CHALLENGING THE MARGINALIZATION OF MUSLIM WOMEN IN PEACEBUILDING: AGENCY, CULTURE, AND FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES IN CONFLICT-RESOLUTION

Women are generally portrayed as victims of war and conflicts. However, women are also active, strong, and resourceful agents as family caretakers, advocates of peace, relief workers, mediators, or combatants. The unrecognition of women’s various roles undermines their chances of being involved in formal peacebuilding and negotiations that establish post-conflict state-building, thus marginalizing them further from the political decision-making processes that have a direct and indirect impact on their life. Research findings on women’s role in peace processes point to several factors that affect their inclusion or exclusion in the process. This paper focuses on Muslim societies where culture and religion tend to be essentialized as the reason for women’s oppression, discrimination, and marginalization. It highlights the various roles Muslim women play during conflicts arguing for contextualizing culture within political, economic, and security factors to understand the obstacles they face. The arguments apply feminist theory on gender roles and patriarchy to explain why women are excluded from conflict-resolution processes, and the lens of postcolonial and Third World feminism to understand the perspective of Muslim communities on involving women. Within the framework of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, the paper follows the experiences of women in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Sudan to argue for utilizing women’s agency to ensure peace through local culture and religion, especially in the context of terrorism and extremism.