Pillay, Anu

Pillay, Anu

Anu Pillay

13 August 2011Feature

An examination of women's participation in formal and informal peace-building activities shows that in most cases women are excluded from formal peace negotiations. Anu Pillay argues that women's participation in designing strategies is essential in adding value to the process of negotiating peace, and reconstructing society after conflict.

At a recent seminar on peace building in Africa, the question of why gender and not women was raised. What is the difference? Although I was surprised that this question came up at all, it made me realise that one makes the assumption that this question has been sufficiently dealt with and that everyone is moving on from there.

Yet, this question helped me to understand why we often remain stuck in our attempts to transform gender relations in our society. The politics of gender…