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Keith Orwin
When women are included in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programs, the ability to capture more arms and various
weapons caches is enhanced. Gender analysis shows that when women are included in peace negotiations and decision-making, there are
more moderate voices advancing the interests of the most marginalized groups. The inclusion of women in consultations makes it likely
that more members of a society will benefit from stabilization efforts.
The involvement of women in the negotiation of institutional reform was
seen to be of paramount importance in the transitional stage of the peace
process in Northern Ireland. An all-women’s party, the Northern Ireland
Women’s Coalition, played a key role in the signing of the Good Friday
Agreement (Tonge 2002: 63). The institutional reform which arose from
the Good Friday Agreement included commitments to advancing equal
presence in political party representation and to safeguarding women’s
equality of opportunity to participate in the public sphere (Ní Aoláin and
Rooney 2007: 346). Institutional reform taking this form helps to change
societal attitudes towards gender; it can also be argued that it helps diversify the role of gender from an overly centred sexual violence focus to a
wider role for gender advancement in transitional justice.
Whilst highlighting the effectiveness of women in peace processes is
important, it is also important to highlight the problem of adopting an
‘add women and stir’ approach (Warren and Cady 1996: 1). Bell and
O’Rourke raise the issue that women are often used as ‘pawns of peace’
where their presence is included in the negotiation stage of peace talks,
but the underlying issues which have resulted in gender-harm in the first
place are widely disregarded once negotiations come to an end (Bell
and O’Rourke 2007: 25). They have argued that: “[m]atters that address
underlying issues of discrimination, domination and improvement of
physical, social and legal security, particularly with regard to gender, are
often addressed as secondary issues, or not at all.” Thus it can be suggested that that the inclusion of women in peace negotiations can some-