Powerful or Powerless? The Influence of Gender Advocates in Peace Negotiations

While the Women, Peace and Security sector advocates for the inclusion of gender experts in peace processes to improve outcomes for women, empirical support for their effectiveness remains inconclusive. This paper tests whether individuals designated to advocate for gender-specific issues are influential or ineffective. Leveraging an original dataset capturing the role of 2,300 delegates across 116 comprehensive peace agreements finalized between 1990 and 2020, we find that gender advocates increase the likelihood that agreements contain provisions for women. However, investigating the case of Northern Ireland using interviews and archival analysis, we find that the systemic masculinized structure of peace negotiations hinders advocates’ overall influence. Consequently, this paper explains how these actors are simultaneously powerful and powerless. Findings capture gender advocates’ limitations, caution against individuals bearing sole responsibility for gender considerations in peace processes, and expand the conceptualization of what it is to be an expert.