Transformative gender justice: setting an agenda

Much of women’s experiences during and following periods of extensive violence are informed by pre-existing, peacetime, inequalities. The specific gendered harms suffered by women, such as sexual violence and exploitation, are grounded in understandings of gendered roles in society and the perceived links between reproduction and community. Thus, as the growing body of feminist research into processes of transitional justice show, women have vital stakes in post-conflict transformation, rather than reconstruction (Chinking and Charlesworth 2006 cited in Reilly 2007, Ní Aoláin 2012). Likewise, the (often far less visible) expectation that women sustain their caring roles in the everyday of war – providing food, shelter, and care for dependents, or soldiers, in often desperate contexts – constitutes specifically gendered experiences associated with existing inequalities and expectations (Reilly 2007). With this knowledge in mind, it is increasingly obvious that for women periods of societal transition have to aim for the transformation of the underlying inequalities that provided the conditions in which these specifically gendered harms were possible.