Women's Rights After War

战后，性别平等改革已成为恢复的标准工具之一。国际行动者支持旨在实现和平、民主过渡的法律和政策，以促进妇女的权利。这些措施包括政治上的性别配额、将家庭暴力定为犯罪的立法改革，以及支持妇女参与劳动力市场和增强社会经济能力的项目。这些改革对促进妇女权利至关重要，但有证据表明，这些改革有很大的局限性。该项目将增进我们对如何在战后进一步促进妇女权利和平等的理解——这是安全和民主的重要先决条件。为此，我们比较和评估了10个国家在战后对妇女权利的干预。该项目优先考虑对什么是“赋予妇女权力”进行创新和重要的重新理论化，这将直接指导旨在确保妇女权利和男女平等的宣传、政策和法律工作。该项目的见解也可用于更有效地促进妇女的政治和经济融入，以确保战后更持久的和平。本项目采用创新的多阶段、多方法研究设计，对1980年以来经历武装冲突的10个国家的妇女权利改革进行了比较和评估：尼泊尔、波斯尼亚-黑塞哥维那、伊拉克、乌干达、哥伦比亚、斯里兰卡、阿富汗、利比里亚、卢旺达和刚果民主共和国。我们选择这些案例是为了反映在战后宪法和法律重新起草过程中实施妇女权利改革的国家之间广泛的地理差异。该项目提出了三个核心问题：(1)谁从战后性别改革中受益，为什么受益？(2)这些改革的实施如何更广泛地塑造社会分化、和平与安全？最后，(3)处境不同的妇女如何能够利用所提供的权利和赋权机会，以及她们如何定义自己的赋权条件？我们研究了五个问题领域的改革：家庭法；刑事司法;国际法律框架；经济机会计划；还有政治代表权。该项目将利用地方定量数据和创新的参与性研究方法，探讨实施性别改革能够促进妇女权利的条件。在这样做的同时，我们还研究了这些改革如何加剧现有的社会政治分裂，加剧冲突时期的裂痕，和/或为政治上的权宜之计服务。我们预计，这些确保一些妇女受益而另一些妇女处于边缘地位的进程不利于追求战后持久和平。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In the wake of war, gender equality reforms have become part of a standard toolkit for recovery. International actors have championed laws and policies intended to bring about peaceful, democratic transitions that foreground women's rights. These include political gender quotas, legislative reforms criminalizing domestic violence, and programs championing women's labor market participation and socioeconomic empowerment. These reforms are essential for advancing women's rights, and yet evidence suggests that these reforms have substantial limitations. This project will advance our understanding of how to further advance women's rights and equality in the aftermath of war--vital prerequisites for security and democracy. To do so, we compare and evaluate women's rights interventions that followed war in 10 countries. The project prioritizes an innovative and important re-theorizing of what constitutes "women's empowerment," which will directly inform advocacy, policy, and legal efforts directed at securing women's rights and equality with men. The insights of the project can also be used to more effectively advance women's political and economic inclusion to secure a more durable peace after war.Using an innovative multi-stage and multi-method research design, this project compares and evaluates women's rights reforms in 10 countries that have experienced armed conflict since 1980: Nepal, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq, Uganda, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Liberia, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We select these cases to capture broad geographic diversity among countries that have implemented women's rights reforms during their constitutional and legal re-drafting processes that followed war. The project asks three core questions: (1) Who benefits, and why, from postwar gender reforms? (2) How does the implementation of these reforms shape social divisions, peace, and security more broadly? And finally, (3) How are differently situated women able to take advantage of the rights and empowerment opportunities presented, and how do they define the terms of their own empowerment? We examine reforms across five issue areas: family law; criminal justice; international legal frameworks; economic opportunity programs; and political representation. Using subnational quantitative data and innovative participatory research methodologies, the project will explore the conditions under which the implementation of gender reforms can advance women's rights. While doing so, we also examine how such reforms can reinforce existing socio-political cleavages, aggravate conflict-era fissures, and/or serve politically expedient goals. We anticipate that these processes, which ensure that some women benefit while others remain sidelined, are detrimental to the pursuit of durable postwar peace.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.