Strong international norms have been established in favour of including women in all aspects of conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The most prominent example of these is perhaps found in Security Council Resolution 1325 passed in the year 2000. Concurrently, national women’s groups have sought to participate in peace negotiations, identifying them as arenas to advance feminist objectives. Recent research suggests that gender-inclusive agreements lead to better outcomes for women in the post-conflict period including the accelerated adoption of electoral quotas for women. To date, we know little about which factors at the international level (such as international norms or global/regional contagion effects) and those at the national level (country- and conflict-level characteristics) are linked to gender-inclusive peace agreements.
This paper uses a dataset that includes a sample of 216 peace agreements signed between 1975 and 2011. It assesses to what degree international norms regarding women’s right to be included in decision-making processes (represented in key international treaties and declarations such as the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979), the Beijing Declaration (1995), and Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security (2000)) and country- or conflict-level characteristics (such as conflict intensity, conflict length, conflict type, and level of women’s empowerment) affect the likelihood of a gender-inclusive agreement.
