Who gets a seat at the table and who holds power? Gender parity and peace in the digital age

Introduction Gender parity in peace processes is typically assessed through institutional participation. Nevertheless, as peacebuilding progressively evolves across digital platforms and mediated narratives, access alone no longer determines who exercises influence. This article asks “who gets a seat at the table” in contemporary peace processes, what that seat confers in the digital age, and “who holds power” as peace governance becomes hybrid. It argues that participation-based approaches obscure how power is redistributed across institutional, digital, and narrative domains, reflecting a broader distinction between inclusion and influence and generating new, less visible patterns of gendered exclusion. Methods Methodologically, the article adopts a conceptual-analytic, qualitative, and interpretive approach, combining theoretically guided literature synthesis with illustrative case application, rather than empirical case comparison or causal inference. Results/findings The article introduces a three-domain analytical framework distinguishing between institutional parity (formal access to peace processes), digital parity (visibility and influence within platform-mediated peace environments), and narrative parity (authority over legitimacy and meaning-making). The framework demonstrates how inclusion in one domain may coexist with exclusion in others, producing what this article terms performative parity situations in which gender inclusion is visible yet structurally constrained. Discussion The findings show that inclusion remains structurally constrained when power is misaligned across domains. Without alignment across the three domains, gender parity remains symbolic. The article concludes by proposing a diagnostic framework that enables scholars and practitioners to identify, analyse, and correct gendered power misalignment across institutional, digital, and narrative domains in contemporary peace processes.