Weaving the Threads of Peace: Creating a Gender Evaluation Methodology for Women's Participation in Peacemaking

Abstract The United Nations Resolution 1325 was enacted to reaffirm the importance of bringing in a gender perspective to peacemaking by seeking to increase women's participation in official peacemaking efforts, supporting women's initiatives to create a culture of peace, and by underscoring women's unique contributions to peacemaking. The extent to which the resolution has been implemented varies across different parts of world. The enactment of 1325 notwithstanding, women continue to make up a small percentage of professional positions in most official peacekeeping and peacemaking bodies in various parts of the world. Drawing on the themes of a grounded theory study of women in conflict-affected areas and on current literature in gender and peacemaking, this paper seeks to build a set of criteria for a gender evaluation methodology (GEM) for evaluating UN 1325. The tool seeks to gauge the level of women's involvement in both official peacemaking processes and in alternative peacemaking initiatives, the degree to which political space has been broadened by UN 1325, and the degree to which peace constituencies have been created and strengthened as a result of this resolution. This paper is part of a larger study developing grounded theory on women's participation in peacemaking. A gender evaluation methodology also serves as a way to explore how global policy as UN 1325 can be implemented in the local context of conflict-affected areas, how it can be evaluated in terms of its goals and objectives, and how accountability can be exacted from multi-stakeholders. Implications of global social policy advocacy on social development agenda-building will be explored.