Women, Religion, Peace report with Berkley Center (00021015).DOC

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

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 peace3. 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-BernardoWomens 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 LankaBuilding 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

Women, Religion, and Peace: Exploring an Invisible Force

Preface/About the ReportWomens 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/women-religion-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-and-peaceSummary 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. 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 non-threatening 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. 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 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, 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 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,

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 well-appreciated 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, anti-nuclear 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 peaceHonoring 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. 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. 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.

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.

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, 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 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 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. 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.

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 (Abu-Nimer 2001: 686). Reporting on faith-based peacebuilding, Tseard Bouta, Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana, 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:

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 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 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 faith-based 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 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. 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.

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 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 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 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 self-sustaining.

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 DRCThough 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.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 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 Omar

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 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 LTTE, 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.Suriya

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.

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 Forum

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 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 NetworkThe 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.

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 workOne 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 int