Gender and Peacebuilding Training Workshops: Reflections on the Relevance of Women-Only SpacesYaliwe Clarke
Gender-training workshops are a common avenue for improving the understanding of gender and its relevance to building sustainable peace. At a bare minimum, gender-training workshops attempt to provide both a conceptual framework and a practical guide for understanding the definition of gender and how certain commonly-held male/female social roles cultivate unequal power relations that result in unfair treatment, discrimination and even outright violence.
Current world statistics show that the under-representation of women in leadership positions and their lack of access to education, employment, health and other social assets is largely due to widespread discrimination against women embedded in both formal (government) institutions and informal family structures. The challenge of gender-training sessions is to help participants radically assess their own assumptions about the role of men and women in society. A further challenge is to provide space for both the participants and resource person(s) or trainer(s) to explore ways of changing those social roles that are detrimental to building sustainable peace.
A contentious issue in gender-training courses is the managing of tensions that arise from the very social roles that the workshop aims to change. Men are often outspoken, defensive of their social status and sometimes unappreciative of the relevance of gender equality to peacebuilding or indeed national security. Women also face the challenge of being classified as victims, and can be easily intimidated into accepting that gender inequality is due to the individual inadequacies of women rather than an oppressive social system.
In my experience as a gender trainer, I have found that participants often debate gender roles in an antagonistic manner. One particular scenario comes to mind: it involved a class that comprised a dynamic group of NGO practitioners from five African countries (seven men and two women). The participants were divided according to gender and asked to present an example of a gender issue. The women pointed to the limited access of women to education and employment opportunities, while the men referred to African men who are being denied sexual relations by their wives.
The class went on to have a lengthy debate about an African woman's role as a wife — how her prime interest should be that of sexually pleasing her husband and looking after her children and home. The men were of the view that it was not possible for a husband to rape his wife because in a marriage he has the right to have sex with his wife at will. The women's concerns about education and employment were overshadowed.
Whereas gender training involving both men and women is essential to ensuring that both women and men partner in the struggle for gender equality, discussions like these undermine opportunities to examine women's experiences that often are overlooked, under-theorised and hardly documented.
In many African communities, experience has shown that men's presence can limit women's effective participation. Coached in female gender stereotypes of "gentleness" and "submissiveness", many women lack self-esteem and confidence to engage with male colleagues — particularly with regard to controversial topics. Thus, the presence of men can undermine the effective participation of women and hence reduce opportunities to build their self-esteem and solidarity — both essential in empowering women to challenge patriarchal attitudes and systems.
In contrast to my experiences of facilitating gender and peace workshops involving both male and female participants, I facilitated a "women in peacebuilding" workshop for 17 women in Lesotho on 18-23 August 2005. Based on the work of the West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) and Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET), which authored a "Community Women in Peacebulding" training manual, the Centre for Conflict Resolution decided to train women only. WIPNET's training methodology is based on the assumption that the capacity of women to be peacebuilders hinges on developing "personal peace". By providing women-only spaces, the training sessions help women to reflect on gender social roles in the context of personal experiences at the levels of both family and the community.
After four years of testing the manual with women from across West Africa, WIPNET found that women are profoundly informed by their gender roles (of wife, mother, daughter, grand-daughter, daughter-in-law, mother-in-law, grand-mother, or sister-in-law) to the extent that the ability of women to be effective peacebuilders requires an interrogation of the problems that women face in fulfilling female gender roles.
During the Lesotho "Community Women in Peacebulding" training workshop, participants started the first session with a collective reflection on the concept of womanhood. Participants were asked to share the first words that came to mind when they thought of "being woman". Their responses were: "mother", "caretaker", "helpmate", "counsellor", "guide", "human being" and "facilitator". With regard to being a Mosotho woman, the participants responded with: "singer", "slave", "peaceful", "child", "inferior", "kitchen-maker", "voiceless", "tiller of land", "water-drawer", 'washerwoman", "child-producer".
These responses spoke to the essence of the workshop — an interrogation of women's social roles and how these impact on their capacity to build peace in society. As is the case in most African countries, Lesotho is a male-dominated society .What is evident is the extent to which overt legal and administrative restrictions on women still exist. For example, women still require their husbands' permission to secure a loan, open a bank account, or even run for public office. Hence, women cannot easily own or inherit property, run a company or stand for political office. Until recently, women had no legal right to refuse sexual intercourse and still requires her husband's permission to have surgery or use contraceptives. The HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is at 30% and it is estimated that half of Lesotho's young women are infected with HIV.
Despite these grave facts, Mosotho women are renowned for running their homes in the absence of their husbands who are often away, working in South Africa. With more than half of Lesotho's male working population registered as migrant workers in South Africa, most men spend an average of 15 working years away from home and nearly a third spend between 17 and 25 years of their lives in mines. With so many men outside the country, Lesotho has a population comprising women, children, the elderly and a few men often ill (with HIV/AIDS) or incapacitated as a result of their prior employment in the mines.
The responses of women to what it means to be a Mosotho woman thus revealed a wealth of personal stories that featured strongly in workshop deliberations as examples of the obstacles that can impact on the personal peace of women and their effectiveness in building peace in their societies. The discussions also revealed the importance of women-only spaces. In patriarchal societies, the experiences of women are often considered too personal or unimportant and are often undermined.
In contrast to gender and peace workshops, women in peacebuilding workshops go beyond the conceptual understanding of gender equality and peace. A great deal of time is dedicated to exercises that help participants build confidence in themselves while simultaneously providing basic skills in communication, negotiation and mediation. Participatory exercises that require the sharing of experiences and group collaboration dominate the curricula. This methodology introduces a dimension crucial to enhancing the contribution of women to peacebuilding: trauma healing.
During the Lesotho workshop, it became clear that women's experiences of domestic violence and the impact of HIV/AIDS posed a heavy emotional burden. As in a number of other cultures in southern Africa, customary law governs the sexuality of women. Sex with one's husband is considered a wifely duty, even in situations where the male spouse is known to have other sexual partners. Women who insist on the use of a condom or deny a husband sexual relations may be beaten or abandoned. Even if a woman suspects her spouse may have been exposed to HIV, she has nowhere to turn for support and there are no laws to protect her.
An added emotional strain is that of nursing the ill. As caretakers of the family, women provide the first level of healthcare, as well as moral and psychological support in times of illness. It is apparent that as the HIV epidemic spreads, even greater demands are being placed on women. They now have the additional physical and psychological burden of attending to men who have become ill and return home to their villages to die.
An interesting session of the Lesotho workshop was called "shedding the weight". At about 8pm, participants gathered in a secluded room. The chairs were arranged in a circle and a single candle and box of matches placed at the centre. Once the lights were dimmed, whoever wished to speak lit the candle and said whatever came to mind. Once finished, the flame was extinguished and the candle returned to the centre of the circle.
Stories were told, tears shed and prayers of solidarity told. Traumatic experiences of loss and pain were shared, while a sense of belonging and common purpose was simultaneously felt. No word of what was shared by the participants left that room. I have no doubt that personal burdens were lightened. I also have no doubt that this session can only be done in women-only spaces.
From the Lesotho training, it is clear that women-only spaces are important in empowering them to realise their unique peacebuilding capacities in Africa. Many women do not realise how significant their personal experiences are to empowering themselves and others, and to challenging patriarchy and build sustainable peace at the personal and communal levels. At the end of the training in Lesotho, women committed themselves to keeping in touch with each other and expose other women to the peacebuilding terrain.
Participants of the Community Women in Peacebuilding Workshop held on 18-21 October 2005, Lesotho Sun, Maseru. Participants are having a group discussion on violence against women in Lesotho. At the centre is Marasoeu Moholi, active member of the former Lesotho Network for Conflict Management (LNCM).
Yaliwe Clarke was a senior project officer in the Conflict Intervention and Peacebuilding Support (CIPS) project
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