The Peacebuilding Program at SPF has been collaborating with the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security in the U.S. on research related to the WPS agenda. But before we dive into the findings of this research, I wanted to ask what exactly is the WPS agenda?
Ms. Nakayama: What is called the WPS agenda is the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and its succeeding nine resolutions acknowledging the important role played by women for conflict prevention, peacemaking, and peacebuilding. It also acknowledged and asked us to pay attention to the disproportionate impact war and conflict has upon women and girls.
Since this resolution was adopted in 2000, there has been so many initiatives by the international organizations, UN organizations, and the UN member states to push forward this agenda. Now there are more than 100 member states which have adopted a National Action Plan to realize that the proposals by the WPS agenda in the national context.
In addition, there has been so much evidence presented showing the interlinkages, the relationship between conflict resumption, outbreak of conflict, and gender equality, and also the impact of women's inclusion in peace processes. So, it's already very evident that if women are involved in peace processes, peace accords will be more sustainable.
Although there have been so many efforts done by all these stakeholders, we think that what is intended by the WPS agenda is not yet fully transformed into reality at the international or regional or local level.
The question is, there have been so many efforts done, but there is some kind of deadlock, and what's next to move us to the new stage to push forward this agenda?
This brings us to the research for the project this time. If you had to sum up the main goal of the research and analysis, how would you do that?
Ms. Nakayama: We hope that we can bring the importance of the masculinity lens to the policy discussion on the WPS agenda because we think that if we understand what men’s perceptions are and how masculinity works in preventing women's right to work outside, for example, it can make us realize what will be the substantial, the meaningful entry point for intervention.
Because if we only keep empowering women, it doesn't change the structure. Therefore, we have to think about what are the avenues for men's transformations. So, on one hand we think that we have to empower women, but on the other hand we have to support men's transformations to realize what is intended in the WPS agenda.
Another thing is the importance of local narratives. WPS has a very difficult task of balancing both. One is upholding international framework and using universal language and trying to endorse women's inclusion in peace talks. For doing that we need an international framework.
But on the other hand, if we only use this universal language, you will meet with resistance from within the local society. Therefore, we have to work closely with the local stakeholders to see what would be the entry point for the international norms to do any work.
So what we did was we collected data of 6000 men and women from three post-conflict areas in Southeast Asia – Aceh and Maluku of Indonesia and Mindanao of the Philippines – and collected data on gender equality, the gender gap, income gap, gender gap of educational attainment or how they divide household work or how equal the decision making is at the household level, as well as the women's involvement in community activities or their perceptions on gender division of labor, gender norms, and also on masculinity. Who are most influential in teaching men what it means to be a man? Or what do they think is important for men?
Also, we have asked them about the past experience of the violence during conflict times and also their mental status and whether or not they are satisfied with the status of the peacebuilding.
What were some of the main findings that came out of the survey of all of these participants?
Ms. Nakayama: We found out that in all of these three fields, the majority of men in post-conflict contexts don't support the use of violence for any reason. We expected that in a post-conflict context, that men have a very violent masculinity. In fact, they denied the use of violence.
And it's not only men, but also women play a very important role in shaping what it means to be masculine or a man. Spouses, the wives, or the mothers play a very important role according to male respondents.
Also, we found out the very important role of the household, family, and community in shaping this masculinity.
How does that play into post-conflict resolution or in the peacebuilding process?
Ms. Nakayama: One of the problems is that in post-conflict context, the women, although they want to pursue more public positions or they want to have the job outside home, a significant number of women, married women, answered that they are not allowed to work.
And these masculinities are related to this gatekeeping role of men. We have found that men from the higher educational background tend to disagree with the statement that married women have the same right as men to work outside. Being a man who can be the breadwinner and also protector of the family, therefore they can afford women not working, that is important in the masculinity. Therefore, it can work negatively against giving the right for women to work outside.
We asked the question whether or not respondents agree with the statement that to protect women’s security, men have to control movement of women outside the house. Those men who are feeling a sense of insecurity of the safety of women tend to agree with this gatekeeping role more, which means that this gatekeeping role is very key in understanding the problem faced by women. This is related to the sense of masculinity, men as being the major earner of the family, and also the sense of insecurity.
Could you tell us about how the research was carried out in the field?
Ms. Nakayama: We collaborated with Jakarta-based researchers, the name of the group is Integral Asia, and also the researchers, our partner from Conciliation Resources in the U.K., in addition to the Georgetown University Institute for Women, Peace, and Security, and designed a questionnaire to collect all these data.
Also, we consulted local partners, which are the International Center for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies, Pattimura University, Mindanao State University, and also the local activists and NGO workers about whether or not the usage of language is right and relevant and also whether or not the questions posed are relevant to collect data that we wanted.
We have collected answers to the 70 questions so that our data is just so enormous. And now all our partners are analyzing the data from different perspectives. Georgetown University and also Integral Asia and each local partners are looking at the data from their own perspective.
What were some other significant findings from the research?
Ms. Nakayama: Another argument that we bring in the paper edited by Integral is that in the past, in peacebuilding, so much effort was done to ensure the security, so that peacebuilding funding was spent more for the compensation for the individual.
However, the trauma of psychosocial problems was, for example, neglected, and also the problem of the widows or the children who are not within the circle of the former combatants’ network were somewhat overlooked – this was the case in Aceh – which is detrimental for the society at large in the long run because psychosocial problems were not addressed and the perpetration of violence continues.
We were able to see clearly the relationship between the past trauma during conflict times and the current ongoing violence perpetrated by men and women against family members. So, we were able to see the impact of the psychosocial support. If, say, those men and women receive psychosocial interventions, they are likely to have the better mental health status. That was confirmed, which was also very important.
Was there anything that caught you by surprise out of these results or based on the survey that was conducted?
Ms. Nakayama: Yeah, there are so many surprising results. We found out that women themselves also agree with the patriarchal norm that men work outside and women take care of the family, and also women agree with the statement that men are the leader of the family.
But one thing I can say is that our data shows that the majority of women are also supporting these patriarchal norms, however, our local narrative shows that women are trying to exert their own influence and power in a different way, not by taking the leadership in the public sphere, but trying to influence men from the back door. There have been so many very subtle exercises of power of women themselves and trying to negotiate the things that are important for them, like children's affairs, without challenging the masculine norms.
The fact that women themselves support the patriarchal norm doesn't mean that women are powerless, in fact. But if we look from an outsider’s perspective, we were very surprised that women themselves support patriarchal norms. But if we carefully listen to local narratives – we have done the focus group discussions too – and those women are saying that there have been so many struggles within the house and trying to get something done, which is important for women.
There have been so many initiatives done by women activists in all the regions – Aceh, Maluku, and Mindanao. In fact, in Maluku, those who initiated the peace process were women working for the humanitarian aid, but started the reconciliation between the Muslim and Christian women. Although in the formal peace processes, women's representation is very low, in reality the women are the initiator of peace processes.
So what is needed is not only counting the number of women sitting at the negotiation table, but also trying to find out where are those forums for women and where are the spaces for women's voices and trying to connect these spaces with formal peace processes so that not only the representatives, but also the issues and concerns will be incorporated in the formal processes.
How did you come to focus on this topic as part of the Peacebuilding Program’s work?
Ms. Nakayama: We kind of have some kind of broad ideas which comes from our own experience of the activities in the field of peacebuilding or in search for gender equality.
One such example is our experience of conducting research on the theme of the new role of men for gender equality from 2018. With this project we have tried to investigate the relationship between men's contribution to the household work and their perceptions of gender norms. We have collected more than 10,000 men's data from cities, mostly in East Asia, Europe, and the U.S.
We thought that that there must be a co-relationship between the frequency in the household work and their liberal perspective on gender norms. However, surprisingly we have found out that those men who are contributing more to the household work are likely to have more discriminatory perspective about women at the workplace.
What was really interesting was that we say that engaging men and boys for the agenda of gender equality, but we realized from that research experience that it is not very simple to engage men and boys for the agenda of gender equality. Therefore, we realized that we need to understand fully about what are the perceptions and the reactions of men for us to have more substantial, meaningful interventions. That was the first experience of ours with regard to the masculinity perspective.
Secondly, we have this experience of the peacebuilding work in Southern Thailand, the conflict area in Southeast Asia, a part of Thailand bordering Malaysia. And from that experience, we had difficulty in persuading male counterpart stakeholders in Pattani, the conflict area. This is a very traditional Muslim society which doesn't allow women to go abroad alone without being accompanied by their husband.
So it has been very difficult for us to persuade, convince men and also women to attend our training programs. But gradually we were able to persuade them after building trust with so many stakeholders, and even when we succeeded in bringing those women to the training abroad, the women were so much empowered and those women became very confident in themselves in talking in public.
How do you think this experience comes into play with the WPS agenda?
Ms. Nakayama: We thought that women’s role in peacebuilding is very important and significant and started reading the WPS literature. We also realized that the WPS literature, trying to set the international framework using the universal language of gender equality.
However, we realized that there should be some kind of reactions against that use of language because gender is a very sensitive area. And considering that the post-conflict or the ongoing conflict society in Southeast Asia, our field, mostly has a colonial history and also the division of labor, gender division of labor, is very rigid.
In those societies, if we bring this WPS agenda with universal language, there should be a resistance or backlash for male stakeholders saying that this is something, the Western bias, and this is not what they want. So we have to be very careful in understanding the real challenges and difficulties women and men are faced with without using this universal language is what we thought.
What are the next steps for sharing this information and how will it be used in the field?
Ms. Nakayama: We are going to have that the launch event first in the U.S. and then in each locality. So first comes the U.S. and then Mindanao, Aceh, and Maluku.
Then we will discuss with our local partners what kind of follow up we can design together. It will be like a support for the psychosocial intervention to the trauma of the conflict, or there have been ideas to incorporate the WPS agenda and masculinity lens into the peace education curriculum. We also have the idea of more research to elaborate more on the local narratives and women's experiences during conflict time, or also we have the proposal that the intervention in the family practices, working together with the religious leaders and also teaching about gender equality education and the prevention of domestic violence. There are so many ideas for the follow up, so we would like to work with local partners to think about that possibility.
Outro:
That was our conversation with Maho Nakayama, director and senior program officer of the Peacebuilding Program at SPF. Visit the show notes for links to learn more about this research and other projects by the Peacebuilding Program. That’s all for this episode of SPF World Views. Thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you next time.
