To explore this largely unexplored
terrain, the United States Institute of Peace, the World Faiths
Development Dialogue (WFDD) and Georgetown Universitys Berkley
Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs launched an
initiative with a symposium July 7-8, 2010, at Georgetown
University. Its focus was the ways in which women inspired by or
linked to religious institutions and ideals work for and maintain
sustainable, positive peace. The symposium brought together
participants from several distinct fields and backgrounds,
practitioners, academics, and policy makers. The investigation also
involved a series of in-depth interviews with invited participants
and other leaders in the field, and drew on background research,
especially the experience of several programs, like the University
of San Diegos Women Peacemakers Program and the Tanenbaum Center
for Interreligious Understandings award programs, that seek
explicitly to highlight the peace work of women inspired by
religious ideas or communities.
This report highlights the initiatives main findings to date,
and in that sense has an interim, stocktaking character. The report
builds on the major themes that emerged from the interviews and
from the July 2010 exchange, and thus highlights the observations
and suggestions of those engaged in the dialogue. The interviews
that formed the basis of much of the exercise are available on the
Berkley Center website at
http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/projects/women-religion-and-peace-experience-perspectives-and-policy-implications.
The Berkley Center and USIP are working jointly to elaborate a
knowledge resources segment of their websites, to make available
relevant material:
http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/networks/women-religion-and-peaceSummary
While the role of religion in conflict and peacebuilding has
received greater attention in recent years, as has the role of
women in promoting peace, little attention has been given to the
intersection of women, religion, conflict, and peacebuilding.
Women involved in peacebuilding around the world often draw
inspiration, motivating frameworks, and active community roots from
religious sources, even if these are not formally acknowledged.
While women are often marginalized from formal religious spaces,
and from institutions and teachings of traditional religious
authority, they play important roles in shaping dominant religious
narratives and motivations and work creatively to build peace,
often unencumbered by institutional constraints. This is the case
across world regions and religious traditions. Women are also often
very involved in the implementation of religious peacebuilding
initiatives, though they may not receive the attention or credit
that their male clergy counterparts do.
The lack of attention to this intersection has led not only to
failures to understand fully the nature of conflict, but has hidden
from view potential avenues for resolving conflicts, promoting
post-conflict healing and reconciliation, and building sustainable
peace.
Women involved in peacebuilding work tend to gravitate toward
efforts that entail sustained interfaith relationship-building, and
approach peace work from a holistic perspective that highlights the
community.
Womens engagement in exploration of theological exploration of
both gender roles and paths towards peace offer the promise of
changing discourse and preconceptions about how women approach
political and social factors involved in conflict and peace.
Womens ability to reach across lines of difference in tense
environments, or to lead protests and mobilize communities, may be
due to the fact that they are seen as less threatening than men by
armed actors. Women often use their very invisibility or
non-threatening status to their advantage in building peace. Their
lack of visibility, however, has often meant lack of support from
outside sources, including resources and training.
1. Introduction: Why can women be so invisible in the quest for
peace? Does it matter?The roles that religious leaders and
communities play in conflict situations, both in instigating and
prolonging violence and in negotiating and building peace, are
attracting increasing attention from scholars and practitioners.
Likewise, womens roles as peacemakers and builders of peaceful
societies, together with special focus on the tragic patterns that
cast women as victims, are an active subject of study and policy
reflection. A focal point is Security Council Resolution 1325 on
women and peace and security. A burgeoning array of organizations
and movements highlight womens parts and potential, both in
thinking and taking action on peace. Yet a significant element,
namely women who work as part of religious institutions and
communities, or women whose primary inspiration is their faith, has
received little attention. This applies both to womens often unseen
roles and the work that they do, and to the fact that the religious
element involved is so little remarked.In much of the world and in
many contemporary faith traditions, formal religious leadership
tends to be heavily dominated by men, and so investigations of
religion and conflict have tended to focus on mens perspectives and
roles. This leadership pattern explains in large measure why womens
engagement in religious peacemaking is so often invisible in the
religious context; womens invisibility is accentuated by historical
tendencies of male domination in security matters. As one observer
noted, we should never forget that men dominate in violent
conflict. Thus it follows quite logically that womens perspectives,
needs, and unique leverage are often downplayed or ignored in the
design of traditional religious peacemaking initiatives. Even so,
many observers acknowledge that women often play critical roles in
conflict situations that extend far beyond their part as incidental
victims or even as special targets and instruments of violence.
Further, womens inspiration, motivating frameworks, and active
community roots often have faith dimensions, even if these are not
formally acknowledged.
Susan Hayward, USIP Program Officer in the Religion and
Peacemaking Center of Innovation, sets out the challenge:
There are many good organizations [in the secular peace field]
that have sought to get women at the peace table, and more deeply
and centrally involved in international affairs such as the
Institute for Inclusive Security or Women for Women. But the
analytical and visible field of religious peacemaking is behind the
curve here, I fear. Yet observing efforts on the ground, outside of
these elite dialogues, I have often discovered clear evidence of
women at work for peace, operating through their religious
communities. Its not a matter of women not being involved in
religious peacemaking its more a matter of their efforts not being
seen, supported, or analyzed.
It is the fundamental hypothesis of the project that the lack of
analysis on the intersection of women, religion and peace is an
important gap in thinking and action for peace. It has led not only
to failures to understand fully the nature of conflict, but has
hidden from view potential avenues for resolving conflicts,
promoting post-conflict healing and reconciliation, and building
sustainable peace.
2. Framing the issue: how should we define peace and why is the
definition relevant?
This exploration of contributions and perspectives of women of
faith to peace in the first instance highlighted a diversity of
views around what we should be talking about when we consider the
very topic of peace. Wrangling about the meaning of peace is not,
of course, new or unusual, but what came out repeatedly were two
firmly held views: (i) first, narrowly defining the work of peace
as centering on bringing armed groups into non-violent processes
fails to take into account the true elements that indeed make for a
peaceful society, and (ii) second, narrow definitions of peace
obscure womens roles and perspectives. Womens insights, especially
enriched by their understanding of religious motivation and
communities, were seen as potentially broadening and enriching the
very understanding of what is required to create peace.
A broader understanding of peace, what is often termed positive
peace, can be seen as essentially synonymous with social justice.
This suggests that women who are working on widely ranging topics
in the fields of development, public health, care for the
environment, and political advocacy should also be seen as working
for peace. An approach that includes these areas will encompass a
far larger group of women than those involved in narrower work for
peace. It draws in, for example, women who provide social services
or assistance to the needy and who engage in building or healing
local communities. Likewise, women who work on issues that seem far
removed from traditional conflict resolution but that promote
economic justice and the development of environments in which
individuals can thrive, such as microfinance, working to build
organizations that represent women working in the informal sector,
and promoting recycling, can be seen to be playing roles in
promoting positive peace. Violence outside of war and civil strife
was another focus; domestic violence and trafficking were
especially cited, as was human rights and human security. Give the
potentially conflicts linked to climate change, addressing
environmental justice issues is increasingly understood as
inextricably linked to work for long-term stability and peace. The
significant roles that women play as leaders in their local
communities and as part of international movements for peace,
whether fighting landmines or advocating for the implementation of
international human rights standards, are seen as an integral part
of peacebuilding.
Broadening this studys investigation of women, religion, and
peace to include such a large array of interventions has pitfalls.
The main risk is the potential loss of focus. However, many, if not
most, of the informants argued strongly for broad definitions of
peace, definitions that extend far beyond classic understandings of
peace as the absence of armed conflict. The argument is that this
broader definition is essential to a proper understanding of womens
roles.
The framing of work for peace by Dena Merriam, founder of the
Global Peace Initiative of Women, illustrates a broad definition
and approach:
By peace, we really mean that we are looking at consciousness
change and at underlying values. Thus we are looking at peace in
its broadest definition: the development of sustainable, inclusive,
balanced societies that are truly prototypes of more peaceful,
harmonious ways of living.
Expanding our definition of peace also allows us to understand
more fully the vital work that many women do as part of
peacebuilding. Joyce Dubensky, Executive Vice President and CEO of
the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding (see box 1),
reflects on the significance of a broader understanding: We have to
ask what happens if you take this broader definition? It does take
us to an understanding of peace that is much bigger than the
absence of war. What that means is that people, women, are doing
something everywhere, in very small villages and towns, at border
crossings, in so many places, and it helps us to look at all the
things people can do.
Ela Bhatt founded the Self Employed Womens Association (SEWA)
and in May, 2010 received the Niwano Peace Prize, whose criteria
center on faith inspiration and work for peace. She links the
pursuit of positive peace with the day-to-day actions of women. She
highlights the central role of community:
Peace is not about a lack of activities of war. It is not just
about general elections. Peace is substantive, lasting; it is about
life. It is about the ordinariness of life, how we understand each
other, share meals, and share courtyards. And that is what women
do. That very ordinariness and the kinds of livelihoods that so
many women pursue are absolutely central for life. That is what
keeps communities together.
Underlining this kind of comprehensive understanding of peace,
Scott Appleby, Director of the Kroc Institute for International
Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, insists on using the
term peacebuilding, rather than peacemaking or conflict resolution.
He thus highlights not only the multifaceted dimensions of work for
peace but its continuing and long term nature. As Appleby puts
it,
Peacebuilding is the envisioning, nurturing, and sustaining of
compassion-filled human relationships that are essential to
authentic human flourishing. Peace is never fully made, but always
being built.
Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, a peace practitioner from Kenya who has also
received many recognitions for her work for peace, including
recently the 2010 Hesse Peace Prize, gives a description of peace
that highlights its long-term nature and the broad and deep demands
of conflict resolution and of monitoring peace. Peace, she says,
should be seen as fragile as an egg, with conflict resolution just
the beginning of a process that needs care and nurture at every
stage:
An egg is life, delicate and fragile but if given the right
conditions, it gives life. Nurturing the fragile potential for
peace is crucial. During the negotiation phase and in the signing
of peace agreements, people think that is the end. Our lesson is
that it is just the beginning. So it is just like the chicken
producing her eggs: one has to nurture to bring to life the chicks,
and then continue to support and sustain them over their lives.
Ibrahims metaphor, like Applebys insistence on the continuum of
peacebuilding, suggests at a minimum a two-pronged framework of
analysis. One, the more traditional and narrow perspective, focuses
on conflict resolution, post conflict resolution, trauma healing,
and conflict prevention. The other positive peace extends to a
wider range of day-to-day life and activities outside the context
of violent conflict and wars. The complexities of this particular
side of peacebuilding extend beyond the circumstantial. The dual
approach underscores the well-appreciated understanding that
commitments to peace must be long-term and they must be
inclusive.
As conflict prevention and post-conflict healing emerge as
central challenges, the scope for looking at womens roles expands.
This complex but far richer approach to what is involved in
building peace puts new demands on an understanding of womens
roles. It takes into account a far wider spectrum of work by women.
Even where women are less engaged in the traditional peace
processes such as diplomatic negotiations, it argues that their
roles should be seen and respected as part of an integrated
continuum.
We thus need to recognize the range of approaches of what
constitutes peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding, and in
each setting make clear whether the focus is more on the classic
dimensions of conflict resolution or on the far broader challenge
of building societies where violence is well controlled and, more
positively, people and communities can thrive. This report examines
womens roles in negotiations in places like Northern Ireland and
Liberia, their absence from the negotiating tables in the Middle
East and elsewhere, their direct roles in conflict (soldiers and
suicide bombers), and grassroots mobilization (Israel-Palestine,
Sri Lanka, anti-nuclear and anti-landmine activism). Many speak
also to womens approaches to and work on the longer-term dimensions
of social justice and development work ranging from post-conflict
healing and reconstruction to education and opportunities.
Box 1: Spotlight on women working for peaceHonoring the work of
women who work to build sustainable peace is an important area of
action. At one level, several prominent peace prize processes seek
to ensure that women are not ignored in reviewing candidates for
various honors. Others see a need for affirmative effort to
identify and recognize women peacebuilders. Prominent examples
include the Right Livelihood Award, the Tanenbaum Center for
Interreligious Understanding, and the Niwano Peace Prize. Dekha
Ibrahim is a too rare example of a woman celebrated for her work
for peace. She received (among other awards) the Right Livelihood
Award known as the Alternative Nobel -- in 2007 and the Hesse Prize
in 2010. Executive vice president and CEO of the Tanenbaum Center
for Interreligious Understanding which each year administers an
award to a religiously motivated peacemaker Joyce Dubensky became
troubled a few years ago that very few women were emerging from
their nomination process, leading to few female Peacemakers.
Dubensky suggests that the dearth of female applicants was
partially caused by women self-selecting out of the process, not
viewing their own work as substantial or risky enough. We actually
found that women who we would consider Peacemakers actually
nominated men who they considered to be worthy rather than naming
themselves! We have had more than one man self-nominate, Dubensky
recalls. To address this disparity, the Tanenbaum Center created a
new prize, the Womens Peace Initiative Award, focused on the Middle
East and North Africa, and began proactively to seek women nominees
throughout the world. The result was a record number of women
emerging it seemed from out of the woodwork. Ultimately the main
Peacemaker prize for 2009 went to a woman. Awards have a role in
shaping the conversation about the demands of peace and the meaning
of leadership. The Niwano Peace Prize, which each year honors an
individual or organization devoted to the cause of peace, honored
Ela Bhatt, founder of the Self-Employed Womens Network, in 2010.
That made a statement that addressing structural poverty was an
essential aspect of building a comprehensive peace, and that the
involvement of women is crucial. The Niwano Prize also highlights
religious inspiration for work for peace, and Bhatts emphasis on
broad Gandhian values in describing her motivation also conveyed a
message about how faith and peace are linked.The Kroc Institute for
Peace and Justice selects four Women Peacemakers each year. They
are given space for rest and reflection, and resources to document
their personal stories and share their experiences of peacebuilding
and advocacy. Though religion does not play a role in the selection
process, many come from a variety of religious backgrounds and
credit their beliefs as a vital part of their motivation.More
spaces are needed to give voice to womens successful work for
peace, and especially to remove blinkers that have obscured the
role that faith plays in their work. Marc Gopin, director of the
Center of Religion, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution (and board
member of the Tanenbaum Center) suggests a properly funded system,
along the lines of the MacArthur genius grants, involving a
wide-net effort to identify worth candidates and to award a larger
group. That way we would know far better who is doing important
work and we could also support them.
3. Women and Peacebuilding
On October 31, 2000, the United Nations Security Council
unanimously passed Resolution 1325 (SCR1325), focused on women,
peace, and security. SCR1325 recognizes that armed conflict affects
women in unique ways, and that women have important roles to play
in conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding.
Passage of SCR 1325 reflects an important understanding and
consensus among scholars and practitioners that peacebuilding
efforts are more likely to be sustainable if they include women.
Womens different experience
In situations of violent conflict, women and men often have
different experiences. Women very often suffer more than men and
are more likely to be victimized. As one scholar observes, in
nearly every sphere of contemporary experience, women are made more
vulnerable than men, and more susceptible to threat (Pettman 2005:
142).
Jacqueline Moturi Ogega, who directs the Womens Program at the
World Conference of Religions for Peace (WCRP), stresses that
because women are uniquely affected by war and poverty, a
gender-sensitive view of conflict situations is vital. This means
that in any approach to conflict both the voices and experience of
women must be taken explicitly into account. That in turn argues
for active engagement of women at every stage:
We must recognize that men and women are affected differently
and women are affected more drastically by war, poverty, HIV/AIDS,
etc. Therefore, their needs are different. Women face the trauma of
rape, sexual slavery, and child motherhood; moreover, orphaned
families headed by girls are more vulnerable. Female orphans are
more disadvantaged because they take care of the family and
therefore are more likely to skip out on school, are prone to
facing sexual abuse, and are generally part of unsecured
child-headed homes[WCRP] Staff must understand these gender
realities.Interestingly, active efforts to take into account the
work of women in conflict and peace adds new dimensions to
understanding, a more inclusive perspective that helps in breaking
free from traditional approaches that tend to be dominated by
perspectives of elites. David Smock, USIPs Associate Vice President
of the Religion and Peacemaking program, argues that the
recognition of female peacebuilders is also a recognition that
peace cant merely be an elite process. It must be undertaken at
lower and middle strata of society, where women have particular
influence. To exclude women is to neglect a particular set of
opportunities that have often been neglected.
In contemporary explorations of the gender dimensions of
conflict, both practitioners and scholars are increasingly
distancing themselves from the traditional characterization of
women as helpless victims in times of war. Instead, they emphasize
womens agency and their capacity to prevent conflict and to promote
and maintain peace.
Womens defining attributes
Womens skills and social position give them the opportunity to
provide a different, at times unique, perspective on issues of
peace and conflict. Across the globe, women have demonstrated their
ability to achieve common ground in instances where men have
failed. Box 2 illustrates how women in Liberia came together to
push for peace during both the first and second civil wars.
Frustrated by the lack of progress, Liberian women overcame
religious and ethnic divides and united to pressure warring
factions towards a peace agreement. Similar stories of women
banding together to declare, in effect, enough is enough, are told
in other settings, notably Sierra Leone and Angola.Box 2:
Interfaith womens movement in Liberia employed tradition and taboos
in work for peace
During both the first and second civil wars in Liberia, local
women bridged ethnic and religious divides to push their country
towards peace.
The Liberian Womens Initiative (LWI), which developed in 1994,
was a movement born of frustration and hope. Ruth Perry, a founding
member of LWI, said at the time when the organization was founded:
Enough is enough. We are tired of hiding in the bushes, eating
grass and burying our dead. Though some women were at first
reluctant to join what was a risky and uncertain enterprise, they
overcame their fears. Another member, Mary Brownell, recalled, Some
of us werent sure wed make it because [the warlords] fight us with
their guns and we have nothing so I said lets go in faith. LWI
asked its members to pray for peace every night at 10 oclock in
their respective homes.
Unified by a common experience of suffering and war fatigue,
Liberian women came together to bring pressure on the warring
factions. They organized, demonstrated, and raised money to attend
peace talks across the country. Though LWI was never given an
actual seat at the negotiation table, its initial efforts helped
pave the way for the Mano River Womens Peace Network (MARWOPNET), a
regional movement with links across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra
Leone; it was an official signatory to the Liberian peace accords
in 2004.
Another Liberian grassroots womens group brought Muslim and
Christian women together in 2003. Like LWI, the Liberian Women in
Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET) was launched out of frustration.
Many women who had been advocates for peace during the first civil
war joined WIPNET for the same reasons they had joined LWI a few
years earlier. Emphasizing commonalities, WIPNET used slogans like
Does the bullet know a Christian from a Muslim? There were, of
course, some setbacks. A few in the community refused to pray with
women who were not of the same religion, asserting that it would
dilute their faith. However, despite it all women from all
different backgrounds came together to advocate for peace.
Pressure from WIPNET helped force Charles Taylor to attend peace
talks in Accra with the rebels. A delegation of women from WIPNET,
headed by Leymah Gbowee, went to monitor the negotiations. When the
accords stalled, Gbowee and the other women decided to take matters
into their own hands. Not allowed inside the peace hall, the women
surrounded the building and looped arms. When some warlords came to
the doors and tried to jump over the human barricade, the women
pushed back. Gbowee had said, We are going to keep them in that
room without water, without food, so they at least feel how we
feel. When policemen approached Gbowee and told her she and her
women were obstructing justice, Gbowee began to remove her hair tie
and threatened to strip naked. In Liberia, tradition dictates that
if an older woman willfully undresses in front of a man, the mans
family will be cursed. Instead of arresting Gbowee, the policeman
backed away from her and called his men off. Two weeks after
WIPNETs barricade and Gbowees unthinkable threat, the terms of the
peace treaty were announced.
Women in Liberia were able to push for change when mens actions
had failed. LWI, WIPNET, and Gbowees actions helped spur the
warring parties towards negotiations. Sentiments of anger and
frustration as well as hope for a brighter future were translated
into collective action and mobilization.
Some scholars and practitioners suggest that women have special
skills that help to facilitate peace work. Many suggest that women
are for whatever reason better at building and sustaining
relationships. Along these lines, Marc Gopin, Director of the
Center on Religion, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George
Mason University, observes that women are able to foster special
kinds of connections:
Women seem to have a capacity to make connections and to use
many means to achieve that, including film, arts, and music. They
are often able to connect, in places like Somalia, on a totally
different level. Women there have been able to make connections
between warring parties in a different way. There is a different
level of seriousness and respect that they bring.
Women in areas of conflict seem better able or more willing to
reach across religious and cultural divides and to find common
ground. Manal Omar, director of Iraq programs at USIP, observes
that in Iraq, women were the first ones who were willing and able
to reach out across ethnic and religious divides:They did it
instinctively. And it wasnt the case that it was safe for them to
do so it increased their vulnerability...I think there is a natural
desire for inclusiveness amongst womenThere is recognition of other
viewpoints.
Similarly, Dena Merriam has observed womens ability to build
bridges and make compromises in many settings. She concludes that
this leads to differences in the way men and women participate in
peace processes. Women, she argues,
.. are simply more finely tuned to how family structures are
suffering, and how the different layers of society are damaged.
They are also [] more prepared to plunge in to try to solve the
problem, more prepared to sacrifice for the solution. They have
less need to hold onto positions. That applies even to the hardest
core women, who are deeply set in conflict modes, and have suffered
terribly. Even they can focus on the issue of children and look for
common ground. I have seen this again and again.
These qualities of female peacebuilding can perhaps be ascribed
to the common experiences of women in conflict zones. As founder
and executive director of TRUST Emun, Elana Rozenman has
encountered this in her organizations meetings involving Israeli
and Palestinian women. When the women meet, she says,
We find we are dealing with the same issues our families,
communities, about the problems of men dominating women, about
sexual abuse and domestic violence, that have to be addressed also
in terms of all the religionsWhen women get together, they
immediately want to find out about personal issues, to share
information about our families. Then immediately we move on from
these personal topics and start work, far more easily.
These characteristics can be essential especially in
post-conflict societies. Maryann Cusimano Love, associate professor
of politics at Catholic University of America, highlights the
tendency towards and skill of women in working through networks,
and in focusing on relationships. She describes it as a fingerprint
of womens groups:
In terms of process, womens religious groups tend to have
greater networks and be more relationship-based. This is very
helpful in creating trust in post-conflict societies, and with
refugees, IDPs [internally displaced persons], and other victims of
conflicts. It is a very effective way to build movements for
peace.
Ironically, the marginalization of women has given them
opportunities, and in some cases, a comparative advantage, for
action. Not only do women bring a different set of skills to peace
work. They also hold unique positions within society that enable
them to participate in ways men cannot. For example, women are
often viewed as outsiders to conflicts, yet this role can work to
their advantage, allowing them to be viewed as more impartial.
Sanam Anderlini, author of Women Building Peace: What They Do and
Why It Matters, argues that, Because women are regarded as less
threatening to the established order, they tend to have more
freedom of action. In some instances, they can make public pleas
for peace by taking advantage of sexist notions that for the most
part discourage retaliation against women (Anderlini 2000: 18).
Virginia Bouvier of USIP refers to the ironic advantages of
marginalization when she highlights that it can lead to greater
flexibility and creativity in the search for solutions:
Women tend to have different institutional limitationsthe fact
that they are often not at the top levels of institutions may mean
that they are more open to institutional change.Gender roles,
characterizations, and stereotypes
Set against an array of observations of the strengths that many
women bring to work for peace, was an unease at acccepting anything
bordering on essentialization of women and overly broad
generalizations. Both the discussions and the interviews wrestled
with this tension between recognizing the unique qualities women
bring to peacebuilding and avoiding the perpetuation of gender
stereotypes. Scott Appleby observed: A central dilemma is how we
can avoid gender stereotypes while acknowledging different
aptitudes, experiences, and skill sets, some of which, fairly or
not, get attached to a particular gender.
Karen Torjesen, professor of Womens Studies at the Claremont
Graduate School, suggests one path that helps in navigating this
tension: making clear that it is social realities, and not inherent
characteristics, that are responsible for the different qualities
women bring. She notes that, It is not womens nature, but womens
social place, their connectivity, and the resulting sensitivities
that offer different perspectives and tools.
Women are not always peaceful, and their roles in conflict
situations are by no means universally positive and consistent.
Casting women are inherent peacemakers carries its own dangers.
Azza Karam, Senior Advisor on Culture at the United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA), highlights the importance of recognizing
these facts. Violent women, like guerilla fighters and suicide
bombers, need to be analyzed alongside women engaged in peace work.
The field needs to be looked at more responsibly:
Were seeing women as the alternative, the other, the potential
peacemakers. Even if we dont say it, that is the subliminal message
were trying hard to come up with. Its been part of my battle with
this new paradigm, because it really means accepting and coming out
publicly to say, weve got huge responsibilities in peacemaking as
women. But we also are part of conflict itself.
In Latin America, Virginia Bouvier similarly recognizes that the
potential advantages and even power that women bring to the table
are not always utilized to enact social change. She points to the
power that women can exercise when they come together to demand
change, drawing on examples from Chile during the Pinochet years,
the peace movement in Colombia, Argentina during the military
dictatorship, and Central America during the long years of civil
war. Gender is not the only issue involved and women are not always
progressive. They do not always play positive roles. In fact, women
in Latin America have more frequently been a conservative force
protecting the status quo, rather than a force for change.The issue
of motherhood has special complexities and sensitivities. Clearly
womens childbearing and child rearing roles are significant in many
ways in conflict situations. Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, General
Secretary, World YWCA, observes caustically that in any conflict
situation it always becomes women and their children. Yet there are
pitfalls. Women in some situations have taken advantage of
traditional gender roles such as their role as mothers to arouse
sentiments of both sympathy and respect. This can also cut both
ways, giving legitimacy to women, including within religious
circles, but also contributing to stereotypes and to
marginalization. Virginia Bouvier commented that she has observed a
distinctive dynamic in the Latin American Church, for example with
groups of Mothers of the Disappeared. She hints at the potential
dangers when women seek to manipulate their gender roles:Womens
role as mothers, a role particularly sanctioned by the Church, has
been an important source of legitimacy and moral authority that
permits women to engage in the public sphere. This moral authority
that is granted to mothers in some societies is particularly
powerful, albeit potentially solidifying gender roles and
stereotypes.
Focusing exclusively on traditional roles can lead to pushing
aside or postponing the essential work of tackling problems such as
gender inequalities. Jacqueline Ogega observes:
The work of [womens peacebuilding groups] has been mostly
oriented towards womens reproductive roles, to nurturing, prayer,
and care of children. They have seen themselves less in
transformative roles or intervening on strategic questionsThey tend
not to progress to roles at a more strategic level, looking to the
root of causes of violence including gender inequality.
These observations draw attention to a much broader issue and
challenge. Not only are peace processes flawed in their
insufficient attention to issues of healing and building
communities. The softer peace work, ranging from dialogue
initiatives to community building, often does not translate into
robust processes that transform conflict-sustaining institutions
and structures. This highlights Scott Applebys constant admonition
that peacebuilding needs to be strategic at every level and that it
must involve both men and women:
Maintaining strong and nurturing and peaceful personal
relationships is not enough; personal transformations must engender
structural transformationPeacebuilding must leverage constructive
personal relationships into political change and social
transformation and calculate the impact and risks of certain kinds
of actions; it must draw shrewdly on resources and partnerships at
the governmental and national and international as well as the
grassroots and local levels.
In sum, gender stereotypes are a real danger. They can
contribute to invisibility and marginalizing women. But they can
also typecast women in traditional roles that are linked to what
are seen as womens special virtues and gifts. Real as these are,
when they are taken as given or unexamined they can accentuate the
problems of marginalization. Women and men, both, need to be power
brokers, mediators, development czars, prophets and prophetesses
within their traditions, and long term builders of communities.4.
Women and Religious Peacebuilding
The growing exploration of religion and peacebuilding
The field of religious peacebuilding is hardly a new phenomenon;
religious communities and actors have long been involved in the
work of building peaceful and just societies. However, the
contemporary field of religious peacebuilding theory and practice,
which today has taken a firmly anchored place within the larger
field of international conflict resolution, visibly emerged in the
1990s. The proliferation of identity-based conflicts that drew
attention in the aftermath of the Cold Wars end brought to light
the manner in which religious identity, motivation, and language
was legitimating and propelling violence. In response, scholars and
practitioners argued for strengthening the hand of religious
leaders seeking to build reconciliation and peace across lines of
division, promoting in particular the role of interfaith dialogue.
While the diplomatic sphere and the international relations field,
particularly in the United States and Europe, continued to shy away
from addressing religion and its role in larger political dynamics,
the events of September 11th, 2001, the Danish cartoon crisis, and
the reality of a religious resurgence around the world led even
this historically secular biased realm to begin to take seriously
religion and the role it can and must play in securing peace.
Exemplary of the arguments made is Madeleine Albrights recent book,
The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World
Affairs.
Special religious roles in peacemaking have various dimensions.
Mohammed Abu-Nimer points out that religious values, like other
values, can motivate people to fight or to reconcile (Abu-Nimer
2001: 686). Reporting on faith-based peacebuilding, Tseard Bouta,
Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana, and Abu-Nimer outline the varied ways in
which faith-based actors have contributed to peacebuilding: They
have provided emotional and spiritual support to war-affected
communities, have mobilized their communities and others for peace,
have mediated between conflicting parties, and have promoted
reconciliation, dialogue, and disarmament, demobilization and
reintegration (Bouta et. al 2005: ix).
While religious peacebuilding as a field has gained increased
attention in recent years, it has not been marked by sharp
attention to gender issues and inclusion of womens voices and
ideas. In many traditions, formal religious leadership is
restricted to men, and even where women can and do join the clergy,
they are vastly outnumbered by men. For this reason, religions
potential to open up avenues for peace and reconciliation is often
viewed through a male prism.
Emma Leslie highlights the importance of bringing religious
actors into peacebuilding efforts as representing a more inclusive
approach. If the role of religion in peace work is ignored, those
who have ties to faith can be excluded or their ideas and
contributions muted:
Religion is also relevant as we look at some of the gaps we see
in approaches and in our understanding of both conflict and peace.
It is relevant to the way we need to approach the younger women
coming along behind. Many of them also come out of a strong
religious perspective. How do we foster and nurture that if we are
not talking about what is important and relevant to them?
Manal Omar puts the challenge starkly: If you want numbers for
your cause, and if you want to work in the grassroots, you need to
be able to use the religious framework both to understand people
and to recruit.Such statements reflect the increasing, if still
fragile and patchy, recognition that religion must play a part in
peacebuilding. Yet despite this growing recognition, the actions of
faith-based women still have received very limited explicit
recognition. Perhaps because there are so few formal and so few
visible female religious leaders in the world, literature that
focuses on the intersection of women, religion and peace is very
thin.
Women, religion, and peacebuilding
The issue of womens marginalization across many dimensions of
peacebuilding, noted above, is thus even more acute where religious
peacebuilding is concerned. Despite this gap, there are indeed
organizations and individuals that have set out to explore the ways
in which women with links to faith are working for peace. Though
the intersection of women, religion, and peace is under-researched,
there are signs of growing curiosity about the topic. Womens roles
in interfaith work are acknowledged more frequently, even if not in
formal literature. The Center for Religious Tolerance has noted the
importance of women as spiritual peacebuilders; they organized a
Womens Interfaith Leadership Development Workshop in Amman, Jordan
in September 2007. In November 2009, at a conference on Women,
Religion, and Globalization held by the MacMillan Center for
International and Area Studies at Yale University, a panel focused
specifically on women, religion, and peacebuilding. Organizations
like the Global Peace Initiative of Women (GPIW) and World
Conference on Religions for Peace (WCRP) are working to bring women
into the spotlight and to increase the influence of their voices in
the interfaith world.
Religiously motivated peacebuilding
The work of many female peacebuilders is inextricably linked to
their religion or their religious beliefs. Our interviews offer a
range of testimonies showing how many women are engaged in peace
work motivated by their faith, a trend that highlights strong
associations and direct links between women, religion, and peace.
Yet is uncommon that these links are made explicitly. As an
example, Emma Leslie observes that in the network she works to
build, the Action Asia Network (linked to Action International),
there was a marked tendency not to talk about religion, in network
discussions and in the workshops they organize. However, they are
hearing more and more, from women who are active in conflict work,
that it is from their religion that the women have derived much of
their inspiration and the way they frame what they do.
Many in the network had their formation in a religious
framework. One woman from Burma, for example, was raised as a
strong Baptist, led services, preached, and taught in a theological
college. That empowered her to be a leader and gave her the skills
that allowed her to take on peace work. The same is true for some
Buddhist women, from Sri Lanka for example, who have found that
their work with monks has inspired them. And Dekha Ibrahim would
describe her framework as drawing much from her faith. Her Islamic
background has equipped her for her work. We hear this more and
more, not so much in formal presentations, but in the off the
record informal chats over coffee, where women share how they see
their work. Religion keeps coming up. I have seen that women in our
network who are inspired by their faith to do peace work are more
inclined to see and reach out to the religious sector as a resource
or partner for their on-the-ground peace work.
As Leslie points out, linkages include both the source of
motivation and inspiration, direct contributions to leadership
training and development, and the avenues through which women
conduct their work
Denise Coghlan, director of Jesuit Refugee Service, has worked
in Cambodia for more than two decades on reconciliation, peace,
justice, and human development. Her testimony is a vivid example of
the powerful religious dimension of one womans motivation to work
for peace and social justice:
When they asked me why I wanted to go to the camps, I said that
wherever suffering is present in the world, the cross of Christ is
mysteriously present. That was my motivation. It was difficult for
many interviewers to hear this, I think, because they thought I
should say that I wanted to return to help refugees in Australia,
but in reality it did not have anything to do with that. It really
was about following the cross of Christ.
Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana also has observed a strong religious
motivation among many female peacebuilders she has encountered: I
have observed that many of these women see their peace work as a
service to God which keeps them motivated to continue, despite the
challenges they face.
Many others highlighted their own ties to faith. As an example,
Marilyn McMorrow, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Georgetown
University School of Foreign Service, observes:My own approach to
peace-making comes from Vatican II and Catholic Social Justice
tradition, particularly the Social Justice Encyclicals, from Pope
John XXIII through Benedict XVI. I take this to mean that, along
with all Catholics including the members of my Religious Order, I
am called to work for justice, peace, and the integrity of
creation. In my religious order, we emphasize each ones call to
become a woman of communion, compassion, and reconciliation who
seeks justice with the heart of an educator.
Hence religious belief, practice, and imagination, sometimes
portrayed as holding some women back, play a powerful role in some
womens decisions to become involved and to persevere in the hard
work of peacebuilding. Womens marginalization in formal religious
spaces
While many scholars have acknowledged the positive roles that
religious communities can play in situations of violent conflict,
one major trend or reality is problematicthe marginalization of
women in formal religious spaces. This is expressed in a variety of
ways. As one example of a widely held concern, Kathryn Poethig
observes:
The role of religion is particularly problematic, because of the
lack of womens presence in hierarchies and in the formal structures
of most communities. This issue came out strongly at the conference
of women on religion in Geneva that followed the 2000 New York/UN
Millennium Summit of Religious leaders. It highlighted the problem
of the invisibility of women and their very presence in religious
organizations and meetings.One need not look far to document the
very limited involvement by women in high-level faith-based or
interfaith initiatives. Women are often active at the local level,
but far less nationally or internationally. David Smock points to
many examples of the invisibility of women in formal processes,
with the Alexandria Process, an initiative of Israeli and
Palestinian religious leaders to support the Middle East peace
process, a prominent instance where no women were involved. Because
it was presented as a project involving the religious leadership
and elites, the Orthodox rabbis, the bishops, and the Sheikhs and
imams were all male.
In speaking about her engagement in Sri Lanka and Iraq, Susan
Hayward explores the issue of womens authority in religious
settings. She stresses that female representation in discussions,
without equal authority or credibility, is not enough:
The views of women and their voices were simply not there, or
were only included in a cursory way, to speak to issues on an
agenda, and within a process, that was entirely shaped by men, and
focused on what men, in their roles as clergy, could do to promote
transformation. If women were involved in a substantive way, it was
often a side project the womans initiative, rather than the central
initiative. This made me uncomfortable. I grew antsy about how we
define leverage and authority within the field of religious
peacemaking who we recognize as holding authority, as shapers of
religious narratives and motivations in conflict zones, and who we
marginalize in our efforts.
Agnes Abuom, Executive Committee Member of the World Council of
Churches (WCC) and a leading figure within African ecumenical
circles, is forthright about the need to change the way
participants in peace discussions are selected. Sometimes that
means actively working to construct a parallel process that can
engage women who are part of religious communities even if they do
not hold formal positions:
As long as we talk with religious leaders in the male gender, we
dont penetrate fully. In the peace process, we must develop
parallel women leaders who can then come to the table, skilled and
equipped to be a part of the debateWhen you bring women to the
table, you get a totally different narrative.
The reality is that many of the major world religious traditions
are patriarchal, empowering men over women. While womens leadership
roles and rights are often underscored in Buddhist, Muslim,
Christian and other scriptures, what happens in practice is that
women are often prevented from accessing senior formal clerical
roles, or from pursuing education that allows them to exercise
interpretive authority within the traditions, barriers sometimes
justified within the very same texts they need to examine. When
outside religious peacebuilding theorists and practitioners fail to
include women in a substantive manner, they reify the patriarchal
streams within religious traditions and fail to lift up those
streams within the tradition that women themselves have drawn on to
inspire and empower themselves. The 2000 Millennium Summit of
Religious Leaders, one of the largest contemporary gatherings of
religious leaders from across the world, engaged many different
perspectives and thus appears to have spurred a new commitment to a
multilayered approach to peacebuilding. However, this highly
visible and publicized event, held in part in the United Nations
General Assembly hall, exposed the stark fact that womens voices
are being marginalized when it comes to discussing links between
religion, conflict, and peace. The Summit brought the absence of
women into the spotlight. This was one of the spurs to the creation
of the Global Peace Initiative for Women.
Womens exclusion from the formal arenas that treat issues
relating to religion and peace are sometimes due to formal rules
and restrictions, but it can also result from what might be better
termed culture and tradition. Wendy Tyndale, formerly with WFDD,
highlights the ways in which such traditions can hinder progress.
Tyndale worked with WFDD in 1999-2001 to support an interfaith
process in Guatemala. The project aimed to nudge forward some of
the ideals and agreements of the Peace Accord. Women were to be
included in the process, but as Tyndale notes:
That was very difficult, and the meetings themselves tended to
be rather dominated by the older male leaders, in keeping with the
tradition. As the groups focus turned to ethics and education, it
was rare that womens issues or voices truly came into the
conversation.
Religious leadership vs. religious representation
So the question is what to do about the limited formal
representation of women. Several different ideas have been advanced
to address the question of how to engage women, give them
credibility and authority, and recognize their roles in religious
work for peace, given their limited formal leadership roles. One
increasingly common practice is to refer to religious actors rather
than religious leaders. Marc Gopin suggests instead a shift in
focus towards religious representatives, which opens up recognition
of work across all segments of religious society:A first and
important priority is to reframe the discussion around who
participates, because that is the key to engaging women more
actively. What works and is meaningful is to focus on religious
representatives. This makes it possible to reframe who is empowered
and authorized to represent a religion. Using language and tests of
eligibility that focus on women religious leaders is simply a
non-starter at the global level, because of the barriers that block
womens participation in several traditions. It is important to look
for women clerics, to have affirmative action to bring them in, but
that should not be the central focus, and it simply excludes, for
example, most of Islam and Orthodox Judaism. Some refer to
religious actors but to me that tends to trivialize their roles and
work and it lacks clarity. Maryann Cusimano Love argues that it is
necessary to look beyond religious leader engagement towards a
broader religious community engagement, and the implications that
can have for female representation. Women are often very much
involved in faith-inspired organizations, working on grassroots
peace building and reconciliation, health care, education, and
other areas. Thus they are active on the ground in social service
organizations. Thats not captured if you only do religious leader
engagement. You miss out on community leaders who may not have the
title in the religious hierarchy.
A common theme is that womens roles are more often focused at
the local, community level, as opposed to more formal structures of
power. Elana Rozenman describes one approach:
Our work, we say, is not political it is holy work. We are
focusing on religion, finding women of faith, and coming together
around our faith. In doing so, we are working to reinforce
nonviolence, and to bring all the wisdom and truth in our religions
together for that purpose. Our meetings are to study, to celebrate
holidays together, to strengthen our sisterhood. During Ramadan we
break the fast together in the home of a Muslim woman. We celebrate
Sukkot, the Jewish holiday, in the Sukka at my home. We see the
Christmas trees in our Christian sisters homes at Christmas. We
make food together so we can share meals. We bring each other to
each others homes and invite our friends and relatives to meet us
all the time.
Her comments highlight another recurring theme: that the social
roles that women play, down to caring for basic needs like food and
shelter, can play pivotal roles even in the most political
settings, and thus should not be discounted as significant elements
in the process of building peace. Other groups working in Israel
and the Middle East, prominent among them the Interfaith Encounter
Association founded by Yehuda Stolov, an Israeli-based organization
that fosters dialogue between religions in the Holy Land. These
groups focus on the importance of personal contact and learning
about different faith traditions in daily life as a central element
for addressing the roots of conflicts and building understanding.
And it is most often women who are involved in this kind of
activity.Opportunities for womens action in a religious context
Despite the common pattern of marginalizing women in formal
religious spheres, they influence their communities in other, often
critical ways that fall outside of what is commonly recognized as
religious leadership. Womens actions are indeed important if often
underappreciated. A common theme is that despite their invisibility
in many settings, women exercise strong influence and play
important roles. Thus the challenge is to find, describe, and build
on this experience.
Jacqueline Moturi Ogega highlights this pattern:
Some of the more mainstream religions tend to be very
hierarchical in the way they are structured and this is important
in defining what women do, especially formally. But there are
examples where women have taken more visible roles as religious
actors, especially in their roles as spiritual healers. In
communities where they are spiritual leaders, especially in
traditional roles, women are often recognized as the spiritual
leaders for healing and cleansing. This takes on special importance
in situations where there have been extreme atrocities against the
people and communities, and where healing is extraordinarily
difficult. Women are also given leading roles in prayer and worship
rituals in many faith traditions. Women can play some strategic
roles here.
Andrea Blanch, President of the Center for Religious Tolerance,
suggests that we need to ask a different set of questions to
understand what leadership in practice looks like for religious
women. She points to the real power that women actually have within
religious communities and institutions, as well as the culture.
Even though they do not have formal titles, they have
influence.
In many religious institutions, women are able to take
leadership roles that, while outside the traditional male
hierarchy, hold real influence. Cusimano Love described this
phenomenon within the Catholic Church, noting,
On the one hand, we have a male hierarchy. On the other hand,
there are many institutional arms of the Church in which there are
opportunities for women to lead Because many of these women are
leaders in institutional roles at schools and hospitals and NGOs so
on they have access to male religious authority.
Virginia Bouvier observes the same complicated dynamic within
the Church in Latin America. She says,
There is obviously a glass ceiling for women within the Church,
and women are still not allowed to preach. But at the same time,
especially in these machista societies, women run the day to day
activities of the churches, and they are sometimes able to create
spaces within the Church to speak and act, to exercise leadership
and authority, and to earn the respect of their peers.
Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana led conflict resolution trainings in a
number of Muslim countries as the Associate Director of Salam
Institute for Peace and Justice, and encountered the unique
approaches that religious women often bring to peacebuilding. She
observed that because they were not always engaged at the formal
tracks of peacemaking, they had created informal mechanisms and
processes.
She cited the example of a woman taking on an informal religious
leadership role, describing a Kurdish Iraqi woman who provided
shura, or conflict resolution, even though she was not officially
trained to do so. She was one of the traditional community leaders
who provided conflict resolutionThe community recognized her
capacity to do this, because of her personal qualities.
Though women often find ways to work outside of institutional
constraints, this also limits the recognition and support they
might receive. Dee Aker is Deputy Director of the Joan B. Kroc
Institute for Peace & Justice at the University of San Diego
which grants four Women Peacemaker awards each year to women all
over the world who are engaged in peacebuilding. She observes that,
while many of the women peacemakers are religiously affiliated and
inspired by their own faith, the vast majority [of women] do not
play formal roles in their religious institutions, and thus can be
overlooked by initiatives that are looking specifically for
religious leaders.
On the other hand, the opportunity for religious women to work
outside of formal structures can at times be beneficial.
Institutions have well known disadvantages of rigidity and
resistance to new ideas. Dena Merriam notes:
There is no question: women are critical to peace. Women
together can go further than any institution. And there may well be
a real benefit that so few spiritual women are tied to positions of
institutional leadership We can go much further if we step away
from institutional positions.
Mari Fitzduff, director of the Program in Coexistence and
Conflict at Brandeis University, observed this dynamic in Northern
Ireland in the period from the 1970s to the 1990s, when nuns often
had a freedom that priests did not:
The nuns became much more radical than many of the priests,
particularly the diocesan priests who were more grounded in the
conservative local institutions. The nuns were more free to offer
their services in ways that the priests could not. So you saw some
of them doing the interfaith work, or getting involved in other
issues where the priests were absent.
Moreover, by working on the periphery of formal religious
structures, women have access to different spaces than the male
leadership. Women are often better positioned to reach other women,
and are thus essential to any peacebuilding initiative. Dr.
Kadayifci-Orellana pointed out that in many countries she had
access to Muslim women engaged in their communities, while her male
colleagues did not. In Saudi Arabia, we went to visit the womens
campus, she observed. The men were not allowed in, so I visited.
While religious women certainly need not only be involved in
women-only initiatives, in many contexts that allows for broader
participation. Yehuda Stolov, founder and executive director of the
Interfaith Encounter Association, noted that women-only groups are
desirable as they allow for traditional women to join.
Significant numbers of women have deliberately taken advantage
of their lack of institutional constraints to take courageous steps
for peace. For example, Fitzduff highlights the courage and
independence of a number of nuns during the tense times in Northern
Ireland. When the Catholic Church refused to provide chaplains for
integrated Catholic-Protestant schools, nuns became chaplains for
these schools on their own initiative.
A number of interviews suggest that religious women and womens
groups, freed from institutional constraints, show extraordinary
courage and creativity in acting for peace, going against
traditionally imposed limits. Furthermore, they may also function
more efficiently. The experiences of Bilkisu Yusuf, founder of
Federation of Muslim Women of Nigeria (FOMWAN), reflects this
ability of women to reach out even within set hierarchies and thus
to bring in new ideas. This was the case in Northern Nigeria:For a
long time the women of FOMWAN have spoken on behalf of Muslims when
there was some issue the government wanted to address, because it
was easier to work with us than with the mens organizations, where
there is so much bureaucracy they cant respond promptly. The men do
not have a rapid response like we have, so the government has
turned to us to speak for MuslimsThe male leaders are under the
Supreme Council, the highest Islamic body. The group is led by the
Sultan, the emirs, the clerics. Bureaucracy has made them not as
effective as they ought to be, and they dont seem to be
implementing projects in their communities. All they do is just
meet and discuss the sighting of the moon for the month of Ramadan
and the start of eid al-fitr, and when to break your fast. The
Supreme Council has its own niche; it is seen as the policy-making
body, but that is about it. In times of building communities, it is
FOMWAN who will look out for you. Increasingly we have been invited
to take up positions in government committees and have input into
policies, because the government recognizes the work we are doing
building hospitals, addressing development issues, etc.
Scilla Elworthy echoes this assertion that women manage despite
the many obstacles. She suggest an important bottom line judgment:
the most efficient institutions, the most effective approaches, do
seem to be led by women.
Women in formal religious leadership roles
The common marginalization of women in many religious
denominations and institutions should not obscure the important
roles played by those women who do hold formal leadership
positions. They are exemplars and often pioneers, and play special
and authoritative roles. Many of the women consulted as part of
this initiative fall within this category. Sister Joan Chittister,
Agnes Abuom (who plays critical roles within the Anglican Communion
and the World Council of Churches, often involved in negotiations
involving the Horn of Africa), bold Buddhist nuns like Damananda,
and Muslim alimat are among those who work doggedly and effectively
for peace. Buddhist and Catholic nuns, Protestant and Muslim female
preachers and teachers, Jewish female rabbis, and female shamans in
many indigenous cultures, play visible and important roles in
shaping religious traditions and their communitys religious
response to conflict and peace.
Women also may play pivotal roles in some interfaith
organizations, where the creation of new leadership models and
criteria opens up, at least in its potential, opportunities for
more gender balanced leadership.
Amina Rasul-Bernardo highlights the roles of female Islamic
scholars in the Philippines in Box 3.
Box 3: Working with the Aleemat in the Philippines: Amina
Rasul-Bernardo
In recent years, Muslim religious scholars and leaders, known as
the ulama, have taken on pivotal roles in addressing the cycle of
violence and conflict in the southern Philippines, both at the
grassroots and the broader level. Amina Rasul-Bernardo observes
that, There are thousands of ulama in the Philippines who provide
spiritual assistance to communities and wield great influence. And
most strikingly, this body of religious leaders already includes
women aleemat (the Arabic word is the female form of ulama), women
who have, like the men, received training in Islamic law at
Al-Azhar and other respected institutions. Over 150 women are part
of the National Network of Muslim Leaders. Women are also active
participants in the National Ulama Conference of Philippines
(NUCP), an organization of Muslim clerics formed in 2009 to empower
Muslim leadership towards peace and development; the groups by-laws
reserve two seats of the 15-member board for aleemat. But,
Rasul-Bernardo points out, There is still the challenge of working
to give these women religious leaders more meaningful roles.
Traditionally, the aleemat provided support to the ulama-headed
organizations and taught at Muslim schools, and were largely
overlooked by institutions providing capacity building for civil
society organizations, including other womens organizations. That
has changed in the past few years, as a number of aleemat have
actively sought larger public roles. At the first National Ulama
Summit in 2008, the women organized a parallel program to focus on
peace and development as a unified group; at the following years
summit, thirty-one aleemat came together in a formal workshop on
womens rights and issues. 2009 also saw the formation of the
organization Nur es Salaam (meaning Light of Peace), which aims to
help organize female Muslim religious leaders, allowing them to
become more active and effective.A major part of these initiatives
is a project called Empowering Women as Peace Advocates, focused on
encouraging women religious scholars to collaborate with Muslim
civil society organizations towards peace efforts. Amina
Rasul-Bernardo describes the results of these meetings:
In many ways this is the very first time the women have been
involved in civil society. Thus there is a lot of focus on
implementation and the how tos. We focus on education about human
rights and the rights of citizens. We are providing support so that
they can become financially independent. Project management skills
are important. We help to bring them together with potential
development partners, which is part of helping them to become
self-standing and self-sustaining.
The womens agendas are clear and basic. They want a more
peaceful community so that their families can survive, and not just
survive but have a peaceful, decent existence. In the south of the
Philippines life is oppressive and dangerous. They see it and have
lived it. And they want to change it.Womens organizations working
to combat violence
An array of organizations led by women linked to religious
organizations work for peace in a wide variety of ways. Box 4
highlights the work of the Centre Olame, a Catholic organization
working in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to
combat gender-based violence. It also highlights the importance of
coalitions that provide a platform to amplify womens voices and to
build the capacity of their organizations to work both on
supporting women and on advocacy at the national and international
levels.Box 4: Confronting gender-based violence in DRCThough the
Second Congo War officially ended seven years ago, conflict
persists in the eastern provinces of the DRC. The violence that
still dominates the provinces of North and South Kivu affects women
disproportionately. One appalling dimension of this violence is the
systematic rape of tens of thousands of women systematically by
combatant forces. The extremely high instances of sexual assault
have both physical effects many of the rapes involve extreme
brutality, and access to hospitals and medical attention is limited
and social and psychological consequences that are likely to
persist over years. A range of courageous leaders combine direct
action to support women in Central Africa with powerful advocacy
for action at national and international levels. Women are often at
the forefront of these efforts, and many involve alliances among
religiously-inspired and secular organizations.
The Centre Olame is a notable example. For more than 30 years,
Centre Olames director, Mathilde Muhindo Mwamini has worked to
empower women in DRC to overcome discrimination, sexual
exploitation, poverty and conflict. Centre Olame is a Catholic
social assistance agency of the Archdiocese of Bukavu, South Kivu.
Olame means live in dignity and
prosperity, and the center provides psychological and practical
assistance to victims of sexual violence, empowers women to fight
against pervasive discrimination and abuse, and promotes local
peacebuilding and community reconciliation in South Kivu. Mme.
Muhindo joined Centre Olame in the mid-1980s, moved by the high
death rate of children. She works to change a culture of
discrimination against women and to help women recognize and
advocate for their rights. Programs address the health and
well-being of children, nutrition and community health programs,
job training, microfinance programs, and mobilization against
harassment and sexual exploitation through political action.
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) supports the work of the
center.Another courageous woman working for peace is Justine Masika
Bihamba, founder of Synergy of Women for Victims of Sexual
Violence, a coalition based in the DRC consisting of 35 women's
organizations that help victims of sexual violence. Honored by the
Catholic Movement, Pax Christi International, for her advocacy work
on behalf of women affected by violence and rape as a weapon of
war, she recently visited Washington to bear witness and call for
action. She criticizes the culture of impunity that surrounds
sexual assault, and the dearth of accessible judiciaries to
prosecute offenders. She urges more pressure from the international
community on the governments of DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi, as well
as the presence of an international tribunal in the DRC. Congolese
civil society, including coalitions of organizations, is active in
providing support for victims. Leaders stress that Congolese women
must become involved in the search for solutions to peace. However,
many challenges remain, including the insecurity and constant
threats under which these organizations must work. While it is
challenging for women on their own to confront issues for change,
as a network, their voices can be heard.
Building stronger links between religious and secular women
Most secular organizations, especially in Europe and North
America, have, as noted above, only recently begun to recognize the
positive roles that religion can play in conflict situations.
Manal Omar cited several specific examples of the blind spots of
secular institutions with regard to religion:
For [OXFAMs] work in Yemen, one of the indicators in the minds
of some of the program officers of success for a public health
program was how many women would take off the niqab! We had these
amazing photos of women who had graduated from midwife training up
in the office, but they were wearing niqab and so people lobbied to
take them down. This was really my first exposure to the very
secular development world. We had one project that worked on
adjusting the marriage law to the age of 18. It was called the
anti-early marriage project. But the religious leaders resisted the
project, and we werent getting anywhere. So finally we engaged the
religious leaders, who told us that way we were framing the project
its title rubbed them the wrong way, although they were supportive
of the objective of the project. They suggested we change the name
to safe marriage project. We did, and the project took off. The
process of approaching, taking seriously, or asking permission from
the religious leadership was a huge shift for the organization.
As a result of this phenomenon, secular and religious work for
peace and justice has not always been well integrated and
coordinated. Sister Joan Chittister was among several in our
consultations who referred to theological moats and other factors
separating different groups, especially lay and secular from
religious, but also among different religious communities and
tendencies. These moats tend to be particularly deep and wide where
womens issues and women themselves are concerned.
Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana spoke about the divide between religious
women and secularists, noting,
This is especially true in Turkey. If you identify yourself as a
Muslim actor, you are automatically seen as against political
secularism. So there is an internal challenge with education, city
centers they are often associated with secularists although more
and more religious girls enter universities and work in cities.
Whereas, if you are religious, you are seen as backward,
uneducated, lower class, a traditional villager. In my observation,
many of the secularists (some call them radical secularists) have
internalized the orientalist discourse and project it onto those
who are associated with village, religion and tradition. So there
is a self-orientalization which creates a deep divide.
The positive note is that several interviewees observe that the
divides may be less pronounced than they appear on the surface and
can be bridged with dedicated efforts. Promoting greater
collaboration between secular and religious groups allows for more
effective work overall. Qamar-ul Huda highlights the importance of
bridging those divides:
A lot of the religious communities already have social services,
but they are isolated and contained. They see NGOs as competitors.
So Im trying to push them to cooperate with others. To be less
isolated, more engaged. Whats wrong with collaborating with others
who have similar objectives? Whats wrong with sharing resources and
materials?
Amina Rasul-Bernardo makes a similar point:
I began from a rather secular perspective, but the more I have
learned about the way women see realities on the ground, the more I
have come to see that building bridges between secular and
religiously inspired groups and approaches is an essential path we
must follow on the road to real peace.
Box 5: Bridging secular and religious divides in Iraq: Manal
Omar
After the 2003 invasion, women were some of the first in Iraq to
come together across religious and political divides, says Manal
Omar, who lived in Baghdad from 2003 to 2005 as Women for Women
Internationals Regional Coordinator and now serves as director of
Iraq programs at USIP . But by 2008 that early cooperation with
women united at the forefront of social and political reform had
given way to polarization between religious and secular. This
fragmentation and distrust between religious and secular women
persists.
On one side were women who followed what they perceived as a
clear secular path: they espoused the UN Declaration on Human
Rights, and argued for equality under the law. They tended to be
highly skeptical of religion and Islam, terming them oppressive to
women. On the other side were women who saw their identities and
organizational support in their religion. They were negatively
inclined towards talk of human rights, saying that it was largely a
"Western" imposition and denigrated Islamic values.
This distrust and polarization over issues of Islamic law and
the role of religion in Iraqi society made it increasingly
difficult for women to work together on other issues and to form a
strong coalition. To address these divides, USIP recently launched
in Iraq a Toolkit for Womens Leadership on Collaborative Problem
Solving to bring women from different political parties together to
enhance coalition-building skills. In the first phase of the
project, Iraqi women from both secular and religious backgrounds
gathered in Beirut to discuss how they might work together for
social and political reforms.
At first, said Omar at a September 2010 panel at USIP, Very
harsh comments were made by women on both sides. Both sides couldnt
recognize that the other women were their neighbors. But over the
four days women began to build personal relationships and find
common ground, building a foundation for them to work together on
social change.
Sri Lanka has seen a wide variety of involvement of women in
working for peace, many of them involving dimensions of faith. Box
6 explores several networks and approaches.
Box 6: Intersecting womens networks and approaches in the midst
of war in Sri Lanka
As women, we are deeply concerned about the militarization of
society due to armed conflict We recognize that women in particular
have been victimized by war and conflict in Sri Lanka Women and
women's organizations in Sri Lanka have been working steadily and
consistently for peace during the last two decades Therefore,
womens realities and womens voices must be an essential part of the
peace process in Sri Lanka. (Memorandum to the Government, the
LTTE, and the Norwegian facilitators,from Women's Organizations of
Sri Lanka, 7 June, 2002.)Amidst the brutality of Sri Lankas
protracted conflict, women have played many roles. Best known is
their suffering: many have died and lost family members in fighting
and from civil strife, and women were the targets of widespread
patterns of rape used as a weapon of war. But Sri Lankan women have
also moved beyond the role of victim. They have participated as
fighters; they have helped life continue during conflict; they have
worked actively for peace. A striking feature of Sri Lanka is the
interweaving of these different aspects.
In the Tamil community, culture and religious traditions
accentuate womens roles. Female goddesses are the focus of devotion
and women play key social roles in social organization. This shaped
womens responses to conflict. Female cadres, activists, and oracles
all engaged directly. Particularly at the local level, their
approaches and activities were linked and woven together. A common
theme among very different actors is reliance on strong community
ties and traditions. This supported spontaneous and organized
efforts to strengthen networks initiated and led by women.
Many women put their lives at risk to work for peace and
development; many work under the public radars in their villages
and communities. Below are three examples of grassroots womens
peacebuilding projects in Sri Lanka.Suriya
The Suriya Womens Development Organization, a Tamil civil
society entity, exemplifies a potent and effective womens response.
Formed in the early 1990s, it expanded over the decades from a
small organization helping displaced women around Colombo, Sri
Lankas capital, to an internationally known body with extensive
networks, both national and international. Suriya built a capacity
to reach isolated communities in Sri Lanka; it also built bridges
to international organizations. It became an effective political
actor, delivering services and communicating the suffering and
wishes of women in Sri Lanka and overseas.
Suriya from the outset adopted a flexible and thus
multi-sectoral approach to meeting needs of displaced women. The
initial focus was on staffing medical clinics, establishing
schools, offering vocational training, legal counseling, and health
education workshops. Suriya later shifted focus to the war zones
around Batticaloa, and thus to the situation of victims. Suriya
took on the work of fighting cases of arbitrary arrest, abduction,
disappearances, and battering of women. It also worked to provide
income-generating activities for widowed women.
A central Suriya objective was to make the government and
military more accountable for acts of injustice against the
population. In Colombo, Suriya lobbied to prevent government
closure of refugee camps. When the government rounded up refugees
in the middle of the night, Suriya women followed them to
Battiacola and organized highly visible camps that brought home the
reality of arrests that had been denied. There, Suriya organized
public protests in the form of silent vigils to challenge the use
of torture and abduction by the government. In the late 1990s,
Suriya organized a clothesline project to protest the lack of
accountability for criminal acts perpetrated by the military.
Colorful sari blouses, each representing a female family member who
had been killed, were strung in public places, broadcasting the
reality that womens domestic space is no safer than the streets of
the war zone.
Suriyas domestic and international outreach programs
strengthened networks of Sri Lankan women. Networks like Freedom
from Fear work to address dangerous and insecure conditions through
publicizing problems. Through silent vigils in Battiacola and other
public events, Suriya gave a sense of common purpose in a
dangerously demoralized and fragmented social situation. Suryias
collective prayers for peace helped build this sense of
community.
Suriyas advocacy roles expanded as it brought home issues that
Sri Lankan women faced. Transnational connections strengthened
Suriyas effectiveness in its local work and gave credibility to its
efforts to bridge the different womens networks in Sri Lanka.Muslim
Womens Research and Action Forum
Sri Lankas Muslim Womens Research and Action Forum (MWRAF) began
as an informal gathering of Muslim women coming together to discuss
issues facing Muslim women in Sri Lanka in 1976, and eventually
evolved into a registered non-governmental organization by 1990.
The organization, headed by Jezima Ismail, seeks to empower Muslim
women in particular, but all women in general, to play an active
role in community and national development. The organization
pursues a vision of upholding equity and justice for all women
(whatever their ethnic origin) free of violence against women and
exploitation of women by all patriarchal structures including the
family, society, custom, religion and the state.
To begin, MWRAF monitors the implementation of Muslim Personal
law and works towards reform of Muslim Personal Law in Sri Lanka in
manner that is in keeping with the principles of equity and
justice. This is achieved through pursuit of legal means to ensure
the protection of womens rights in national and local governance,
and supported through the promotion of Quranic interpretative study
with male imams and women that highlights the religious mandate of
gender rights and protection. The organization also seeks to
mobilize women in the grassroots to do this work of monitoring and
organizing to secure and protect womens rights in state and
religious law.
MWRAF also seeks to bring women and men together across the
Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim ethnic communities to strengthen the
adoption of a Sri Lankan identity where there is no concept of
majority and minority and all citizens are of equal status. This
inter-ethnic and inter-faith peacebuilding work is conducted in the
grassroots through community dialogue forums.
Finally, MWRAF seeks to compile and produce research materials
on issues relevant to their ongoing work, including publications on
gender equality, peacebuilding, and customary law practiced
throughout the Muslim world. Sinhala-Tamil-Muslim Rural Women's
NetworkThe Sinhala-Tamil-Muslim Rural Women's Network (STMRWN) is
based in Trincomalee, a region historically sacred to both Hindus
and Buddhists. It works to bring together women from the different
ethnic and religious communities, promoting political involvement,
womens empowerment, and human rights. STMRWN works on poverty
alleviation, micro credit, health, education, environment, and
peace. Its members number 29,000, from the countrys diverse ethnic
and religious groups.
Sri Lankan women have rarely contested local elections, because
political tradition favors the established political parties.
STMRWN was among the first womens groups to contest provincial
council elections in 1999, addressing as their platform the
marginalization of small farmers. They did not win a seat in
council, but the effort helped to mobilize women, and different
ethnic groups and faith traditions worked together for a greater
civic voice.
STMRWN, besides political advocacy, was actively engaged in
tsunami relief, immediately following the disaster and longer term.
STMRWN is implementing livelihood and restoration and
infrastructure development projects focused on poor fishing
villages that have fell through the gaps of the immediate
post-tsunami development response. STMRWN works with ActionAid on
land-title issues that have exacerbated conflict in a region slowly
emerging from civil war.
Trauma healing and reconciliation workOne area of peace work
where womens roles seem particularly prominent is reconciliation
and healing. While trauma healing is certainly not always
associated with religion, spirituality does seem to have a positive
effect on the process. Andrea Blanch, who is trained as a social
psychologist, comments, Religion and faith tap into peoples deepest
beliefs and can provide one tool to begin addressing the trauma and
the conflict at a personal and societal level.
Blanch notes that women seem particularly adept at this sort of
reconciliation work. Similarly, both Susan Hayward and Jacqueline
Ogega highlight the relationship between women and healing in their
int