Gender, Conflict and Peacebuilding: An Introduction

What are the links between gender and conflict? What are the links between gender and peacebuilding? This lecture discusses some of those links with examples from international areas of armed conflict and experiences for ending violence and reaching peace.

The lecture will look at conflict analysis from a feminist perspective by addressing nationalism, militarism, masculinity and the discourses about women as actors and victims of war. In armed conflict accepted gender roles are often contested, providing space for transformative action for gender equality also in post-conflict reconstruction. Yet, peacebuilding does not always foster gender equality when advocated through normative frameworks, such as the UN Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Specific endeavors are needed to address gender power relations at all levels and in all phases of peacebuilding, not the least with regard to human security.

Brigitte Holzner has a Ph.D. in Psychology and an M.A. in Development Studies with the specialization in Women & Development. She was lecturer and researcher at several universities in the Netherlands and coordinated a social-science educational and research project for Leiden University in Indonesia. Between 2004 and 2010 she was in charge of the gender programme of the Austrian Development Agency and was the gender advisor of the Rule of Law Mission EULEX in Kosovo in 2010-2012. She taught courses on women, gender & development, politics of gender, conflict transformation and peace building, among others, for the Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the Centre for International Peace Operations (Berlin), and Swisspeace/University of Basel. She has published on gender and development, social change, post-socialist transformations, human security, gender responsive budgeting, agrarian change, reproductive health, urban governance, and research methodology.

The lecture serves also as introduction to the course “Gender, Conflict and peacebuilding”, scheduled for the summer semester 2019. The lecture will be broadcasted by video-screening to the Islamic University Gaza (IUG) and will enable interactive discussion. The lecture is the first of a series planned for the winter semester 2018/19.

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Further events within the project

“Strengthening Higher Education Capacities in Palestine for Gender Equality”

Department of Sociology at the Uni Graz and Islamic University of Gaza

Islamic Feminisms

Dr. Nadia Galiani-Jones, Central European University Budapest

18th October 2018

Doing Research under Occupation – Knowledge Production in and about Palestine

Dr. Helmut Krieger, University of Vienna

20th November 2018

Women’s Agency: Conceptual and practical issues

Dr. Nahda Shehada, Institute of Social Studies/Erasmus University Rotterdam

6th December 2018

The human rights of children with special emphasis on the girl child

Dr. Bernadette Knauder, European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, Graz

13th December 2018

Gender issues in social participation of refugees: Experiences from the Gaza strip

Dr. Gudrun Kramer, Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution

17th January 2019

Funding Austrian Development Agency under APPEAR (Austrian Partnership Program for Higher Education and Research)