In 1915, women from over thirty countries met in The Hague to express opposition to the war and propose ways to end it. The delegates called for three things: for women to be present at all international peace conferences, a women's-only peace conference to be convened alongside any official negotiations, and the establishment of universal suffrage. While these demands went unmet at the time, contemporary women's groups continue to seek to participate in peace negotiations and to have language promoting gender equality inserted into all peace agreements. In fact, between 1989 and 2005, almost half of all peace processes led to agreements with references to women.

Many of these clauses addressed compensation for wartime gender-based violence and guarantees for women's participation in the post-conflict transitional period. Others included electoral quotas and changes to inheritance legislation. Curiously, the language used is fairly consistent across agreements, and that is because it reflects international women's rights norms rather than more local norms. But why is it that, if a peace agreement's primary objective is to end conflict, some include potentially controversial provisions about gender that might delay or complicate reaching an agreement? Why do these provisions echo international norms when we might expect each agreement to reflect varying cultural norms? And which factors make it more likely that women's rights will appear in peace agreements? Windows of Opportunity answers these questions by looking at peace negotiations in Burundi, Macedonia, and Northern Ireland. It looks at the key actors in negotiations, what prompts their mobilization, their objectives, their strategies, how they construct clauses for inclusion in peace agreements, how women's roles in the state are impacted in the wake of peace agreements, and how these variables increase the likelihood of success for women's movements.

Miriam J. Anderson's profile page

Miriam Anderson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.