The Feminist Perspective on Peace Studies

When most people picture peace and conflict, they think of armies, treaties, and negotiating tables full of diplomats. But this picture leaves out a crucial question: do war and violence affect everyone in the same way? The feminist approach to peace studies argues that they do not. It shifts attention away from states and battlefields and toward the everyday lives of people, particularly women, who experience violence in forms that traditional security thinking has long ignored. In doing so, it expands our very definition of what peace means and how it can be built.

Why feminists redefine violence and peace 🔗

The starting point for the feminist approach is the idea that peace is not simply the absence of war. To understand this, it helps to look at the work of peace scholar Johan Galtung, whose framework distinguishes between direct violence, structural violence, and cultural violence. Direct violence is physical and visible: a beating, a bombing, a killing. Structural violence is built into social systems and institutions, depriving people of resources, rights, and opportunities. Cultural violence refers to the beliefs and norms that make the other two seem normal or acceptable.

Feminist scholars accept this framework but argue it is incomplete. They point out that Galtung’s theory needs to incorporate gender as a social construct that embodies relations of power. Without a gender lens, peace studies misses how violence is distributed unequally between men and women. A war may officially “end,” but for women living in a society where they face discrimination, economic dependence, and the constant threat of abuse, peace has not truly arrived.

The continuum of violence 🔗

One of the most influential feminist contributions is the concept of a continuum of violence. Developed by scholars like Cynthia Cockburn, this idea recognises that violence against women is part of a broader spectrum of normalised, everyday aggression rooted in patriarchal norms. This continuum stretches from physical harm in the home, to structural and symbolic forms of oppression, all the way to the organised violence of war.

This insight is powerful because it dissolves the line between “private” and “public” violence. A culture that tolerates domestic abuse, feminists argue, is connected to a culture that tolerates militarism. The same systems of male dominance that normalise control over women in the household also help sustain the aggression that drives armed conflict. Seen this way, peace cannot be achieved by signing a ceasefire; it requires dismantling the structures that produce violence at every level.

The disproportionate impact of conflict on women 🔗

Feminist analysis draws attention to how women and girls bear a distinct burden during conflict. This is not just collateral damage. The nature of modern warfare, where civilians are increasingly targeted, means women often suffer a range of harms, from sexual violence inflicted by combatants to the loss of spouses, families, and livelihoods.

The international community formally recognised this in 2000 with the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. It was the first resolution to acknowledge that conflict impacts people differently depending on their gender, and it built its agenda on the pillars of participation, protection, prevention, and recovery. The resolution specifically calls on all parties to a conflict to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, especially rape and other forms of sexual abuse.

Violence against women as a peace issue 🔗

For feminists, rape, family violence, trafficking, and exploitation are not separate “women’s issues” to be dealt with after the “real” peace work is done. They are central to peace itself. When sexual violence is used as a weapon of war, or when economic exploitation forces women into vulnerable positions, these are violations that any meaningful definition of peace must address.

This focus reframes everyday harms that societies often treat as unfortunate but private matters. By naming them as violence within a continuum, feminist thinkers insist they belong squarely within the field of peace and conflict studies. A society cannot claim to be peaceful while a large part of its population lives under the constant threat of harm.

The historical association of women with peace 🔗

There is a long-standing image of women as natural peacemakers, the nurturers who protect and sustain life. This association has deep historical roots. As far back as the nineteenth century, women’s peace societies held that pacifism was a natural effect of the maternal instinct and therefore part of women’s duties as mothers and nurturers. Women have also organised collectively for peace for over a century, most famously through the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, founded around the end of the First World War.

This history gives feminist peace activism a rich tradition to draw upon. Women’s movements have repeatedly mobilised against war and militarism, often framing their activism in terms of protecting future generations and prioritising care over competition.

The essentialism debate 🔗

However, this is also where the feminist approach becomes most internally complex and interesting. Many feminists are deeply sceptical of the claim that women are naturally more peaceful than men. They argue that this idea, known as essentialism, is both inaccurate and counterproductive.

The problem is twofold. First, casting women as inherently peaceful and nurturing reinforces rigid gender stereotypes. This kind of gender-reductionism can portray women as passive, apolitical, and in need of protection, while assuming a natural link between masculinity and violence. Neither stereotype holds up: a person’s inclination toward violence is shaped by systems of power and hierarchy, not biology.

Second, the “women as natural peacemakers” idea can actually backfire politically. Scholars have identified a paradox in which essentialist views that portray women as peaceful end up marginalising them from formal political roles, limiting their participation in peace negotiations. If women are seen only as gentle caregivers and victims, they are easily confined to the domestic sphere rather than recognised as capable political agents who can sit at the negotiating table.

The more sophisticated feminist position, then, is not that women are biologically destined for peace, but that women’s distinctive social experiences and their exclusion from power give them valuable perspectives that mainstream security thinking overlooks. Their role in peacemaking comes from agency and insight, not from instinct.

Linking peace to social justice, economic equity, and ecology 🔗

Because feminists define violence broadly, their vision of peace is correspondingly broad. True peace, in this view, requires transforming the underlying conditions that create conflict. Feminist conceptions of peace tend to be more comprehensive and transformative than traditional notions, placing gender equality at their core and treating structural transformation as essential for sustainable peace. This vision rests on three connected pillars.

Social justice 🔗

Social justice means dismantling the patriarchal structures that perpetuate inequality. It involves ensuring that women have genuine, equal access to education, healthcare, political representation, and legal protection. Without this, the structural violence that quietly harms women every day continues unchecked, regardless of whether a country is officially at war or at peace.

Economic equity 🔗

Economic equity addresses the way economic disparities fuel conflict and trap women in vulnerable positions. Closing the gender pay gap, ensuring fair labour practices, recognising unpaid care work, and building social safety nets all reduce the root causes of violence. When women are economically dependent, they have fewer options to escape abusive situations, and entire communities remain fragile.

Ecological balance 🔗

The third pillar links the liberation of women to the health of the planet, an idea developed most fully in ecofeminism. Ecofeminists argue that the same patriarchal logic that exploits women also drives the exploitation of nature. In contexts where communities depend directly on natural resources, environmental degradation often falls hardest on women.

One of the clearest examples comes from the Chipko movement in the Himalayan region in the 1970s. This was a non-violent response by women against large-scale deforestation, in which they clung to trees to protect them from being cut. The thinker Vandana Shiva, who volunteered with the movement, used it to develop her influential ecofeminist analysis. In her work Staying Alive, she argues that patriarchal development models simultaneously destroy ecosystems and marginalise women, while positioning women as central custodians of biodiversity and ecological regeneration.

It is worth noting that scholars debate how to interpret movements like Chipko. Some celebrate it as proof of women’s special relationship with nature, while others, such as Ramachandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil, argue it should be understood primarily within the context of broader peasant struggles over forest resources. This debate echoes the essentialism question: was the women’s involvement about an innate bond with nature, or about their material stake in survival? Either way, ecofeminism makes the case that peace with each other is inseparable from peace with the Earth.

From victims to agents of peace 🔗

A final and crucial theme is the shift from seeing women only as victims to recognising them as active builders of peace. Even when excluded from official processes, women have continued their peacebuilding work in the most difficult circumstances. Across conflict zones, grassroots feminist activists, often shut out of formal peace processes, persist in their efforts even amidst renewed violence and failed peace agreements.

This is why feminists push so hard for women’s participation in decision-making. Resolution 1325 itself stresses that women’s full involvement is important to every aspect of achieving and sustaining peace within a community. Yet implementation has been slow and uneven. Much of the international effort has focused on protecting women rather than ensuring their actual participation, and funding for women’s grassroots peace organisations remains a tiny fraction of what is needed.

The feminist approach therefore ends with a demand as much as an analysis. It asks us to broaden who counts as a peacemaker, to recognise the violence that goes unseen, and to understand that a peace built without the full participation of half the population is unlikely to last.

What do you think? If we accept that peace means freedom from structural and everyday violence, not just the absence of war, how should governments measure whether a society is genuinely “peaceful”? And does emphasising women’s role in peacebuilding risk reinforcing the very stereotypes that feminists warn against, or can it be done in a way that treats women as full political agents?

References

1. https://www.academia.edu/19757186/Galtung_Violence_and_Gender_The_Case_for_a_Peace_Studies_Feminism_Alliance
2. https://academic.oup.com/isagsq/article/5/1/ksaf008/8008823
3. https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/publications/Parliament_as_partners_supporting_the_Women_Peace_and_Security_Agenda_-_A_Global_Handbook.pdf
4. https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/stories/news/2023/10/the-women-peace-and-security-agenda-in-myanmar
5. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/244543
6. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/feminist-pacifism-or-passive-ism/
7. https://www.academia.edu/3801084/Women_peace_and_security_Moving_beyond_feminist_pacifism
8. https://idronline.org/seven-things-we-learned-from-dr-vandana-shiva/
9. https://www.femres.org/en/books/staying-alive/
10. https://www.usip.org/gender_peacebuilding/about_UNSCR_1325