INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION OCCASIONAL PAPER NUMBER 19 reform in the realm of gender justice has resulted in a superficial acceptance of transformation. If reconciliation in its “thick” sense is to be understood as recognition, acknowledgement and redress of harms, then more creative ways of acknowledging gendered harms are needed. Thus interrogating the position of gender concerns in current theories of reconciliation is imperative. Gender and Reconciliation at the Local Level: Women as Peacebuilders? Much of the literature on gender and reconciliation is replete with stereotypes around women as peace-makers or peace-builders and central to local reconciliation processes. As Christine Bell and Catherine O’Rourke argue, “the difficulties of navigating the boundary between using gender as a category disruptive of traditional military and political assumptions, and ‘essentialising’ women as bringing a ‘different voice’, a different set of priorities, and a form of ‘transcendent’ identity politics, is particularly acute” in reconciliation processes.28 According to Susan McKay, national priorities regarding reconciliation are often developed at the expense of gender justice, especially when “thin” notions of reconciliation are employed. She also notes that reconciliation processes to date have been overwhelmingly driven by interests that favour the powerful and, in turn, further disenfranchises the vulnerable. Indeed, some analysts have pointed to the reality that through reconciliation processes women may in fact be deprived of gains achieved during conflict when gender roles are more fluid. This stems from the fact that post-conflict “transformation” often coincides with a restoration of prior gender relations. In addition gender roles may be subject to the longer-term impacts of conflict. For example, as the Rwandan genocide and post-apartheid South Africa reveal, a growth in the female-to-male ratio and increases in female-headed households may in fact create new vulnerabilities. And as Elissa Helms notes in the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina, reconciliation processes often sustain ideas of separate gender spheres whether this be prior to or post-conflict constructs. Ultimately, these views underpin: “both constructions of essential, unsurpassable ethnic difference as well as imaginings of renewed life alongside erstwhile ‘ethnic’ enemies”.27 What these views fail to achieve is challenging gender identities within either debates over “difference” or “renewed life”. This is perhaps reinforced by examples of women’s widespread involvement in informal reconciliation processes despite, or because of, their absence in more formal processes. As Karen Brounéus has observed, these stereotypes are explained through either an “essentialist” or “constructivist” framework.29 Essentialists argue that due to biological reasons women are innately more nurturing, passive and peaceful. Constructivists, on the other hand, maintain that women are more invested in peace-building due to gender roles which places them at the centre of mediating disputes.30 This view suggests that because of religious and cultural conditioning women are able to forgive and reconcile more easily than men.31 It is also suggested that this expectation of women as more forgiving lies at the heart of numerous reconciliation processes. However, both of these oversimplifications and stereotypes have been challenged by authors such as Karen Brounéus who caution that these views “distort our understanding of war and peace” and the role of gender issues.32 Indeed she argues that post-genocide Rwanda reveals that women hold significantly more negative views towards peace-building. An obstacle to the advancement of gender-sensitive reconciliation has been that a “gender perspective” is often interpreted as solely involving the concerns of women and, within this reading, the experiences of women are often considered universal. However, it is important to recognise that not all women experience conflict or authoritarian rule in the same way, and their experiences often vary according to race, ethnicity, class, education, age, sexual identity and location. Adopting an intersectional approach challenges assumptions of women as passive victims. It also acknowledges the reality that women can be autonomous actors who choose to support, oppose or survive a conflict or authoritarian rule. Beyond being victims during conflicts, women carry out a variety of roles including those of perpetrators. Indeed, it is critical to move beyond the binaries whereby women as victims are juxtaposed against men as perpetrators. It is nonetheless important to recognise that often women themselves subscribe or employ these stereotypes to gain entry into the public sphere. Elissa Helms has shown that in Bosnia and Herzegovina women reproducing “donorspeak (and) public statements in support of reconciliation or gender equality can not always be taken at face value or as proof of women’s greater inclination to reconciliation”.33 Indeed in some contexts women promoting themselves as peace-builders may be because working with men would be deemed political and would be frowned upon. With reference to Nicaragua, Julie Cupples has explored how “women themselves strategically drew upon crude, simplistic stereotypes… they employ a language of victimhood, based on Catholic images of suffering motherhood … Gender identities – in particular, motherhood and its connotations of sacrifice and nurturing – can enable women to attempt reconciliation with former ‘enemies’”.34 However, as Julia Wells argues in the South African context, appeals to motherhood as a method of activism is often constrained because “at some point women’s political activism is bound to be perceived as interfering with their prescribed roles as mothers”.35 Thus the promotion of the concept 3