World Faiths Development Dialogue

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and

The United States Institute for Peace

Women, Religion, and Peace: Exploring an Invisible

Force
Katherine Marshall and Susan Hayward
December, 2010

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Table of Contents
Preface
1. Introduction: Why can women be so invisible in the quest for peace? Does it
matter?
2. Framing the issue: How should we define peace and why is the definition relevant?
Box 1: Spotlight on women working for peace
3. Women and Peacebuilding
Womens different experience
Womens defining attributes
Box 2: Interfaith womens movement in Liberia employed tradition and taboos
in work for peace
Gender roles, characterizations, and stereotypes
4. Women and Religious Peacebuilding
The growing exploration of religion and peacebuilding
Women, religion, and peacebuilding
Religiously motivated peacebuilding
Womens marginalization in formal religious spaces
Religious leadership vs. religious representation
Opportunities for womens action in a religious context
Women in formal religious leadership roles
Box 3: Working with the Aleemat in the Philippines - Amina Rasul-

Bernardo
Womens organizations working to combat violence
Box 4: Confronting gender-based violence in DRC
Box 5: Intersecting womens networks and approaches in the midst of war in
Sri Lanka
Building stronger links between religious and secular women
Box 6: Building bridges in Iraq: Manal Omar
Trauma healing and reconciliation work
Womens perspectives and priorities
Challenges for female religious peacebuilders

5. Priorities for Research and Action

Documenting experience, action and ideas
Supporting effective networks
Supporting work to challenge theological approaches that exclude or downplay women
Other recommendations
Questions for reflection
Acknowledgements
Women, Religion, and Peace: Interviews cited
References cited

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Women, Religion, and Peace: Exploring an Invisible Force

Preface/About the Report

Womens roles in the work of peace are often neglected, as is the part played by religious
institutions and ideas. Where women and religion are engaged, the situation borders on
invisibility. To explore this largely unexplored terrain, the United States Institute of Peace, the
World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) and Georgetown Universitys Berkley Center for
Religion, Peace, and World Affairs launched an initiative with a symposium July 7-8, 2010, at
Georgetown University. Its focus was the ways in which women inspired by or linked to
religious institutions and ideals work for and maintain sustainable, positive peace. The
symposium brought together participants from several distinct fields and backgrounds,
practitioners, academics, and policy makers. The investigation also involved a series of in-depth
interviews with invited participants and other leaders in the field, and drew on background
research, especially the experience of several programs, like the University of San Diegos
Women Peacemakers Program and the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understandings
award programs, that seek explicitly to highlight the peace work of women inspired by religious
ideas or communities.
This report highlights the initiatives main findings to date, and in that sense has an interim,
stocktaking character. The report builds on the major themes that emerged from the interviews
and from the July 2010 exchange, and thus highlights the observations and suggestions of those
engaged in the dialogue. The interviews that formed the basis of much of the exercise are
available on the Berkley Center website at http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/projects/womenreligion-and-peace-experience-perspectives-and-policy-implications. The Berkley Center and
USIP are working jointly to elaborate a knowledge resources segment of their websites, to make
available relevant material: http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/networks/women-religion-andpeace

Summary

While the role of religion in conflict and peacebuilding has received greater attention in
recent years, as has the role of women in promoting peace, little attention has been given
to the intersection of women, religion, conflict, and peacebuilding.

Women involved in peacebuilding around the world often draw inspiration, motivating
frameworks, and active community roots from religious sources, even if these are not
formally acknowledged.

While women are often marginalized from formal religious spaces, and from institutions
and teachings of traditional religious authority, they play important roles in shaping
dominant religious narratives and motivations and work creatively to build peace, often
unencumbered by institutional constraints. This is the case across world regions and
religious traditions.

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Women are also often very involved in the implementation of religious peacebuilding
initiatives, though they may not receive the attention or credit that their male clergy
counterparts do.

The lack of attention to this intersection has led not only to failures to understand fully
the nature of conflict, but has hidden from view potential avenues for resolving conflicts,
promoting post-conflict healing and reconciliation, and building sustainable peace.

Women involved in peacebuilding work tend to gravitate toward efforts that entail
sustained interfaith relationship-building, and approach peace work from a holistic
perspective that highlights the community.

Womens engagement in exploration of theological exploration of both gender roles and

paths towards peace offer the promise of changing discourse and preconceptions about
how women approach political and social factors involved in conflict and peace.

Womens ability to reach across lines of difference in tense environments, or to lead

protests and mobilize communities, may be due to the fact that they are seen as less
threatening than men by armed actors. Women often use their very invisibility or nonthreatening status to their advantage in building peace.

Their lack of visibility, however, has often meant lack of support from outside sources,
including resources and training.

1. Introduction: Why can women be so invisible in the quest for peace? Does it
matter?
The roles that religious leaders and communities play in conflict situations, both in instigating
and prolonging violence and in negotiating and building peace, are attracting increasing attention
from scholars and practitioners. Likewise, womens roles as peacemakers and builders of peaceful
societies, together with special focus on the tragic patterns that cast women as victims, are an
active subject of study and policy reflection. A focal point is Security Council Resolution 1325 on
women and peace and security.1 A burgeoning array of organizations and movements highlight
womens parts and potential, both in thinking and taking action on peace. Yet a significant
element, namely women who work as part of religious institutions and communities, or women
whose primary inspiration is their faith, has received little attention. This applies both to womens
often unseen roles and the work that they do, and to the fact that the religious element involved is
so little remarked.
In much of the world and in many contemporary faith traditions, formal religious leadership tends
to be heavily dominated by men, and so investigations of religion and conflict have tended to
focus on mens perspectives and roles. This leadership pattern explains in large measure why
womens engagement in religious peacemaking is so often invisible in the religious context;
womens invisibility is accentuated by historical tendencies of male domination in security
matters. As one observer noted, we should never forget that men dominate in violent conflict.
Thus it follows quite logically that womens perspectives, needs, and unique leverage are often
downplayed or ignored in the design of traditional religious peacemaking initiatives. Even so,
many observers acknowledge that women often play critical roles in conflict situations that
1

Passed in October 2000. See below for discussion.

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extend far beyond their part as incidental victims or even as special targets and instruments of
violence. Further, womens inspiration, motivating frameworks, and active community roots often
have faith dimensions, even if these are not formally acknowledged.
Susan Hayward, USIP Program Officer in the Religion and Peacemaking Center of Innovation,
sets out the challenge:
There are many good organizations [in the secular peace field] that have sought to get
women at the peace table, and more deeply and centrally involved in international affairs
such as the Institute for Inclusive Security or Women for Women. But the analytical and
visible field of religious peacemaking is behind the curve here, I fear. Yet observing
efforts on the ground, outside of these elite dialogues, I have often discovered clear
evidence of women at work for peace, operating through their religious communities. Its
not a matter of women not being involved in religious peacemaking its more a matter
of their efforts not being seen, supported, or analyzed.
It is the fundamental hypothesis of the project that the lack of analysis on the intersection of
women, religion and peace is an important gap in thinking and action for peace. It has led not
only to failures to understand fully the nature of conflict, but has hidden from view potential
avenues for resolving conflicts, promoting post-conflict healing and reconciliation, and building
sustainable peace.

2. Framing the issue: how should we define peace and why is the definition relevant?
This exploration of contributions and perspectives of women of faith to peace in the first instance
highlighted a diversity of views around what we should be talking about when we consider the
very topic of peace. Wrangling about the meaning of peace is not, of course, new or unusual, but
what came out repeatedly were two firmly held views: (i) first, narrowly defining the work of
peace as centering on bringing armed groups into non-violent processes fails to take into account
the true elements that indeed make for a peaceful society, and (ii) second, narrow definitions of
peace obscure womens roles and perspectives. Womens insights, especially enriched by their
understanding of religious motivation and communities, were seen as potentially broadening and
enriching the very understanding of what is required to create peace.
A broader understanding of peace, what is often termed positive peace, 2 can be seen as
essentially synonymous with social justice. This suggests that women who are working on widely
ranging topics in the fields of development, public health, care for the environment, and political
advocacy should also be seen as working for peace. An approach that includes these areas will
encompass a far larger group of women than those involved in narrower work for peace. It
draws in, for example, women who provide social services or assistance to the needy and who
engage in building or healing local communities. Likewise, women who work on issues that seem
far removed from traditional conflict resolution but that promote economic justice and the
development of environments in which individuals can thrive, such as microfinance, working to
build organizations that represent women working in the informal sector, and promoting
recycling, can be seen to be playing roles in promoting positive peace. Violence outside of war
and civil strife was another focus; domestic violence and trafficking were especially cited, as was
2

Peace also has two sides: absence of personal violence, and absence of structural violence. We
shall refer to them as negative peace and positive peace respectively, (Johan Galtung 1969: 183
italics in original).

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human rights and human security. Give the potentially conflicts linked to climate change,
addressing environmental justice issues is increasingly understood as inextricably linked to work
for long-term stability and peace. The significant roles that women play as leaders in their local
communities and as part of international movements for peace, whether fighting landmines or
advocating for the implementation of international human rights standards, are seen as an integral
part of peacebuilding.
Broadening this studys investigation of women, religion, and peace to include such a large array
of interventions has pitfalls. The main risk is the potential loss of focus. However, many, if not
most, of the informants argued strongly for broad definitions of peace, definitions that extend far
beyond classic understandings of peace as the absence of armed conflict. The argument is that
this broader definition is essential to a proper understanding of womens roles.
The framing of work for peace by Dena Merriam, founder of the Global Peace Initiative of
Women, illustrates a broad definition and approach:
By peace, we really mean that we are looking at consciousness change and at
underlying values. Thus we are looking at peace in its broadest definition: the
development of sustainable, inclusive, balanced societies that are truly prototypes of
more peaceful, harmonious ways of living.
Expanding our definition of peace also allows us to understand more fully the vital work that
many women do as part of peacebuilding. Joyce Dubensky, Executive Vice President and CEO of
the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding (see box 1), reflects on the significance of
a broader understanding:
We have to ask what happens if you take this broader definition? It does take us to an
understanding of peace that is much bigger than the absence of war. What that means is
that people, women, are doing something everywhere, in very small villages and towns,
at border crossings, in so many places, and it helps us to look at all the things people can
do.
Ela Bhatt founded the Self Employed Womens Association (SEWA) and in May, 2010 received
the Niwano Peace Prize, whose criteria center on faith inspiration and work for peace. She links
the pursuit of positive peace with the day-to-day actions of women. She highlights the central role
of community:
Peace is not about a lack of activities of war. It is not just about general elections.
Peace is substantive, lasting; it is about life. It is about the ordinariness of life, how we
understand each other, share meals, and share courtyards. And that is what women do.
That very ordinariness and the kinds of livelihoods that so many women pursue are
absolutely central for life. That is what keeps communities together.
Underlining this kind of comprehensive understanding of peace, Scott Appleby, Director of the
Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, insists on using
the term peacebuilding, rather than peacemaking or conflict resolution. He thus highlights not
only the multifaceted dimensions of work for peace but its continuing and long term nature. As
Appleby puts it,

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Peacebuilding is the envisioning, nurturing, and sustaining of compassion-filled human

relationships that are essential to authentic human flourishing. Peace is never fully
made, but always being built.
Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, a peace practitioner from Kenya who has also received many recognitions
for her work for peace, including recently the 2010 Hesse Peace Prize, gives a description of
peace that highlights its long-term nature and the broad and deep demands of conflict resolution
and of monitoring peace. Peace, she says, should be seen as fragile as an egg, with conflict
resolution just the beginning of a process that needs care and nurture at every stage:
An egg is life, delicate and fragile but if given the right conditions, it gives life.
Nurturing the fragile potential for peace is crucial. During the negotiation phase and in
the signing of peace agreements, people think that is the end. Our lesson is that it is just
the beginning. So it is just like the chicken producing her eggs: one has to nurture to
bring to life the chicks, and then continue to support and sustain them over their lives.
Ibrahims metaphor, like Applebys insistence on the continuum of peacebuilding, suggests at a
minimum a two-pronged framework of analysis. One, the more traditional and narrow
perspective, focuses on conflict resolution, post conflict resolution, trauma healing, and conflict
prevention. The other positive peace extends to a wider range of day-to-day life and activities
outside the context of violent conflict and wars. The complexities of this particular side of
peacebuilding extend beyond the circumstantial. The dual approach underscores the wellappreciated understanding that commitments to peace must be long-term and they must be
inclusive.
As conflict prevention and post-conflict healing emerge as central challenges, the scope for
looking at womens roles expands. This complex but far richer approach to what is involved in
building peace puts new demands on an understanding of womens roles. It takes into account a
far wider spectrum of work by women. Even where women are less engaged in the traditional
peace processes such as diplomatic negotiations, it argues that their roles should be seen and
respected as part of an integrated continuum.
We thus need to recognize the range of approaches of what constitutes peacemaking,
peacekeeping, and peacebuilding, and in each setting make clear whether the focus is more on the
classic dimensions of conflict resolution or on the far broader challenge of building societies
where violence is well controlled and, more positively, people and communities can thrive. This
report examines womens roles in negotiations in places like Northern Ireland and Liberia, their
absence from the negotiating tables in the Middle East and elsewhere, their direct roles in conflict
(soldiers and suicide bombers), and grassroots mobilization (Israel-Palestine, Sri Lanka, antinuclear and anti-landmine activism). Many speak also to womens approaches to and work on the
longer-term dimensions of social justice and development work ranging from post-conflict
healing and reconstruction to education and opportunities.
Box 1: Spotlight on women working for peace
Honoring the work of women who work to build sustainable peace is an important area of action.
At one level, several prominent peace prize processes seek to ensure that women are not ignored
in reviewing candidates for various honors. Others see a need for affirmative effort to identify and
recognize women peacebuilders. Prominent examples include the Right Livelihood Award, the
Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, and the Niwano Peace Prize.

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Dekha Ibrahim is a too rare example of a woman celebrated for her work for peace. She received
(among other awards) the Right Livelihood Award known as the Alternative Nobel -- in
2007 and the Hesse Prize in 2010.
Executive vice president and CEO of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding
which each year administers an award to a religiously motivated peacemaker Joyce Dubensky
became troubled a few years ago that very few women were emerging from their nomination
process, leading to few female Peacemakers. Dubensky suggests that the dearth of female
applicants was partially caused by women self-selecting out of the process, not viewing their own
work as substantial or risky enough. We actually found that women who we would consider
Peacemakers actually nominated men who they considered to be worthy rather than naming
themselves! We have had more than one man self-nominate, Dubensky recalls. To address this
disparity, the Tanenbaum Center created a new prize, the Womens Peace Initiative Award,
focused on the Middle East and North Africa, and began proactively to seek women nominees
throughout the world. The result was a record number of women emerging it seemed from out of
the woodwork. Ultimately the main Peacemaker prize for 2009 went to a woman.
Awards have a role in shaping the conversation about the demands of peace and the meaning of
leadership. The Niwano Peace Prize, which each year honors an individual or organization
devoted to the cause of peace, honored Ela Bhatt, founder of the Self-Employed Womens
Network, in 2010. That made a statement that addressing structural poverty was an essential
aspect of building a comprehensive peace, and that the involvement of women is crucial. The
Niwano Prize also highlights religious inspiration for work for peace, and Bhatts emphasis on
broad Gandhian values in describing her motivation also conveyed a message about how faith
and peace are linked.
The Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice selects four Women Peacemakers each year. They are
given space for rest and reflection, and resources to document their personal stories and share
their experiences of peacebuilding and advocacy. Though religion does not play a role in the
selection process, many come from a variety of religious backgrounds and credit their beliefs as a
vital part of their motivation.
More spaces are needed to give voice to womens successful work for peace, and especially to
remove blinkers that have obscured the role that faith plays in their work. Marc Gopin, director of
the Center of Religion, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution (and board member of the
Tanenbaum Center) suggests a properly funded system, along the lines of the MacArthur genius
grants, involving a wide-net effort to identify worth candidates and to award a larger group.
That way we would know far better who is doing important work and we could also support
them.

3. Women and Peacebuilding

On October 31, 2000, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1325
(SCR1325), focused on women, peace, and security. SCR1325 recognizes that armed conflict
affects women in unique ways, and that women have important roles to play in conflict
prevention, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding. Passage of SCR 1325 reflects an important
understanding and consensus among scholars and practitioners that peacebuilding efforts are
more likely to be sustainable if they include women.

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Womens different experience

In situations of violent conflict, women and men often have different experiences. Women very
often suffer more than men and are more likely to be victimized. As one scholar observes, in
nearly every sphere of contemporary experience, women are made more vulnerable than men,
and more susceptible to threat (Pettman 2005: 142).
Jacqueline Moturi Ogega, who directs the Womens Program at the World Conference of
Religions for Peace (WCRP), stresses that because women are uniquely affected by war and
poverty, a gender-sensitive view of conflict situations is vital. This means that in any approach to
conflict both the voices and experience of women must be taken explicitly into account. That in
turn argues for active engagement of women at every stage:
We must recognize that men and women are affected differently and women are affected
more drastically by war, poverty, HIV/AIDS, etc. Therefore, their needs are different.
Women face the trauma of rape, sexual slavery, and child motherhood; moreover,
orphaned families headed by girls are more vulnerable. Female orphans are more
disadvantaged because they take care of the family and therefore are more likely to skip
out on school, are prone to facing sexual abuse, and are generally part of unsecured
child-headed homes[WCRP] Staff must understand these gender realities.
Interestingly, active efforts to take into account the work of women in conflict and peace adds
new dimensions to understanding, a more inclusive perspective that helps in breaking free from
traditional approaches that tend to be dominated by perspectives of elites. David Smock, USIPs
Associate Vice President of the Religion and Peacemaking program, argues that the recognition
of female peacebuilders is also a recognition that peace cant merely be an elite process. It must
be undertaken at lower and middle strata of society, where women have particular influence. To
exclude women is to neglect a particular set of opportunities that have often been neglected.
In contemporary explorations of the gender dimensions of conflict, both practitioners and
scholars are increasingly distancing themselves from the traditional characterization of women as
helpless victims in times of war. Instead, they emphasize womens agency and their capacity to
prevent conflict and to promote and maintain peace.
Womens defining attributes
Womens skills and social position give them the opportunity to provide a different, at times
unique, perspective on issues of peace and conflict. Across the globe, women have demonstrated
their ability to achieve common ground in instances where men have failed. Box 2 illustrates how
women in Liberia came together to push for peace during both the first and second civil wars.
Frustrated by the lack of progress, Liberian women overcame religious and ethnic divides and
united to pressure warring factions towards a peace agreement. Similar stories of women banding
together to declare, in effect, enough is enough, are told in other settings, notably Sierra Leone
and Angola.
Box 2: Interfaith womens movement in Liberia employed tradition and taboos in work for
peace
During both the first and second civil wars in Liberia, local women bridged ethnic and religious
divides to push their country towards peace.

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The Liberian Womens Initiative (LWI), which developed in 1994, was a movement born of
frustration and hope. Ruth Perry, a founding member of LWI, said at the time when the
organization was founded: Enough is enough. We are tired of hiding in the bushes, eating grass
and burying our dead. Though some women were at first reluctant to join what was a risky and
uncertain enterprise, they overcame their fears. Another member, Mary Brownell, recalled,
Some of us werent sure wed make it because [the warlords] fight us with their guns and we
have nothing so I said lets go in faith. LWI asked its members to pray for peace every night at
10 oclock in their respective homes.
Unified by a common experience of suffering and war fatigue, Liberian women came together to
bring pressure on the warring factions. They organized, demonstrated, and raised money to attend
peace talks across the country. Though LWI was never given an actual seat at the negotiation
table, its initial efforts helped pave the way for the Mano River Womens Peace Network
(MARWOPNET), a regional movement with links across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone; it
was an official signatory to the Liberian peace accords in 2004.
Another Liberian grassroots womens group brought Muslim and Christian women together in
2003. Like LWI, the Liberian Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET) was launched out of
frustration. Many women who had been advocates for peace during the first civil war joined
WIPNET for the same reasons they had joined LWI a few years earlier. Emphasizing
commonalities, WIPNET used slogans like Does the bullet know a Christian from a Muslim?
There were, of course, some setbacks. A few in the community refused to pray with women who
were not of the same religion, asserting that it would dilute their faith. However, despite it all
women from all different backgrounds came together to advocate for peace.
Pressure from WIPNET helped force Charles Taylor to attend peace talks in Accra with the
rebels. A delegation of women from WIPNET, headed by Leymah Gbowee, went to monitor the
negotiations. When the accords stalled, Gbowee and the other women decided to take matters into
their own hands. Not allowed inside the peace hall, the women surrounded the building and
looped arms. When some warlords came to the doors and tried to jump over the human barricade,
the women pushed back. Gbowee had said, We are going to keep them in that room without
water, without food, so they at least feel how we feel. When policemen approached Gbowee and
told her she and her women were obstructing justice, Gbowee began to remove her hair tie and
threatened to strip naked. In Liberia, tradition dictates that if an older woman willfully undresses
in front of a man, the mans family will be cursed. Instead of arresting Gbowee, the policeman
backed away from her and called his men off. Two weeks after WIPNETs barricade and
Gbowees unthinkable threat, the terms of the peace treaty were announced.
Women in Liberia were able to push for change when mens actions had failed. LWI, WIPNET,
and Gbowees actions helped spur the warring parties towards negotiations. Sentiments of anger
and frustration as well as hope for a brighter future were translated into collective action and
mobilization.

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10

Some scholars and practitioners suggest that women have special skills that help to facilitate
peace work. Many suggest that women are for whatever reason better at building and
sustaining relationships. Along these lines, Marc Gopin, Director of the Center on Religion,
Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, observes that women are able to
foster special kinds of connections:
Women seem to have a capacity to make connections and to use many means to achieve
that, including film, arts, and music. They are often able to connect, in places like
Somalia, on a totally different level. Women there have been able to make connections
between warring parties in a different way. There is a different level of seriousness and
respect that they bring.
Women in areas of conflict seem better able or more willing to reach across religious and
cultural divides and to find common ground. Manal Omar, director of Iraq programs at USIP,
observes that in Iraq, women were the first ones who were willing and able to reach out across
ethnic and religious divides:
They did it instinctively. And it wasnt the case that it was safe for them to do so it
increased their vulnerability...I think there is a natural desire for inclusiveness amongst
womenThere is recognition of other viewpoints.
Similarly, Dena Merriam has observed womens ability to build bridges and make compromises
in many settings. She concludes that this leads to differences in the way men and women
participate in peace processes. Women, she argues,
.. are simply more finely tuned to how family structures are suffering, and how the
different layers of society are damaged. They are also [] more prepared to plunge in to
try to solve the problem, more prepared to sacrifice for the solution. They have less need
to hold onto positions. That applies even to the hardest core women, who are deeply set
in conflict modes, and have suffered terribly. Even they can focus on the issue of children
and look for common ground. I have seen this again and again.
These qualities of female peacebuilding can perhaps be ascribed to the common experiences of
women in conflict zones. As founder and executive director of TRUST Emun, Elana Rozenman
has encountered this in her organizations meetings involving Israeli and Palestinian women.
When the women meet, she says,
We find we are dealing with the same issues our families, communities, about the
problems of men dominating women, about sexual abuse and domestic violence, that
have to be addressed also in terms of all the religionsWhen women get together, they
immediately want to find out about personal issues, to share information about our
families. Then immediately we move on from these personal topics and start work, far
more easily.
These characteristics can be essential especially in post-conflict societies. Maryann Cusimano
Love, associate professor of politics at Catholic University of America, highlights the tendency
towards and skill of women in working through networks, and in focusing on relationships. She
describes it as a fingerprint of womens groups:
In terms of process, womens religious groups tend to have greater networks and be
more relationship-based. This is very helpful in creating trust in post-conflict societies,

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11

and with refugees, IDPs [internally displaced persons], and other victims of conflicts. It
is a very effective way to build movements for peace.
Ironically, the marginalization of women has given them opportunities, and in some cases, a
comparative advantage, for action. Not only do women bring a different set of skills to peace
work. They also hold unique positions within society that enable them to participate in ways men
cannot. For example, women are often viewed as outsiders to conflicts, yet this role can work to
their advantage, allowing them to be viewed as more impartial. Sanam Anderlini, author of
Women Building Peace: What They Do and Why It Matters, argues that, Because women are
regarded as less threatening to the established order, they tend to have more freedom of action. In
some instances, they can make public pleas for peace by taking advantage of sexist notions that
for the most part discourage retaliation against women (Anderlini 2000: 18).
Virginia Bouvier of USIP refers to the ironic advantages of marginalization when she highlights
that it can lead to greater flexibility and creativity in the search for solutions:
Women tend to have different institutional limitationsthe fact that they are often not
at the top levels of institutions may mean that they are more open to institutional
change.
Gender roles, characterizations, and stereotypes
Set against an array of observations of the strengths that many women bring to work for peace,
was an unease at acccepting anything bordering on essentialization of women and overly broad
generalizations. Both the discussions and the interviews wrestled with this tension between
recognizing the unique qualities women bring to peacebuilding and avoiding the perpetuation of
gender stereotypes. Scott Appleby observed: A central dilemma is how we can avoid gender
stereotypes while acknowledging different aptitudes, experiences, and skill sets, some of which,
fairly or not, get attached to a particular gender.
Karen Torjesen, professor of Womens Studies at the Claremont Graduate School, suggests one
path that helps in navigating this tension: making clear that it is social realities, and not inherent
characteristics, that are responsible for the different qualities women bring. She notes that, It is
not womens nature, but womens social place, their connectivity, and the resulting sensitivities
that offer different perspectives and tools.
Women are not always peaceful, and their roles in conflict situations are by no means universally
positive and consistent. Casting women are inherent peacemakers carries its own dangers. Azza
Karam, Senior Advisor on Culture at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), highlights
the importance of recognizing these facts. Violent women, like guerilla fighters and suicide
bombers, need to be analyzed alongside women engaged in peace work. The field needs to be
looked at more responsibly:
Were seeing women as the alternative, the other, the potential peacemakers. Even if we
dont say it, that is the subliminal message were trying hard to come up with. Its been
part of my battle with this new paradigm, because it really means accepting and coming
out publicly to say, weve got huge responsibilities in peacemaking as women. But we
also are part of conflict itself.
In Latin America, Virginia Bouvier similarly recognizes that the potential advantages and even
power that women bring to the table are not always utilized to enact social change. She points to

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12

the power that women can exercise when they come together to demand change, drawing on
examples from Chile during the Pinochet years, the peace movement in Colombia, Argentina
during the military dictatorship, and Central America during the long years of civil war. Gender is
not the only issue involved and women are not always progressive. They do not always play
positive roles. In fact, women in Latin America have more frequently been a conservative force
protecting the status quo, rather than a force for change.
The issue of motherhood has special complexities and sensitivities. Clearly womens childbearing
and child rearing roles are significant in many ways in conflict situations. Nyaradzayi
Gumbonzvanda, General Secretary, World YWCA, observes caustically that in any conflict
situation it always becomes women and their children. Yet there are pitfalls. Women in some
situations have taken advantage of traditional gender roles such as their role as mothers to
arouse sentiments of both sympathy and respect. This can also cut both ways, giving legitimacy
to women, including within religious circles, but also contributing to stereotypes and to
marginalization. Virginia Bouvier commented that she has observed a distinctive dynamic in the
Latin American Church, for example with groups of Mothers of the Disappeared. She hints at
the potential dangers when women seek to manipulate their gender roles:
Womens role as mothers, a role particularly sanctioned by the Church, has been an
important source of legitimacy and moral authority that permits women to engage in the
public sphere. This moral authority that is granted to mothers in some societies is
particularly powerful, albeit potentially solidifying gender roles and stereotypes.
Focusing exclusively on traditional roles can lead to pushing aside or postponing the essential
work of tackling problems such as gender inequalities. Jacqueline Ogega observes:
The work of [womens peacebuilding groups] has been mostly oriented towards
womens reproductive roles, to nurturing, prayer, and care of children. They have seen
themselves less in transformative roles or intervening on strategic questionsThey tend
not to progress to roles at a more strategic level, looking to the root of causes of violence
including gender inequality.
These observations draw attention to a much broader issue and challenge. Not only are peace
processes flawed in their insufficient attention to issues of healing and building communities. The
softer peace work, ranging from dialogue initiatives to community building, often does not
translate into robust processes that transform conflict-sustaining institutions and structures. This
highlights Scott Applebys constant admonition that peacebuilding needs to be strategic at every
level and that it must involve both men and women:
Maintaining strong and nurturing and peaceful personal relationships is not enough;
personal transformations must engender structural transformationPeacebuilding must
leverage constructive personal relationships into political change and social
transformation and calculate the impact and risks of certain kinds of actions; it must
draw shrewdly on resources and partnerships at the governmental and national and
international as well as the grassroots and local levels.
In sum, gender stereotypes are a real danger. They can contribute to invisibility and marginalizing
women. But they can also typecast women in traditional roles that are linked to what are seen as
womens special virtues and gifts. Real as these are, when they are taken as given or unexamined
they can accentuate the problems of marginalization. Women and men, both, need to be power

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brokers, mediators, development czars, prophets and prophetesses within their traditions, and
long term builders of communities.

4. Women and Religious Peacebuilding

The growing exploration of religion and peacebuilding
The field of religious peacebuilding is hardly a new phenomenon; religious communities and
actors have long been involved in the work of building peaceful and just societies. However, the
contemporary field of religious peacebuilding theory and practice, which today has taken a firmly
anchored place within the larger field of international conflict resolution, visibly emerged in the
1990s. The proliferation of identity-based conflicts that drew attention in the aftermath of the
Cold Wars end brought to light the manner in which religious identity, motivation, and language
was legitimating and propelling violence. In response, scholars and practitioners argued for
strengthening the hand of religious leaders seeking to build reconciliation and peace across lines
of division, promoting in particular the role of interfaith dialogue. 3 While the diplomatic sphere
and the international relations field, particularly in the United States and Europe, continued to shy
away from addressing religion and its role in larger political dynamics, the events of September
11th, 2001, the Danish cartoon crisis, and the reality of a religious resurgence around the world
led even this historically secular biased realm to begin to take seriously religion and the role it
can and must play in securing peace. Exemplary of the arguments made is Madeleine Albrights
recent book, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs 4.
Special religious roles in peacemaking have various dimensions. Mohammed Abu-Nimer points
out that religious values, like other values, can motivate people to fight or to reconcile (AbuNimer 2001: 686). Reporting on faith-based peacebuilding, Tseard Bouta, Ayse KadayifciOrellana, and Abu-Nimer outline the varied ways in which faith-based actors have contributed to
peacebuilding: They have provided emotional and spiritual support to war-affected communities,
have mobilized their communities and others for peace, have mediated between conflicting
parties, and have promoted reconciliation, dialogue, and disarmament, demobilization and
reintegration (Bouta et. al 2005: ix).
While religious peacebuilding as a field has gained increased attention in recent years, it has not
been marked by sharp attention to gender issues and inclusion of womens voices and ideas. In
many traditions, formal religious leadership is restricted to men, and even where women can and
do join the clergy, they are vastly outnumbered by men. For this reason, religions potential to
open up avenues for peace and reconciliation is often viewed through a male prism.
Emma Leslie highlights the importance of bringing religious actors into peacebuilding efforts as
representing a more inclusive approach. If the role of religion in peace work is ignored, those
who have ties to faith can be excluded or their ideas and contributions muted:

The United States Institute of Peaces Religion, Ethics, and Human Rights research program, led by David
Little, explored this phenomenon in places like Sri Lanka, Sudan, and the Balkans. See also Doug Johnston
and Cynthia Sampsons book Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (USA: Oxford University
Press, 1995), and Scott Applebys The Ambivalence of the Sacred (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999).
4
Albright, Madeleine. The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs
(New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

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Religion is also relevant as we look at some of the gaps we see in approaches and in our
understanding of both conflict and peace. It is relevant to the way we need to approach
the younger women coming along behind. Many of them also come out of a strong
religious perspective. How do we foster and nurture that if we are not talking about what
is important and relevant to them?
Manal Omar puts the challenge starkly: If you want numbers for your cause, and if you want
to work in the grassroots, you need to be able to use the religious framework both to
understand people and to recruit.
Such statements reflect the increasing, if still fragile and patchy, recognition that religion must
play a part in peacebuilding. Yet despite this growing recognition, the actions of faith-based
women still have received very limited explicit recognition. Perhaps because there are so few
formal and so few visible female religious leaders in the world, literature that focuses on the
intersection of women, religion and peace is very thin.
Women, religion, and peacebuilding
The issue of womens marginalization across many dimensions of peacebuilding, noted above, is
thus even more acute where religious peacebuilding is concerned. Despite this gap, there are
indeed organizations and individuals that have set out to explore the ways in which women with
links to faith are working for peace. Though the intersection of women, religion, and peace is
under-researched, there are signs of growing curiosity about the topic. Womens roles in interfaith
work are acknowledged more frequently, even if not in formal literature. The Center for Religious
Tolerance has noted the importance of women as spiritual peacebuilders; they organized a
Womens Interfaith Leadership Development Workshop in Amman, Jordan in September 2007. In
November 2009, at a conference on Women, Religion, and Globalization held by the MacMillan
Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, a panel focused specifically on
women, religion, and peacebuilding. Organizations like the Global Peace Initiative of Women
(GPIW) and World Conference on Religions for Peace (WCRP) are working to bring women into
the spotlight and to increase the influence of their voices in the interfaith world.
Religiously motivated peacebuilding
The work of many female peacebuilders is inextricably linked to their religion or their religious
beliefs. Our interviews offer a range of testimonies showing how many women are engaged in
peace work motivated by their faith, a trend that highlights strong associations and direct links
between women, religion, and peace. Yet is uncommon that these links are made explicitly. As an
example, Emma Leslie observes that in the network she works to build, the Action Asia Network
(linked to Action International), there was a marked tendency not to talk about religion, in
network discussions and in the workshops they organize. However, they are hearing more and
more, from women who are active in conflict work, that it is from their religion that the women
have derived much of their inspiration and the way they frame what they do.
Many in the network had their formation in a religious framework. One woman from
Burma, for example, was raised as a strong Baptist, led services, preached, and taught in
a theological college. That empowered her to be a leader and gave her the skills that
allowed her to take on peace work. The same is true for some Buddhist women, from Sri
Lanka for example, who have found that their work with monks has inspired them. And
Dekha Ibrahim would describe her framework as drawing much from her faith. Her
Islamic background has equipped her for her work. We hear this more and more, not so

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much in formal presentations, but in the off the record informal chats over coffee, where
women share how they see their work. Religion keeps coming up. I have seen that women
in our network who are inspired by their faith to do peace work are more inclined to see
and reach out to the religious sector as a resource or partner for their on-the-ground
peace work.
As Leslie points out, linkages include both the source of motivation and inspiration, direct
contributions to leadership training and development, and the avenues through which women
conduct their work
Denise Coghlan, director of Jesuit Refugee Service, has worked in Cambodia for more than two
decades on reconciliation, peace, justice, and human development. Her testimony is a vivid
example of the powerful religious dimension of one womans motivation to work for peace and
social justice:
When they asked me why I wanted to go to the camps, I said that wherever suffering is
present in the world, the cross of Christ is mysteriously present. That was my motivation.
It was difficult for many interviewers to hear this, I think, because they thought I should
say that I wanted to return to help refugees in Australia, but in reality it did not have
anything to do with that. It really was about following the cross of Christ.
Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana also has observed a strong religious motivation among many female
peacebuilders she has encountered: I have observed that many of these women see their peace
work as a service to God which keeps them motivated to continue, despite the challenges they
face.
Many others highlighted their own ties to faith. As an example, Marilyn McMorrow, Visiting
Assistant Professor in the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, observes:
My own approach to peace-making comes from Vatican II and Catholic Social Justice
tradition, particularly the Social Justice Encyclicals, from Pope John XXIII through
Benedict XVI. I take this to mean that, along with all Catholics including the members of
my Religious Order, I am called to work for justice, peace, and the integrity of
creation. In my religious order, we emphasize each ones call to become a woman of
communion, compassion, and reconciliation who seeks justice with the heart of an
educator.
Hence religious belief, practice, and imagination, sometimes portrayed as holding some women
back, play a powerful role in some womens decisions to become involved and to persevere in the
hard work of peacebuilding.
Womens marginalization in formal religious spaces
While many scholars have acknowledged the positive roles that religious communities can play in
situations of violent conflict, one major trend or reality is problematicthe marginalization of
women in formal religious spaces. This is expressed in a variety of ways. As one example of a
widely held concern, Kathryn Poethig observes:
The role of religion is particularly problematic, because of the lack of womens presence
in hierarchies and in the formal structures of most communities. This issue came out
strongly at the conference of women on religion in Geneva that followed the 2000 New

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York/UN Millennium Summit of Religious leaders. It highlighted the problem of the

invisibility of women and their very presence in religious organizations and meetings.
One need not look far to document the very limited involvement by women in high-level faithbased or interfaith initiatives. Women are often active at the local level, but far less nationally or
internationally. David Smock points to many examples of the invisibility of women in formal
processes, with the Alexandria Process, an initiative of Israeli and Palestinian religious leaders to
support the Middle East peace process, a prominent instance where no women were involved.
Because it was presented as a project involving the religious leadership and elites, the Orthodox
rabbis, the bishops, and the Sheikhs and imams were all male.
In speaking about her engagement in Sri Lanka and Iraq, Susan Hayward explores the issue of
womens authority in religious settings. She stresses that female representation in discussions,
without equal authority or credibility, is not enough:
The views of women and their voices were simply not there, or were only included in a
cursory way, to speak to issues on an agenda, and within a process, that was entirely
shaped by men, and focused on what men, in their roles as clergy, could do to promote
transformation. If women were involved in a substantive way, it was often a side project
the womans initiative, rather than the central initiative. This made me uncomfortable.
I grew antsy about how we define leverage and authority within the field of religious
peacemaking who we recognize as holding authority, as shapers of religious narratives
and motivations in conflict zones, and who we marginalize in our efforts.
Agnes Abuom, Executive Committee Member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and a
leading figure within African ecumenical circles, is forthright about the need to change the way
participants in peace discussions are selected. Sometimes that means actively working to
construct a parallel process that can engage women who are part of religious communities even if
they do not hold formal positions:
As long as we talk with religious leaders in the male gender, we dont penetrate fully. In
the peace process, we must develop parallel women leaders who can then come to the
table, skilled and equipped to be a part of the debateWhen you bring women to the
table, you get a totally different narrative.
The reality is that many of the major world religious traditions are patriarchal, empowering men
over women. While womens leadership roles and rights are often underscored in Buddhist,
Muslim, Christian and other scriptures, what happens in practice is that women are often
prevented from accessing senior formal clerical roles, or from pursuing education that allows
them to exercise interpretive authority within the traditions, barriers sometimes justified within
the very same texts they need to examine. When outside religious peacebuilding theorists and
practitioners fail to include women in a substantive manner, they reify the patriarchal streams
within religious traditions and fail to lift up those streams within the tradition that women
themselves have drawn on to inspire and empower themselves.
The 2000 Millennium Summit of Religious Leaders, one of the largest contemporary gatherings
of religious leaders from across the world, engaged many different perspectives and thus appears
to have spurred a new commitment to a multilayered approach to peacebuilding. However, this
highly visible and publicized event, held in part in the United Nations General Assembly hall,
exposed the stark fact that womens voices are being marginalized when it comes to discussing

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links between religion, conflict, and peace. The Summit brought the absence of women into the
spotlight. This was one of the spurs to the creation of the Global Peace Initiative for Women.
Womens exclusion from the formal arenas that treat issues relating to religion and peace are
sometimes due to formal rules and restrictions, but it can also result from what might be better
termed culture and tradition. Wendy Tyndale, formerly with WFDD, highlights the ways in which
such traditions can hinder progress. Tyndale worked with WFDD in 1999-2001 to support an
interfaith process in Guatemala. The project aimed to nudge forward some of the ideals and
agreements of the Peace Accord. Women were to be included in the process, but as Tyndale notes:
That was very difficult, and the meetings themselves tended to be rather dominated by
the older male leaders, in keeping with the tradition. As the groups focus turned to ethics
and education, it was rare that womens issues or voices truly came into the
conversation.
Religious leadership vs. religious representation
So the question is what to do about the limited formal representation of women. Several different
ideas have been advanced to address the question of how to engage women, give them credibility
and authority, and recognize their roles in religious work for peace, given their limited formal
leadership roles. One increasingly common practice is to refer to religious actors rather than
religious leaders. Marc Gopin suggests instead a shift in focus towards religious
representatives, which opens up recognition of work across all segments of religious society:
A first and important priority is to reframe the discussion around who participates,
because that is the key to engaging women more actively. What works and is meaningful
is to focus on religious representatives. This makes it possible to reframe who is
empowered and authorized to represent a religion. Using language and tests of eligibility
that focus on women religious leaders is simply a non-starter at the global level,
because of the barriers that block womens participation in several traditions. It is
important to look for women clerics, to have affirmative action to bring them in, but that
should not be the central focus, and it simply excludes, for example, most of Islam and
Orthodox Judaism. Some refer to religious actors but to me that tends to trivialize their
roles and work and it lacks clarity.
Maryann Cusimano Love argues that it is necessary to look beyond religious leader engagement
towards a broader religious community engagement, and the implications that can have for
female representation. Women are often very much involved in faith-inspired organizations,
working on grassroots peace building and reconciliation, health care, education, and other areas.
Thus they are active on the ground in social service organizations. Thats not captured if you
only do religious leader engagement. You miss out on community leaders who may not have the
title in the religious hierarchy.
A common theme is that womens roles are more often focused at the local, community level, as
opposed to more formal structures of power. Elana Rozenman describes one approach:
Our work, we say, is not political it is holy work. We are focusing on religion, finding
women of faith, and coming together around our faith. In doing so, we are working to
reinforce nonviolence, and to bring all the wisdom and truth in our religions together for
that purpose. Our meetings are to study, to celebrate holidays together, to strengthen our
sisterhood. During Ramadan we break the fast together in the home of a Muslim woman.

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We celebrate Sukkot, the Jewish holiday, in the Sukka at my home. We see the Christmas
trees in our Christian sisters homes at Christmas. We make food together so we can share
meals. We bring each other to each others homes and invite our friends and relatives to
meet us all the time.
Her comments highlight another recurring theme: that the social roles that women play, down to
caring for basic needs like food and shelter, can play pivotal roles even in the most political
settings, and thus should not be discounted as significant elements in the process of building
peace. Other groups working in Israel and the Middle East, prominent among them the Interfaith
Encounter Association founded by Yehuda Stolov, an Israeli-based organization that fosters
dialogue between religions in the Holy Land. These groups focus on the importance of personal
contact and learning about different faith traditions in daily life as a central element for
addressing the roots of conflicts and building understanding. And it is most often women who are
involved in this kind of activity.
Opportunities for womens action in a religious context
Despite the common pattern of marginalizing women in formal religious spheres, they influence
their communities in other, often critical ways that fall outside of what is commonly recognized
as religious leadership. Womens actions are indeed important if often underappreciated. A
common theme is that despite their invisibility in many settings, women exercise strong influence
and play important roles. Thus the challenge is to find, describe, and build on this experience.
Jacqueline Moturi Ogega highlights this pattern:
Some of the more mainstream religions tend to be very hierarchical in the way they are
structured and this is important in defining what women do, especially formally. But
there are examples where women have taken more visible roles as religious actors,
especially in their roles as spiritual healers. In communities where they are spiritual
leaders, especially in traditional roles, women are often recognized as the spiritual
leaders for healing and cleansing. This takes on special importance in situations where
there have been extreme atrocities against the people and communities, and where
healing is extraordinarily difficult. Women are also given leading roles in prayer and
worship rituals in many faith traditions. Women can play some strategic roles here.
Andrea Blanch, President of the Center for Religious Tolerance, suggests that we need to ask a
different set of questions to understand what leadership in practice looks like for religious
women. She points to the real power that women actually have within religious communities
and institutions, as well as the culture. Even though they do not have formal titles, they have
influence.
In many religious institutions, women are able to take leadership roles that, while outside the
traditional male hierarchy, hold real influence. Cusimano Love described this phenomenon within
the Catholic Church, noting,
On the one hand, we have a male hierarchy. On the other hand, there are many
institutional arms of the Church in which there are opportunities for women to lead
Because many of these women are leaders in institutional roles at schools and hospitals
and NGOs so on they have access to male religious authority.

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Virginia Bouvier observes the same complicated dynamic within the Church in Latin America.
She says,
There is obviously a glass ceiling for women within the Church, and women are still not
allowed to preach. But at the same time, especially in these machista societies, women
run the day to day activities of the churches, and they are sometimes able to create
spaces within the Church to speak and act, to exercise leadership and authority, and to
earn the respect of their peers.
Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana led conflict resolution trainings in a number of Muslim countries as the
Associate Director of Salam Institute for Peace and Justice, and encountered the unique
approaches that religious women often bring to peacebuilding. She observed that because they
were not always engaged at the formal tracks of peacemaking, they had created informal
mechanisms and processes.
She cited the example of a woman taking on an informal religious leadership role, describing a
Kurdish Iraqi woman who provided shura, or conflict resolution, even though she was not
officially trained to do so. She was one of the traditional community leaders who provided
conflict resolutionThe community recognized her capacity to do this, because of her personal
qualities.
Though women often find ways to work outside of institutional constraints, this also limits the
recognition and support they might receive. Dee Aker is Deputy Director of the Joan B. Kroc
Institute for Peace & Justice at the University of San Diego which grants four Women
Peacemaker awards each year to women all over the world who are engaged in peacebuilding.
She observes that, while many of the women peacemakers are religiously affiliated and inspired
by their own faith, the vast majority [of women] do not play formal roles in their religious
institutions, and thus can be overlooked by initiatives that are looking specifically for religious
leaders.
On the other hand, the opportunity for religious women to work outside of formal structures can
at times be beneficial. Institutions have well known disadvantages of rigidity and resistance to
new ideas. Dena Merriam notes:
There is no question: women are critical to peace. Women together can go further than
any institution. And there may well be a real benefit that so few spiritual women are tied
to positions of institutional leadership We can go much further if we step away from
institutional positions.
Mari Fitzduff, director of the Program in Coexistence and Conflict at Brandeis University,
observed this dynamic in Northern Ireland in the period from the 1970s to the 1990s, when nuns
often had a freedom that priests did not:
The nuns became much more radical than many of the priests, particularly the diocesan
priests who were more grounded in the conservative local institutions. The nuns were
more free to offer their services in ways that the priests could not. So you saw some of
them doing the interfaith work, or getting involved in other issues where the priests were
absent.
Moreover, by working on the periphery of formal religious structures, women have access to
different spaces than the male leadership. Women are often better positioned to reach other

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women, and are thus essential to any peacebuilding initiative. Dr. Kadayifci-Orellana pointed out
that in many countries she had access to Muslim women engaged in their communities, while her
male colleagues did not. In Saudi Arabia, we went to visit the womens campus, she observed.
The men were not allowed in, so I visited. While religious women certainly need not only be
involved in women-only initiatives, in many contexts that allows for broader participation.
Yehuda Stolov, founder and executive director of the Interfaith Encounter Association, noted that
women-only groups are desirable as they allow for traditional women to join.
Significant numbers of women have deliberately taken advantage of their lack of institutional
constraints to take courageous steps for peace. For example, Fitzduff highlights the courage and
independence of a number of nuns during the tense times in Northern Ireland. When the Catholic
Church refused to provide chaplains for integrated Catholic-Protestant schools, nuns became
chaplains for these schools on their own initiative.
A number of interviews suggest that religious women and womens groups, freed from
institutional constraints, show extraordinary courage and creativity in acting for peace, going
against traditionally imposed limits. Furthermore, they may also function more efficiently. The
experiences of Bilkisu Yusuf, founder of Federation of Muslim Women of Nigeria (FOMWAN),
reflects this ability of women to reach out even within set hierarchies and thus to bring in new
ideas. This was the case in Northern Nigeria:
For a long time the women of FOMWAN have spoken on behalf of Muslims when there
was some issue the government wanted to address, because it was easier to work with us
than with the mens organizations, where there is so much bureaucracy they cant
respond promptly. The men do not have a rapid response like we have, so the government
has turned to us to speak for MuslimsThe male leaders are under the Supreme Council,
the highest Islamic body. The group is led by the Sultan, the emirs, the clerics.
Bureaucracy has made them not as effective as they ought to be, and they dont seem to
be implementing projects in their communities. All they do is just meet and discuss the
sighting of the moon for the month of Ramadan and the start of eid al-fitr, and when to
break your fast. The Supreme Council has its own niche; it is seen as the policy-making
body, but that is about it. In times of building communities, it is FOMWAN who will look
out for you. Increasingly we have been invited to take up positions in government
committees and have input into policies, because the government recognizes the work we
are doing building hospitals, addressing development issues, etc.
Scilla Elworthy echoes this assertion that women manage despite the many obstacles. She
suggest an important bottom line judgment: the most efficient institutions, the most effective
approaches, do seem to be led by women.
Women in formal religious leadership roles
The common marginalization of women in many religious denominations and institutions should
not obscure the important roles played by those women who do hold formal leadership positions.
They are exemplars and often pioneers, and play special and authoritative roles. Many of the
women consulted as part of this initiative fall within this category. Sister Joan Chittister, Agnes
Abuom (who plays critical roles within the Anglican Communion and the World Council of
Churches, often involved in negotiations involving the Horn of Africa), bold Buddhist nuns like
Damananda, and Muslim alimat are among those who work doggedly and effectively for peace.
Buddhist and Catholic nuns, Protestant and Muslim female preachers and teachers, Jewish female

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rabbis, and female shamans in many indigenous cultures, play visible and important roles in
shaping religious traditions and their communitys religious response to conflict and peace.
Women also may play pivotal roles in some interfaith organizations, where the creation of new
leadership models and criteria opens up, at least in its potential, opportunities for more gender
balanced leadership.
Amina Rasul-Bernardo highlights the roles of female Islamic scholars in the Philippines in Box 3.

Box 3: Working with the Aleemat in the Philippines: Amina Rasul-Bernardo

In recent years, Muslim religious scholars and leaders, known as the ulama, have taken on pivotal
roles in addressing the cycle of violence and conflict in the southern Philippines, both at the
grassroots and the broader level. Amina Rasul-Bernardo observes that, There are thousands of
ulama in the Philippines who provide spiritual assistance to communities and wield great
influence. And most strikingly, this body of religious leaders already includes women aleemat
(the Arabic word is the female form of ulama), women who have, like the men, received training
in Islamic law at Al-Azhar and other respected institutions.
Over 150 women are part of the National Network of Muslim Leaders. Women are also active
participants in the National Ulama Conference of Philippines (NUCP), an organization of Muslim
clerics formed in 2009 to empower Muslim leadership towards peace and development; the
groups by-laws reserve two seats of the 15-member board for aleemat.
But, Rasul-Bernardo points out, There is still the challenge of working to give these women
religious leaders more meaningful roles. Traditionally, the aleemat provided support to the
ulama-headed organizations and taught at Muslim schools, and were largely overlooked by
institutions providing capacity building for civil society organizations, including other womens
organizations.
That has changed in the past few years, as a number of aleemat have actively sought larger public
roles. At the first National Ulama Summit in 2008, the women organized a parallel program to
focus on peace and development as a unified group; at the following years summit, thirty-one
aleemat came together in a formal workshop on womens rights and issues. 2009 also saw the
formation of the organization Nur es Salaam (meaning Light of Peace), which aims to help
organize female Muslim religious leaders, allowing them to become more active and effective.
A major part of these initiatives is a project called Empowering Women as Peace Advocates,
focused on encouraging women religious scholars to collaborate with Muslim civil society
organizations towards peace efforts. Amina Rasul-Bernardo describes the results of these
meetings:
In many ways this is the very first time the women have been involved in civil society. Thus there
is a lot of focus on implementation and the how tos. We focus on education about human rights
and the rights of citizens. We are providing support so that they can become financially

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independent. Project management skills are important. We help to bring them together with
potential development partners, which is part of helping them to become self-standing and selfsustaining.
The womens agendas are clear and basic. They want a more peaceful community so that their
families can survive, and not just survive but have a peaceful, decent existence. In the south of the
Philippines life is oppressive and dangerous. They see it and have lived it. And they want to
change it.

Womens organizations working to combat violence

An array of organizations led by women linked to religious organizations work for peace in a
wide variety of ways. Box 4 highlights the work of the Centre Olame, a Catholic organization
working in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to combat gender-based
violence. It also highlights the importance of coalitions that provide a platform to amplify
womens voices and to build the capacity of their organizations to work both on supporting
women and on advocacy at the national and international levels.
Box 4: Confronting gender-based violence in DRC
Though the Second Congo War officially ended seven years ago, conflict persists in the eastern
provinces of the DRC. The violence that still dominates the provinces of North and South Kivu
affects women disproportionately. One appalling dimension of this violence is the systematic rape
of tens of thousands of women systematically by combatant forces. The extremely high instances
of sexual assault have both physical effects many of the rapes involve extreme brutality, and
access to hospitals and medical attention is limited and social and psychological consequences
that are likely to persist over years.
A range of courageous leaders combine direct action to support women in Central Africa with
powerful advocacy for action at national and international levels. Women are often at the
forefront of these efforts, and many involve alliances among religiously-inspired and secular
organizations.
The Centre Olame is a notable example. For more than 30 years, Centre Olames director,
Mathilde Muhindo Mwamini has worked to empower women in DRC to overcome
discrimination, sexual exploitation, poverty and conflict. Centre Olame is a Catholic social
assistance agency of the Archdiocese of Bukavu, South Kivu. Olame means live in dignity and
prosperity, and the center provides psychological and practical assistance to victims of sexual
violence, empowers women to fight against pervasive discrimination and abuse, and promotes
local peacebuilding and community reconciliation in South Kivu. Mme. Muhindo joined Centre
Olame in the mid-1980s, moved by the high death rate of children. She works to change a culture
of discrimination against women and to help women recognize and advocate for their rights.
Programs address the health and well-being of children, nutrition and community health
programs, job training, microfinance programs, and mobilization against harassment and sexual
exploitation through political action. Catholic Relief Services (CRS) supports the work of the
center.

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Another courageous woman working for peace is Justine Masika Bihamba, founder of Synergy of
Women for Victims of Sexual Violence, a coalition based in the DRC consisting of 35 women's
organizations that help victims of sexual violence. Honored by the Catholic Movement, Pax
Christi International, for her advocacy work on behalf of women affected by violence and rape as
a weapon of war, she recently visited Washington to bear witness and call for action. She
criticizes the culture of impunity that surrounds sexual assault, and the dearth of accessible
judiciaries to prosecute offenders. She urges more pressure from the international community on
the governments of DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi, as well as the presence of an international
tribunal in the DRC.
Congolese civil society, including coalitions of organizations, is active in providing support for
victims. Leaders stress that Congolese women must become involved in the search for solutions
to peace. However, many challenges remain, including the insecurity and constant threats under
which these organizations must work. While it is challenging for women on their own to confront
issues for change, as a network, their voices can be heard.

Building stronger links between religious and secular women

Most secular organizations, especially in Europe and North America, have, as noted above, only
recently begun to recognize the positive roles that religion can play in conflict situations.
Manal Omar cited several specific examples of the blind spots of secular institutions with regard
to religion:
For [OXFAMs] work in Yemen, one of the indicators in the minds of some of the
program officers of success for a public health program was how many women would
take off the niqab! We had these amazing photos of women who had graduated from
midwife training up in the office, but they were wearing niqab and so people lobbied to
take them down. This was really my first exposure to the very secular development world.
We had one project that worked on adjusting the marriage law to the age of 18. It was
called the anti-early marriage project. But the religious leaders resisted the project, and
we werent getting anywhere. So finally we engaged the religious leaders, who told us
that way we were framing the project its title rubbed them the wrong way, although
they were supportive of the objective of the project. They suggested we change the name
to safe marriage project. We did, and the project took off. The process of approaching,
taking seriously, or asking permission from the religious leadership was a huge shift for
the organization.
As a result of this phenomenon, secular and religious work for peace and justice has not always
been well integrated and coordinated. Sister Joan Chittister was among several in our
consultations who referred to theological moats and other factors separating different groups,
especially lay and secular from religious, but also among different religious communities and
tendencies. These moats tend to be particularly deep and wide where womens issues and women
themselves are concerned.
Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana spoke about the divide between religious women and secularists, noting,
This is especially true in Turkey. If you identify yourself as a Muslim actor, you are
automatically seen as against political secularism. So there is an internal challenge

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with education, city centers they are often associated with secularists although more
and more religious girls enter universities and work in cities. Whereas, if you are
religious, you are seen as backward, uneducated, lower class, a traditional villager. In
my observation, many of the secularists (some call them radical secularists) have
internalized the orientalist discourse and project it onto those who are associated with
village, religion and tradition. So there is a self-orientalization which creates a deep
divide.
The positive note is that several interviewees observe that the divides may be less pronounced
than they appear on the surface and can be bridged with dedicated efforts. Promoting greater
collaboration between secular and religious groups allows for more effective work overall.
Qamar-ul Huda highlights the importance of bridging those divides:
A lot of the religious communities already have social services, but they are isolated
and contained. They see NGOs as competitors. So Im trying to push them to cooperate
with others. To be less isolated, more engaged. Whats wrong with collaborating with
others who have similar objectives? Whats wrong with sharing resources and
materials?
Amina Rasul-Bernardo makes a similar point:
I began from a rather secular perspective, but the more I have learned about the way
women see realities on the ground, the more I have come to see that building bridges
between secular and religiously inspired groups and approaches is an essential path we
must follow on the road to real peace.
Box 5: Bridging secular and religious divides in Iraq: Manal Omar5
After the 2003 invasion, women were some of the first in Iraq to come together across religious
and political divides, says Manal Omar, who lived in Baghdad from 2003 to 2005 as Women for
Women Internationals Regional Coordinator and now serves as director of Iraq programs at USIP
. But by 2008 that early cooperation with women united at the forefront of social and political
reform had given way to polarization between religious and secular. This fragmentation and
distrust between religious and secular women persists.
On one side were women who followed what they perceived as a clear secular path: they
espoused the UN Declaration on Human Rights, and argued for equality under the law. They
tended to be highly skeptical of religion and Islam, terming them oppressive to women. On the
other side were women who saw their identities and organizational support in their religion. They
were negatively inclined towards talk of human rights, saying that it was largely a "Western"
imposition and denigrated Islamic values.
This distrust and polarization over issues of Islamic law and the role of religion in Iraqi society
made it increasingly difficult for women to work together on other issues and to form a strong
coalition. To address these divides, USIP recently launched in Iraq a Toolkit for Womens
Leadership on Collaborative Problem Solving to bring women from different political parties
together to enhance coalition-building skills. In the first phase of the project, Iraqi women from
both secular and religious backgrounds gathered in Beirut to discuss how they might work
5

http://www.usip.org/events/women-barometer-success-and-stability-sharing-lessonslearned-iraq-afghanistan
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together for social and political reforms.

At first, said Omar at a September 2010 panel at USIP, Very harsh comments were made by
women on both sides. Both sides couldnt recognize that the other women were their neighbors.
But over the four days women began to build personal relationships and find common ground,
building a foundation for them to work together on social change.
Sri Lanka has seen a wide variety of involvement of women in working for peace, many of them
involving dimensions of faith. Box 6 explores several networks and approaches.
Box 6: Intersecting womens networks and approaches in the midst of war in Sri Lanka
As women, we are deeply concerned about the militarization of society due to armed conflict
We recognize that women in particular have been victimized by war and conflict in Sri Lanka
Women and women's organizations in Sri Lanka have been working steadily and consistently for
peace during the last two decades Therefore, womens realities and womens voices must be an
essential part of the peace process in Sri Lanka. (Memorandum to the Government, the LTTEi,
and the Norwegian facilitators, from Women's Organizations of Sri Lanka, 7 June, 2002.)
Amidst the brutality of Sri Lankas protracted conflict, women have played many roles. Best
known is their suffering: many have died and lost family members in fighting and from civil
strife, and women were the targets of widespread patterns of rape used as a weapon of war. But
Sri Lankan women have also moved beyond the role of victim. They have participated as fighters;
they have helped life continue during conflict; they have worked actively for peace. A striking
feature of Sri Lanka is the interweaving of these different aspects.
In the Tamil community, culture and religious traditions accentuate womens roles. Female
goddesses are the focus of devotion and women play key social roles in social organization. This
shaped womens responses to conflict. Female cadres, activists, and oracles all engaged directly.
Particularly at the local level, their approaches and activities were linked and woven together. A
common theme among very different actors is reliance on strong community ties and traditions.
This supported spontaneous and organized efforts to strengthen networks initiated and led by
women.
Many women put their lives at risk to work for peace and development; many work under the
public radars in their villages and communities. Below are three examples of grassroots womens
peacebuilding projects in Sri Lanka.
Suriyaii
The Suriya Womens Development Organization, a Tamil civil society entity, exemplifies a potent
and effective womens response. Formed in the early 1990s, it expanded over the decades from a
small organization helping displaced women around Colombo, Sri Lankas capital, to an
internationally known body with extensive networks, both national and international. Suriya built
a capacity to reach isolated communities in Sri Lanka; it also built bridges to international
organizations. It became an effective political actor, delivering services and communicating the
suffering and wishes of women in Sri Lanka and overseas.

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Suriya from the outset adopted a flexible and thus multi-sectoral approach to meeting needs of
displaced women. The initial focus was on staffing medical clinics, establishing schools, offering
vocational training, legal counseling, and health education workshops. Suriya later shifted focus
to the war zones around Batticaloa, and thus to the situation of victims. Suriya took on the work
of fighting cases of arbitrary arrest, abduction, disappearances, and battering of women. It also
worked to provide income-generating activities for widowed women.
A central Suriya objective was to make the government and military more accountable for acts of
injustice against the population. In Colombo, Suriya lobbied to prevent government closure of
refugee camps. When the government rounded up refugees in the middle of the night, Suriya
women followed them to Battiacola and organized highly visible camps that brought home the
reality of arrests that had been denied. There, Suriya organized public protests in the form of
silent vigils to challenge the use of torture and abduction by the government. In the late 1990s,
Suriya organized a clothesline project to protest the lack of accountability for criminal acts
perpetrated by the military. Colorful sari blouses, each representing a female family member who
had been killed, were strung in public places, broadcasting the reality that womens domestic
space is no safer than the streets of the war zone.
Suriyas domestic and international outreach programs strengthened networks of Sri Lankan
women. Networks like Freedom from Fear work to address dangerous and insecure conditions
through publicizing problems. Through silent vigils in Battiacola and other public events, Suriya
gave a sense of common purpose in a dangerously demoralized and fragmented social situation.
Suryias collective prayers for peace helped build this sense of community.
Suriyas advocacy roles expanded as it brought home issues that Sri Lankan women faced.
Transnational connections strengthened Suriyas effectiveness in its local work and gave
credibility to its efforts to bridge the different womens networks in Sri Lanka.
Muslim Womens Research and Action Forumiii
Sri Lankas Muslim Womens Research and Action Forum (MWRAF) began as an informal
gathering of Muslim women coming together to discuss issues facing Muslim women in Sri
Lanka in 1976, and eventually evolved into a registered non-governmental organization by 1990.
The organization, headed by Jezima Ismail, seeks to empower Muslim women in particular, but
all women in general, to play an active role in community and national development. The
organization pursues a vision of upholding equity and justice for all women (whatever their
ethnic origin) free of violence against women and exploitation of women by all patriarchal
structures including the family, society, custom, religion and the state.
To begin, MWRAF monitors the implementation of Muslim Personal law and works towards
reform of Muslim Personal Law in Sri Lanka in manner that is in keeping with the principles of
equity and justice. This is achieved through pursuit of legal means to ensure the protection of
womens rights in national and local governance, and supported through the promotion of
Quranic interpretative study with male imams and women that highlights the religious mandate
of gender rights and protection. The organization also seeks to mobilize women in the grassroots

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to do this work of monitoring and organizing to secure and protect womens rights in state and
religious law.
MWRAF also seeks to bring women and men together across the Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim
ethnic communities to strengthen the adoption of a Sri Lankan identity where there is no concept
of majority and minority and all citizens are of equal status. This inter-ethnic and inter-faith
peacebuilding work is conducted in the grassroots through community dialogue forums.
Finally, MWRAF seeks to compile and produce research materials on issues relevant to their
ongoing work, including publications on gender equality, peacebuilding, and customary law
practiced throughout the Muslim world.
Sinhala-Tamil-Muslim Rural Women's Network
The Sinhala-Tamil-Muslim Rural Women's Network (STMRWN) is based in Trincomalee, a
region historically sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists. It works to bring together women from
the different ethnic and religious communities, promoting political involvement, womens
empowerment, and human rights. STMRWN works on poverty alleviation, micro credit, health,
education, environment, and peace. Its members number 29,000, from the countrys diverse
ethnic and religious groups.
Sri Lankan women have rarely contested local elections, because political tradition favors the
established political parties. STMRWN was among the first womens groups to contest
provincial council elections in 1999, addressing as their platform the marginalization of small
farmers. They did not win a seat in council, but the effort helped to mobilize women, and
different ethnic groups and faith traditions worked together for a greater civic voice. iv
STMRWN, besides political advocacy, was actively engaged in tsunami relief, immediately
following the disaster and longer term. STMRWN is implementing livelihood and restoration
and infrastructure development projects focused on poor fishing villages that have fell through
the gaps of the immediate post-tsunami development response. STMRWN works with ActionAid
on land-title issues that have exacerbated conflict in a region slowly emerging from civil war.
Trauma healing and reconciliation work
One area of peace work where womens roles seem particularly prominent is reconciliation and
healing. While trauma healing is certainly not always associated with religion, spirituality does
seem to have a positive effect on the process. Andrea Blanch, who is trained as a social
psychologist, comments, Religion and faith tap into peoples deepest beliefs and can provide one
tool to begin addressing the trauma and the conflict at a personal and societal level.
Blanch notes that women seem particularly adept at this sort of reconciliation work. Similarly,
both Susan Hayward and Jacqueline Ogega highlight the relationship between women and
healing in their interviews. Hayward suggests, Womens roles in trauma healing can be powerful
and important and deserve more attention. Ogega notes the potential of women in this area:

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There are examples where women have taken more visible roles as religious actors,
especially in their roles as spiritual healers. In communities where they are spiritual
leaders, especially in traditional roles, women are often recognized as the spiritual
leaders for healing and cleansing. This takes on special importance in situations where
there have been extreme atrocities against the people and communities, and where
healing is extraordinarily difficult. Women are also given leading roles in prayer and
worship rituals in many faith traditions. Women can play some strategic roles here.
Cusimano Love highlights this phenomenon, drawing on experience in the Democratic Republic
of Congo as an example:
In issues of trauma healing, especially when the victims of conflict are primarily women
and girls, women in faith-based groups can be very effective. This is especially true in
places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where rape and mutilation of women
are being used as tools of conflict by armed groups trying to access natural resources.
Womens groups are very well situated to help these victims, and are working in areas
where the state is either absent or predatory, reaching out to victims of what the UN calls
war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are doing effective engagement to give
these girls and women healing support, but also in addressing how to integrate them
back into the community when theyve been stigmatized.
Womens perspectives and priorities
Many interviewees reflected on the ways in which women can bring to the table a different set of
interests and points of view from those that are typically discussed by male religious leaders.
Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana observes that in her experience, by and large womens work or
dialogue has primarily focused on issues related to women and children. She continues:
What differentiates religious womens peacemaking from their male counterparts is
their unique experiences, in some cases, their marginalization from formal mechanisms.
These experiences lead them to develop a unique perspective on issues relating to
peacemaking. Also womens and mens experiences are often different at times of conflict.
Traditionally womens needs and issues have not been addressed at times of conflict. At
times it may not be easy for women to discuss some of these experiences and needs with
men. Women and girls may feel more comfortable talking to other women about these
issues, especially those women who have an understanding about religious tradition.
Women religious peacemakers are in a position to combine these needs and issues with
their religious perspectives.
A strongly held view is that one gender-related issue that needs to be brought to the agenda much
more often and more forcefully and effectively is gender-based violence. In discussing her
community-based peace activism in Kashmir, Ashima Kaul notes,
In our early work it was very difficult to raise the issue of domestic violence. There was
denial even from women, but especially from men, who said that this does not happen in
Kashmiri society. Women denied it also, saying that Islam gives equal status to men and
women, using quotations from the Koran to show that domestic violence could not be. We
continued to press on the issue, continued to engage with them, and slowly the space has
opened up. Now, domestic violence is written [about] and discussed in the media, and
people are reporting it. There is no longer the assumption that, if you are a Muslim and
follow Islam, violence will not happen to you.

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Interfaith dialogue, when it is led by women or has strong female participation, may also take on
a different character. Qamar-ul Huda of USIP observes,
Men like to start with theology, scriptural reasoning or, more accurately, scriptural
support for their arguments. They will talk about how the Prophet is a peaceful example,
we are peaceful, etc. Women teachers will start with theology, but it has a conservative
slant we must do this work of Islamic peacemaking in order to preserve a strong
family, which preserves a strong community and society. They are doing more than just
teaching young children; they see themselves as keeping the society together.
Very clearly, women peacebuilders are not strictly focused on gender issues. But their agendas are
often marked by a different set of priorities and a focus on different issues. A common
observation is that women bring a strong focus and experience on practical matters linked to a
desire to see an improvement in the quality of their families lives. Amina Rasul-Bernardo, noting
that the Muslim women in the Philippines she has worked with give priority to peace advocacy,
health, education, and election reform, observes, The womens agendas are clear and basic. They
want a more peaceful community so that their families can survive, and not just survive but have
a peaceful, decent existence.
Challenges for female religious peacebuilders
Thus, despite the frequent invisibility of religious women and of religious dimensions in the work
of women peacemakers, there is substantial evidence that women are indeed frequently active in
the arena of religious peacebuilding. Still, their work is mostly behind the scenes in informal
roles. Though these roles can foster positive developments in peace work, many would argue that
it is both just and desirable to tap more fully into the potential of women with links to faith. The
question is how to do this most effectively.
Azza Karam highlights one of the challenges of bringing these women of faith into the spotlight,
which turns on the women themselves and their reluctance to seek the limelight:
I came to WCRP because I believed in the importance of investing in women. I have
distinct memories of the many women of faith Ive met in these different movements, in
the Arab region and Africa. They have had a powerful impact on me. They are incredibly
strong and capable and wonderful and amazing. Yet, somehow, too many of them
appeared to be content with a certain status quo. Even though they were leaders in their
own right, the status quo was insistent that they had to be in the background; no matter
how accomplished they were, the status quo demanded that these women not be
recognized and supported in the same way as their male counterparts. But they were
carrying many religious movements on their own shoulders. I sincerely believe many
religious movements would not exist without these women. []I respected their thinking,
but I thought from the start that there had to be some way of recognizing that remarkable
potential, giving and shaping power.
Marie Dennis, now Co-President of the global peace network, Pax Christi, uses her own
experience as an illustration:
I see that I need to rethink my own approach and roles at a personal level. I am most
comfortable in a background role, and have very little personal need for recognition but I

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appreciate that in my Pax Christi role, my challenge is to step into that function and
claim the space that women should have.
There are at least two important dimensions to this reluctance to push for formal leadership. The
first is an observation that informal roles are often highly effective precisely because they are
informal. A second is the role that traditions and culture play in discouraging women from putting
themselves forward and to shun formal roles..Whatever the reasons, a result of the tendency for
women to work from behind the scenes is that their work tends to go undocumented. This lack of
appreciation and evaluation can lead to a shortage of both deserved recognition and constructive
criticism. Jacqueline Ogega notes the importance of documentation:
The work women do is in many areas [] tends to be very local, very real, and very
tangible. But there is a major, generic problem: this work has been very poorly
documented. Women have been acting in so many places, but there is in truth very limited
documentation about what exactly they do. So what we are drawing on is largely ad hoc
or anecdotal information, stories from our own direct experiences that can make it
appear that we are romanticizing womens roles. We need more credible evidence to
prove what women of faith and their organizations have done. In general, there is a vast
wealth of undocumented work that women of faith are doing for peace, on all fronts.
Filiz Odabas-Geldiay, Director of Government Relations for the Art of Living Foundation, raises
the tendency of women she has worked with to keep a low profile, and to take pride in the quality
of modesty. She comments:
Women are already involved in the peace process but they work quietly so they are not
noticed as much. Their work is usually taken for granted. It is important to acknowledge
and document what has already been accomplished.
Marc Gopin echoes these concerns about the lack of solid evidence and documentation about
womens work and roles in the arenas of peace. Knowledge is piecemeal and that contributes to a
paucity of thoughtful and professional evaluation:
The problem is that we have no systematic country analyses in this area. What we know
about the nature of peace processes, especially in an area like this one is piecemeal
what we happen to hear. So it is hard to answer the question because we lack any
systematic gathering of experience and resources, and far less do we have any real
assessment of the impact.
Systematic documentation and analysis could help tackle one of the largest challenges at the
intersection of women, religion, and peacea lack of resources. As Jacqueline Ogega and several
others underscore, it is often extraordinarily difficult to mobilize resources for the critical
community-based work at the local level, which is often driven by women of faith:
We have found through our work at Religions for Peace that women of faith continue to
be unrecognized, under-funded, and unsupported in their efforts to build peace. It is
difficult for the media to pick up the story that women of faith are leading change by
organizing peace committees at the village level, and that their work contributes to the
overall efforts to build peaceThe lack of resources is the central challenge. The way
religious womens organizations are structured, even well organized womens groups,
limits the possibility of getting resources to them in any significant way. Available
resources tend to go to mainstream religious groups. Women may be asked to organize

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local communities, but that is very limited in terms of resources and also limited in terms
of building organizational capacity.
Marc Gopin also stresses the need for documentation and analysis of religious womens
peacebuilding effortsdoing so may shed light on important and effective work, which would
not only advance the field but also help to direct resources more efficiently:
We have in the United States, with the Obama administration, a real window of
opportunitya rare and important era of government seriousness. And so we face the
question of how we can use something like the MacArthur model of selecting for
excellence, and how we can advocate for a paradigm shift that is not doling out driblets
of money but instead is asking, what money will it take to bring peace? Sometimes we
hear that the money is there but I just dont believe it. What we want is to put money in
ratios that support cutting edge work, that give peace a fighting chance.

5. Priorities for Research and Action

The consultation process was marked by numerous and diverse insights into gaps in knowledge
and understanding and ideas as to how this project to investigate roles of women, religion, and
peace might move forward. Some are highlighted here.
Networks
The power and importance of networks is an important area for learning and investigation.
Women working for peace emphasize the importance of networks both as practical sources of
support and, more broadly, as a source of inspiration and a way to amplify voices and contribute
to an adding up of their efforts. Networks highlighted range from highly focused efforts that
address specific regions to broader networks that aim at a general sharing of experience and
reinforcement of community. Ashima Kaul highlights the tangible benefits in terms of training
and capacity or skills building as an important function of networks, but also stresses that the
moral support they provide is even more important. As Dee Aker points out, Women very often
feel very alone and isolated. They are not aware that they are not the only ones caught in
seemingly impossible situations. People emphasize that they draw both strength and inspiration,
as well as specific support, from networks that link individuals across geographic regions.
The calls for more and stronger networks present both a challenge and an opportunity for actors
interested in the role of women in religious peacebuilding. The challenge is to help create more
effective, useful networks. In opening up new channels of communication, ideas are shared and
links between issues and experiences can be more clearly made.
In describing some of the challenges facing Pax Christi International, Marie Dennis touches on
the complexities that might be addressed by networks, since increased communication and
collaboration can help organizations explore better ways to improve communities recovering
from war. Networks can also help groups like Pax Christi focus their work, share their ideas, and
garner support from other organizations. Dennis notes:
Through all this work, I have seen more and more the connections among issues and the
importance of creating viable networks that can link many different kinds of structures, to
help people who are working for peace to sing in harmony with each other, and to work
togetherWe need to find better ways, more opportunities, to lift up the terrible realities
that we see, the effects of war and violence, in a more coherent way. That must shape

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how we focus our work, what we propose, and what we advocate, individually and
collectively.
Emma Leslie, who brings considerable experience working with networks, highlighted some of
the lessons her team draws from working with different networks:
We have invested a lot in learning about how to build meaningful and useful networks,
and we are learning all the time. One lesson is that we establish strict rules from the
beginning, on who joins and how we manage communication. This has particular
importance for people in sensitive, tense situations, where communications can be not
only a nuisance but simply dangerous. Another lesson we found is that having someone
in a network representing an organization does not work well. People move on, the new
person is not integrated well, and the momentum and energy and above all the trust and
relationships are dissipated. So membership in our networks is personal and individual.
New social media open new means and channels that offer significant potential. Kathryn Poethig
discussed the potential for social networks for young leaders:
One of most interesting areas where much is happening [in terms of networks] that is
worth focusing on is in the colleges, thus looking at the next generation. How do people
in their twenties see these issues? What kinds of programs are they initiating? And what
programs serve them well? The potential of social networking is really exciting and
worth exploring.
At the same time, the need for personal interaction should not be discounted. Addressing the
potential of networks, what works and what does not, Dena Merriam observed:
Networks are the key. And in this field they play particularly essential roles, because
everything is based on personal relationships. Building trust is what is important also in
religious worldsIt is important to have networks that go across faiths. I have found that
it is possible to work deeply with different faiths, in part because I show such interest in
different faiths. That interest and curiosity are a critical ingredient to the effort to be able
to cross over and share experience Networks are vital because they are about seeing
people as the most important thing. That means that they simply must involve face-toface meetings. And that means being willing to travel.
Networking can build bridges between generations, communities, organizations, and individuals.
By creating broad networks of people who support each other, it is easier to work towards
common goals, brainstorm new ideas, and collectively advocate for change.
Supporting work to challenge theological approaches that exclude or downplay women
In several faith traditions, important changes in womens roles and thus in their potential to work
for peace centers on intra-faith work that challenges through theological dialogue the assumptions
and teachings that have negative effects on women. Such work is marked within several Muslim
communities and a long-standing African womens theologians association has worked in this
direction for over a decade.
Work along these lines deserves more focus, recognition, and support.
Documentation and research

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A central finding is the need to pursue investigation of a range of case studies, both focused on
specific regions and on issues emerging from them. These materials could serve the networks of
women peacemakers directly and serve as teaching materials in both training programs and at
universities.
Many participants highlighted the need for more comprehensive, on-the-ground research and
mapping of the work that women do for peace, and particularly for religious peacebuilding. Scott
Appleby emphasized the need for first-rate social scientific studies of what is actually happening
in these so-called invisible realms of peacebuilding, conducted by women standing in some
critical but positive relationship to the traditional religious community. Cusimano-Love
underscored the importance of research done in conjunction with the Catholic Peace Network on
how different government bureaus and organizations define peace, and their priorities for
peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. She notes the significance of work by SSTR
[Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction] activities of the U.S. Defense Department
and State Department, and the contrast with the UN Peace Building Commissions ideas about
peacebuilding, in terms of the approach and definitions of faith-based organizations.
Interdisciplinary work has particular importance. Kathryn Poethig notes that women from several
different sectors need to be included in this process of analysis. This, of course, ties back into the
notion that if peace is defined as more than the absence of violence, it encompasses women
working in numerous, but related fields. Such approaches encourage practitioners and researchers
to tap into the experiences of more individuals and offer ways to establish better forms of
communication and collaboration. Poethig observes:
My concern is that we are not linking fields well enough. We are not looking at all the
sources of wisdom, at how we connect, how we can take the discussion to the next level
We need the three levels, activist, practitioner, and theoretical, but we need to bring them
together to get to another level of understanding of what we are doing and can doWe
need to focus on curricula around human rights and around peace education networks,
again building on remarkable things that are being done.
The challenges of diversity of experience take on increasing significance in reflecting on roles of
different cultures. Ela Bhatt urges that cooperation needs to take place not only across different
sectors, but also between different types of people. Those further removed from positions of
power still have much to contribute. Like Poethig, her words highlight the importance of
inclusiveness:
All my life I have worked to change concepts, and that begins with how people see and
understand the problems. The biggest obstacles, obstruction, and opposition come from
blockages among the policy makers and the educated. That is why we need to organize at
different levels, across borders of all kinds, building on relationships and on people, from
the grass roots to the international, from cooperatives to Cornell University, because we
need the knowledge as well.
Many participants pointed to the importance of recognizing the diversity of thought within
religious traditions (as well as among them). Dr. Kadayifci-Orellana notes:
Even within the same community of women of faith, there are many differences in the
way they understand peace and their religious tradition. Age, personal experiences,
ethnicity, race, are also categories that may play an important role for the construction

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of identity of these women. Understanding these differences and constructively managing

these complexities are critical for a sound theoretical perspective.
Strategic thinking and exploration
Conscious efforts to work towards greater strategic focus in the work of women peacebuilders
emerged as a common concern. Scilla Elworthy observes that what is needed is an overall
strategy for the building of peace worldwide. She continues:
There are so many effective grassroots initiatives that do not get a fraction of the
resources they merit; there are marvelous UN declarations that do not really deliver;
there is excellent research coming out of university peace departments; there are even
great initiatives on the part of governments, but all these are fragmented and do not work
together as joint stakeholders in the building of peace.
Susan Hayward suggests that women have to do more than just look for ways to work in
traditionally acceptable roles. The status quo has to be broken. She says:
If women are to be peacemakers, they have to be empowered and to have authority in
the community As long as men hold the key to our religious traditions, they are likely to
be drawn on to preserve traditions of masculine control. Reasserting a different
interpretation is thus important.
Hayward continues:
I feel strongly that religious peacemaking is at a point where we need to think seriously
about strategy, and to rethink how we are going about it to engage in evaluation and
self-criticism. There have been important accomplishments and we have learned many
lessons, but we also need to recognize that some of the approaches, including the large
meetings that tend to be a primary vehicle to bring people together for interfaith
dialogue, go only so far. We need to have an honest reflection about where we are, and
our impact. We need above all to integrate the different approaches: formal dialogue,
education, rituals, and negotiations, and we need to integrate them with the political
sectors.
Other recommendations
The importance of promoting peace education was highlighted by several participants. Amina
Rasul-Bernardo described one Islamic peace education model, developed through the Philippine
Council for Islam and Democracy and an international workshop.
Several suggestions highlighted the need for specific action to educate donors, to help them
understand the process of working through religious traditions or institutions. The process is often
more complex than they recognize and quite different from their preconceptions.
The gulfs in understanding that separate many (though by no means all) secular womens
organizations from those grounded in religion were seen as regrettable and quite often colored by
preconceptions and misunderstandings. Dialogue processes aimed at bridging gulfs deserve
support.

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In highlighting the importance of engaging women more actively in advocacy work, Denise
Coghlan urges that faith-based organizations that focus on peacebuilding appreciate well the
importance of both professionalism and compassion, and a focus on the people:
Perhaps some faith-inspired organizations could pay more attention to advocacy, but
they have to know their stuff! If you are going to advocate you have to be knowledgeable.
It is no use saying faith-based organizations should do this or that if they do not know
their topics. They need to be prepared to work diligently on the subjects they choose.
Another thing faith-inspired organizations can help on is aligning the interests of the
people with the political interests of the leaders Faith-inspired organizations can work
to see that politicians realize [the needs and the voice of the people].
The direction of many of these ideas and recommendations is towards recognizing,
understanding, and building on the potential and actual advantages that womens social and
religious positions allow within the peacebuilding process, while, at the same time, encouraging
moves beyond traditional gender roles. Kathleen Kuehnast, Gender Adviser to USIP, highlights
the need for balance and for less stereotyped approaches to gender roles.
How do you bring the top and the bottom closer together? How do we bring women into
formal leadership of religion and how do we bring men into the local-level of women
involved in religious peacemaking? It has to go both ways.
Questions for discussion and investigation
Some pending questions and specific suggestions are as follows:
(a) These case studies highlight a positive development as women work within their traditions to
redefine understandings of womens roles in society, including their roles for peace. How can
this interpretive work best be supported?
(b) How do we balance the ways in which we characterize women and their roles in peace work?
Can we say that women have special skills without reinforcing stereotypes?
(c) What about women who are more comfortable working behind the scenes, or in non-formal
religious peacemaking roles? How do we break away from the status quo? What if women are
better at working from the sidelines because they feel more comfortable there?
(d) How can we foster more effective networks, since these are so often cited as a powerful
potential asset in the internet age, yet also greeted with some frustration given their demands on
time?
(e) What role does religious feminism have to play in the intersection of women, peace and
conflict?
(f) How can young people and young women be engaged more effectively at this intersection of
women, religion, and peace?
(g) What are the causes for different manifestations of womens religious peacebuilding in
different contexts are they cultural? Religious? Political?

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Acknowledgments:
The report was prepared under the direction of Katherine Marshall and Susan Hayward; Esther
Breger, Sarah Jackson, and Claudia Zambra contributed substantively to successive drafts. Inputs
from Michael Bodakowski, Paige Lovejoy, and Deven Comen, as well as participants in the July
symposium and in interviews are gratefully acknowledged.

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37

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Drawn from chapter by Patricia Lawrence,The Watch of Tamil Women: Womens Acts in a Transitional Warscape, in
Monique Skidmore and Patricia Lawrence (eds), 2007, Women and the Contested State: Religion, Violence, and Agency in
South and Southeast Asia (University of Notre Dame Press).
iii
Information drawn from www.mwraf.org
iv
Information drawn from http://www.groundviews.org/
ii

Women, Religion, and Peace Interviews Cited

Abu-Nimer, Mohammed. School of International Service, American University. 13 June 2010.
Abuom, Agnes. World Council of Churches. 3 July 2009.
Aker, Dee. Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice, University of San Diego. 20 June 2010.
Anderson, Joan. International Office of Public Information, Soka Gakkai. 5 November 2009.
Appleby, R. Scott. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. 7 July 2010.
Bhatt, Ela. Self-Employed Womens Association. 17 May 2010.
Blanch, Andrea. Center for Religious Tolerance. 13 June 2010.
Bouvier, Virginia. United States Institute for Peace. 2 July 2009.
Chittister, Joan. Benetvision. 21 June 2010.
Coghlan, Denise. Jesuit Refugee Service Cambodia. 28 May 2010.
DeBoer, Patricia. American Friends Service Committee. 29 July 2010.
Dennis, Marie. Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns. 29 April 2010.
Dubensky, Joyce. Tanenbaum Center for Religious Understanding. 4 June 2010.
Elworthy, Scilla. Oxford Research Group. 16 July 2010.
Fitzduff, Mari Christine. International Master of Arts Program in Coexistence and Conflict, Brandeis University.
17 June 2010.
Gumbonzvanda, Nyaradzayi. General Secretary, World YWCA. November, 2010.
Gopin, Marc. Center on Religion, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution, George Mason Universitys Institute for
Conflict Analysis and Resolution. 21 May 2010.
Hayward, Susan. United States Institute of Peace. 1 May 2010.
Huda, Qamar-ul. United States Institute of Peace. 8 June 2010.
Ibrahim, Dekha. Wajir Peace and Development Committee. 29 May 2010.
Kadayifci-Orellana, Ayse. Salaam Institute for Peace and Justice. 18 May 2010.
Karam, Azza. United Nations Population Fund. 29 April 2010.
Kaul, Ashima. Independent Peace Practitioner and Journalist. 24 June 2010.
Kuehnast, Kathleen. United States Institute of Peace. 8 June 2010.
Leslie, Emma. Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. 1 May 2010.
Love, Maryann Cusimano. The Catholic University of America. 6 July 2010.
McMorrow, Marilyn. School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. 23 June 2010.
Merriam, Dena. Global Peace Initiative of Women. 7 May 2010.
Newberg, Paula
Odabas-Geldiay, Filiz. International Association for Human Values and Art of Living Foundation. 1 July 2010.
Ogega, Jacqueline Moturi. World Conference of Religions for Peace. 27 May 2010.
Omar, Manal. United States Institute of Peace. 5 June 2010.
Poethig, Kathryn. California State University, Monterey Bay. 2 May 2010.
Rasul-Bernardo, Amina. Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy. 8 July 2010.
Rozenman, Elana. TRUST-Emun. 30 June 2010.
Smock, David. United States Institute of Peace. 18 May 2010.
Stolov, Yehuda. Interfaith Encounter Association. Email exchange, May 2010.
Syeed, Afeefa. United States Agency for International Development Middle East and Asia Bureaus. 2 July 2010.
Torjesen, Karen Jo. Claremont Graduate University. 30 June 2010.
Tyndale, Wendy. 1 April 2010.

Yusuf, Hajiya Bilkisu. Federation of Muslim Womans Associations in Nigeria. 8 July 2010.

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