Disentangling gendered peace: Observing gendered peace in policy

Abstract

Abstract Understanding where and how to bolster human rights is arguably the underlying motivation of most research in human rights and the greater field of political science. Increasingly, an emphasis on gender has been shown to prevent conflict and reinforce peace, thus demonstrating how a reinforcement of women’s rights benefits the sustainment of peace. Despite increasing evidence for this phenomenon, scholars have not fully explored the mechanisms through which a focus on women fosters and preserves peace. Using extant literature on women and peace, I identify two sets of policy instruments that may be more effectual than others in establishing gendered peace and preventing states from relapsing into conflict. I further categorize the policies into high-level and targeted policies and hypothesize that, contrary to intuition, high-level policies could be more effective at generating gendered peace. I test the models for each instrument using an updated version of the PAX-Gender database and find that more high-level gender policies are linked to longer-lasting peace treaties.