The `sex war' and other wars: towards a feminist approach to peace-building

For more than a decade, resolutions from the UN and the European Commission have highlighted women's suffering during wars, and the unfairness of their treatment upon the return to peace. Yet the injustices and the hypocrisy continue. Women are reified as the peacemakers while they are excluded from peace processes. Women's suffering during war is held up as evidence of inhumanity by the same organisations that accept, if not promote, the marginalisation of women's needs during peacetime. The author reviews the processes through which these phenomena are perpetuated and outlines some ways forward which could help to break these cycles. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development, Women and War: Feminist Perspectives. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development, Women and War: Feminist Perspectives