Description
The recent integration of gender-based issues within peace building literature has revealed the critical need for peace processes to include women and the potential negative effects of their absence. Women, however, are mostly presented as a homogeneous group that promotes a same and unified idea of peace. Yet, women constitute a large and heterogeneous category, with different ethnicities, religions, classes, ages, races, etc. Those intersecting identities influence how they experience conflicts, the way they envision peace, but also their ability to mobilize. Based on interviews with women activists from the six entities that emerged from the disintegration of the Yugoslav space, I discuss the role of women’s intersecting identities in the personal trajectories of mobilization they develop. The paper reveals the power structures based on which processes of inclusion and exclusion operate. As such, it provides new insights on the construction of peace by local actors. Particularly, what kind peace is promoted and by whom.
