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This paper looks at how gender concerns are being integrated into policies and programs that shape post-conflict societies.

Findings indicate a slow but positive shift in international opinion and understanding about the consequences of conflict on women and the importance of their participation in peacebuilding processes and post-conflict social transformation. However, gender discrimination continues to manifest itself in such forms as political exclusion, economic marginalization, and sexual violence during and after conflict that deny women their human rights and constrain the potential for development.

Efforts to introduce gender-sensitive approaches to peacebuilding have met with limited results since they fail to address underlying norms that define gender relations and power dynamics. Peacebuilding, despite being arguably more gender- sensitive, gives inadequate attention to the construction of gender norms and the processes by which they can be transformed to ensure more equitable gender relations.

Current gaps in knowledge suggest the need for further inquiry to:

• understand the complex interplay between gender identity, power, and violence
• establish methods of monitoring and evaluation that assess and guide gender perspectives in peacebuilding initiatives
• document norms and institutional practices that influence women’s economic reintegration
• determine optimal strategies to promote the human rights of women in reconstruction and conflict prevention.

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