Education, Economic Empowerment, and Women's Agency: A Conceptual Peacebuilding Framework for South-East Nigeria

Women in South-East Nigeria contribute to everyday conflict management, mutual support and community cohesion, yet their participation in formal peace and security structures remains constrained by gendered norms, insecurity and uneven access to resources. This conceptual article examines how education and economic empowerment may strengthen women’s agency and under what conditions that agency can contribute to peacebuilding. Informed by an integrative review of scholarship, policy materials and official statistics, the article brings together Kabeer’s resources–agency–achievements framework, the capability approach, feminist peace scholarship and the Women, Peace and Security agenda. It proposes a four-stage pathway—education, economic empowerment, agency and peacebuilding contribution—while treating the pathway as conditional and iterative rather than automatic. Security conditions, gender relations, institutional responsiveness and community networks shape whether knowledge and resources can be converted into meaningful action. The framework is operationalised through five connected pillars: transformative education; economic empowerment; women’s leadership in peace structures; protection and safety; and community accountability. Research on the Umuada and other women’s networks illustrates the potential of locally grounded institutions, while also showing why customary structures should not be presumed universally inclusive. The article’s contribution is an integrated, context-sensitive framework that connects empowerment to peacebuilding while foregrounding protection, institutional conditions and the risks women may face through participation. It offers propositions for policy design and future empirical testing, not a claim that the framework has already been validated.