Women and early warning: An unequal and missed opportunity

The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue just put out a report Women's involvement in conflict early warning systems by Mary Ann M. Arnado.  The report argues that despite the forward movement involving women in peace process after the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1325, women and women's work has still be generally ignored in conflict prevention and early warning systems. In practice, this means that most early warning systems, which rely on collection, analysis and dissemination of data on conflict factors, have not provided women with equal opportunity to contribute.  The result is that crucial data is missing from the analysis and what is determined a "security threat" ignores some threats to women. Notably, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines have specifically designed their early warning systems as gender inclusive and the benefit has been clear. However, Arnado writes, "The involvement of women in conflict early warning systems is more pronounced and defined at the community level than in prevailing formal structures." Unsurprising since this is the case in so many instances.

The main arguments for calling for women’s participation in arenas like this one hinge on one of two tenets—the basic right of women to be included and the idea that women are actually better at anything related to peace simply because women are more peaceful. The first argument is absolutely true that we women should have the equal right to participate in all walks of life, and particularly in those that affect our lives. However, asserting that one has the right does not always bring about change.

Moving to the second argument, I find the idea that women are inherently more peaceful to be unhelpful, but also not true. There are numerous cases in which women have actually fueled conflict, often from behind, supplying materials, food, housing to combatants and sometimes using rhetoric to goad men around them to take up arms. Some women actually take up arms themselves and fight among the ranks. In fact, in the United States, women have fought hard for the right to join the military. And we don’t have to reach far to come up with examples of women heads of state who were just as hawkish as their male counterparts. So it’s an unhelpful assertion that women are just better at being peaceful and one I feel it largely based on and fed by stereotypes of women and of their perceived role in the home.

This is not to say that there are no differences between men and women (excuse the binary for the sake of this argument), as clearly there are both biological and cultural factors that impact the way our genders manifest themselves. And of course to some extent, stereotypes can be self-reinforcing and culture plays a huge part in laying out the rules for our spheres of influence as well as our expected roles in all aspects of life, including conflict. My main problem with this arguments is that it’s grossly oversimplified and often serves to pit genders against one another, getting us into the game of who is better than who, which is not helpful. All this said, because of the clear delineation of women’s and men’s roles in many societies, excluding women and the data they would bring into the early warning process means missing whole parts of the picture. All areas of society in which men are the ones excluded would be discounted in the early warning analysis, a dangerous omission.

What is needed?  A resolution for women's participation in early warning?  When will the men in power realize they're missing the important and unique potential of the women in their community?  What is most effective in affecting change?