Gender Diversity and Humanitarian Frontline Negotiations: Preparatory Literature Review1

INTERNAL DRAFT FOR CONSULTATIONS

Prepared by Fédérica du Pasquier On the frontlines of armed conflicts, the vast majority of parties, including humanitarian negotiators, are male. Although the number of female negotiators and mediators has been increasingly steadily over the recent years, no research has been done on the impact of gender diversity on humanitarian negotiations. Does it matter? A transversal study conducted by the Humanitarian Exchange (HNx) program at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has shown that “a major component of ICRC negotiations involves the establishment and maintenance of relationships with counterparts,” and that “a relationship based on trust was overwhelmingly seen by interviewees as a pre-requisite to any form of humanitarian agreement.” 2 Given the importance of building relationships as part of humanitarian negotiations, is there any empirical evidence that the gender of the humanitarian negotiator or mediator impacts upon this process? If so, how can this gender component be harnessed to improve humanitarian access? The purpose of the following literature review is to explain how the impact of gender has been analyzed in analogous fields in order to inform the direction of research and analysis of its influence on humanitarian negotiations. After an introductory note situating this discussion in the wider debate on gender studies, this paper will cover two main areas, namely Negotiations and Mediation (I) and Peacemaking, and Peacekeeping (II). While the former relates to how gender affects negotiation practice in a non-humanitarian context, the latter explores how gender has been conceived of in frontline conflict environments. Previous literature in related fields, this review will show, indicates that gender has an important impact on both the practice of negotiation and the perception of actors in conflict settings. This review will finish with a list of questions that emerge for negotiations in a humanitarian setting.

1 This preliminary review of literature has been prepared by Federica du Pasquier, researcher at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative's Advanced Training Program on Humanitarian Action (ATHA). 2 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). 2015. Humanitarian Negotiation Exchange (HNx): Analytical Report on ICRC Negotiation and Mediation Practices. External Draft for Consultation.

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A Note on Gender and Studying Differences Between Men and Women Gender is understood to mean “a set of cultural institutions and practices that constitute the norms and standards of masculinity and femininity.”3 Sex, on the other hand, is a word that refers to the “biological differences between men and women.”4 The study of gender and sex differences has long been – and to a certain extent continues to be – controversial. In the 1970s in particular, feminists rejected literature and psychology studies exploring gender differences, arguing that claims about sex differences falsely portrayed women as inferior to men.5 These scholars exposed sexist biases of early research on writing about maternal instinct and sex differences in the size and structure of the human brain,6 and criticized more modern research demonstrating sex differences as being riddled with artifacts, methodological deficiencies, and unexplained inconsistencies in findings.7 This empiricist feminist research on gender was based on the premise that methodologically sound comparisons of women and men would yield null results or trivially small findings, thereby challenging stereotypes about women and promoting women’s chance for equal opportunities in society.8 A countertrend of feminist psychologists emerged that accepted the existence of sex-related differences and praised behavioral aspects that it ascribed to women, including moral reasoning focusing on caring for others, a greater focus on building relationships, etc. 9 Within this current, two approaches have in turn emerged that trace differences back to inherent biological characteristics (essentialist trend) 10 or to social conditioning (constructionalist trend)11 respectively. The debate has shifted from the former to the latter, which is from viewing gender as an inherent, invariable characteristic to a more complex and contextual dimension of individual identity.12 To this day, the fear that literature highlighting gender differences will ultimately serve to undermine women persists, especially when it relies on biological arguments.13 Yet a consensus seems to be emerging that gender-induced differences do exist.

3 Steans, J. 1998. Gender and International Relations, Cambridge: Polity Press, 92. 4 Oakley, A. 2015. Sex, Gender and Society. London : Ashgate Publishing, 21-22. 5 See for instance Bernard, J. 1974. Sex differences: An overview (Module 26). New York: MSS Modular Publications,

who referred to studies of sex differences as “battle weapons against women,” p. 13. 6 See for instance Shields, S. A. 1975. Functionalism, Darwinism, and the psychology of women. American

Psychologist, 30, 739-754. 7 See for instance Sherif, C. W. 1979. Bias in psychology. In J. A. Sherman & E. T. Beck (Eds.), The prism of sex: Essays

in the sociology of knowledge (93-133). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 8 Eagly, A.H. 1995. The Science and Politics of Comparing Women and Men. American Psychologist, Vol. 50. No. 3. 145-158. For some examples of authors writing to prove that women and men are essentially equivalent in their personalities, behavioral tendencies, and intellectual abilities see for instance Caplan, P. J., MacPherson, G. M., & Tobin, P. 1985. Do sex-related differences in spatial abilities exist? A multilevel critique with new data. American Psychologist, 40, 786-799 and Fischer, A. H. 1993. Sex differences in emotionality: Fact or stereotype? Feminism & Psychology, 3, 303-318. 9 See for instance Gilligan, C. 1982. In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Chodorow, N. 1978. The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press. 10 See for instance Ferris, E. 1993. Women, War and Peace, Uppsala: Life and Peace Institute. 11 See for instance Skjelsbaek, I. 1997. Gendered Battlefields: A Gender Analysis of Peace and Conflict. Oslo: PRIO Report, 6/97. 12 Kolb, Deborah. 2009. Too Bad for the Women or Does It Have to Be? Gender and Negotiation Research over the Past Twenty-Five Years. Negotiation Journal 515-531. 13 Unger and Crawford, for instance, argue that for an oppressed group such as women differences become deficiencies. Unger, R., & Crawford, M. 1992. Women and gender: A feminist psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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In the fields of negotiation, mediation and peacemaking the research on gender differences has overwhelmingly aimed to be a tool of female empowerment and to increase women’s participation and influence. By recognizing that differences can have a positive outcome and analyzing the particular challenges women are subjected to, the scholars cited in the following literature review have largely contributed to the advocacy for more diverse and gender-balanced teams, be in the fields of negotiation, mediation, or peacekeeping.

I) Negotiations and Mediation Negotiations Are women the same or different from men when it comes to negotiating, and what might explain these differences? This question has dominated the field of negotiations since 1975, when Rubin and Brown published the first comprehensive review of research on gender in negotiation.14 They accounted for their partially contradictory evidence on gender influence on competitive and cooperative behaviors in negotiations, in which women were alternatively more cooperative and more competitive than men, by arguing that female negotiators are highly “interpersonally oriented.” 15 Whereas men “orient themselves not to the other, but to the impersonal task of maximizing their own earnings,” they argued, women ‘‘are highly sensitive and reactive to the interpersonal aspects of their relationship with the other.”16 During the 1980s, as theories gender as a social role17 and a contextual phenomenon18 were being developed in social psychology, gender was largely disregarded in mainstream negotiation theory. It is only in the mid-1990s, informed by advances in psychological research on gender in social behavior, that psychological researchers started paying more attention to the social construction of gender in negotiation, and in particular to situational factors that might moderate gender effects in negotiation.19 Two meta-analyses marked this shift. The first was a study by Walters, Stuhlmacher, and Meyer20 (1998) on gender and negotiation behavior, which found that women appear to behave more cooperatively in negotiations than men, but only slightly. They also noted when the negotiators’ ability to communicate with their counterparts was restrained, or in the case of abstract bargaining paradigms, this difference was considerably lower: “In simulations of explicit bargaining, where face-to-face communication is usually permissible and participants enact elaborate role-plays, women behaved less competitively than men. In contrast, the average effect of gender difference was essentially zero in experiments involving matrix games, in which bargainers have little contact with one another and negotiating usually proceeds through a series of “offers” or choices to compete or cooperate.”21 The greater the opportunities to communicate, they conclude, the

14 For a very comprehensive account of the evolution of psychological perspectives on gender in negotiations, which this section draws on, see Bowles, H.R., 2012. Psychological Perspectives on Gender in Negotiation. HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series. 15 Rubin, J., and Brown, B. 1975. The Social Psychology of Bargaining and Negotiation. New York: Academic Press. 16 Rubin & Brown, 1975, 193. 17 Eagly, A. H. 1987. Sex differences in social behavior: A social-role interpretation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 18 Deaux, K., & Major, B. 1987. Putting gender into context: An interactive model of gender- related behavior. Psychological Review, 94, 369-389. 19 Bowles, 2012, 4. 20 Walters, A. E., Stuhlmacher, A. F., & Meyer, L. L. 1998. Gender and negotiator competitiveness: A meta-analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 76, 1-29. 21 Walters, Stuhlmacher, & Meyer, 1998, 20-21.

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larger the stereotypical gender differences. In the second such meta-analysis, Stuhlmacher and Walters (1999)22 argued that the difference in studies’ outcomes of negotiation settlements between men and women might have been caused by the stereotypically masculine nature of the negotiations at hand (e.g., negotiating for cars, airplanes, computer systems, turbo engine parts as opposed to traditionally stereotypical feminine tasks involving child care, caretaker issues, housework, grade school teachers,…). Similarly, they hypothesized that stereotypical power differentials (e.g. a male supervisor and a female subordinate) in the study role-play would lead to stereotypical gender differences in settlements. In brief, they conclude, the situation and negotiation structure may influence gender differences in negotiation outcomes. According to these meta-analyses, in sum, the differential impact of gender therefore increases in face-to-face negotiations, where negotiators communicate in person (1), and in situations that exacerbate gender stereotypes (2). Party as a result of these studies, research on the content and implications of gender stereotypes in negotiation became more prevalent and important in the early 2000s.23 Kray and Thompson (2004)24 published a comprehensive qualitative review of the literature on gender and negotiations. They identified five distinct theories on the origins of gender differences, which respectively traced them back to the mind of a focal negotiator; the mind of a negotiating opponent or constituents; a product of the interactive exchange within a negotiating dyad; a by-product of situational factors; or an interactive combination of a focal negotiator and the distinct situation that he or she faces.25 Unsurprisingly, they found that gender effects are “multi-determined,” that is that these factors have an interactive effect in determining when and if gender differences emerge. They therefore argue for a situational approach to the study of gender in negotiation, and stress that gender stereotypes, as the common denominator of the various approaches, are at the root of gender effects in negotiation. Because masculine attributes – assertiveness, independence, and rationality – are thought to be more valuable at the bargaining table than feminine ones – emotionality, concern for others, and passivity – they argue, female negotiators at a disadvantage. More recent research on negotiations has further investigated how prescriptive gender stereotypes, that is beliefs about the characteristics that men and women should possess, 26 and the ensuing gender policing affect female negotiators’ behavior. Bowles et al. (2005)27 showed that women are more successful at negotiating higher compensation outcomes for others than for themselves. This is consistent with the stereotype that self-promotion is typically a male behavior, whereas women engage in advocacy on behalf of others. Amanatullah and Morris (2010) showed that this could be explained by greater fear of social backlash in negotiations for oneself. When advocating for others, on the other hand, women have more liberty to negotiate

22 Stuhlmacher, A. F., & Walters, A. E. 1999. Gender differences in negotiation outcome: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 52, 653-677. 23 Bowles, 2012, 5. 24 Kray, L. J., & Thompson, L. 2004. Gender stereotypes and negotiation performance: An examination of theory and research. Research in Organizational Behavior, 26, 103-182. 25 Kray & Thompson, 172. 26 As opposed to beliefs about the characteristics that men and women do possess. For a detailed study on prescriptive and descriptive gender stereotypes, see Burgess, D., & Borgida, E. 1999. Who women are, who women should be: Descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotyping in sex discrimination. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 5, 665-692. 27 Bowles, H. R., Babcock, L., & McGinn, K. L. 2005. Constraints and triggers: Situational mechanics of gender in negotiation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 951-965.

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forcefully, and gender differences in performance decline.28 Because bargaining assertively is construed as incongruent with female gender roles, women adjust their bargaining behavior to manage social impressions.29 A particularly striking and well-researched manifestation of this phenomenon occurs in compensation negotiations. There has been accumulating evidence that men do much better than women when negotiating their salaries.30 Various explanations have been advanced for this discrepancy, including that women are more reticent than men to negotiate for higher compensation31, and that women set lower aspirations and assert themselves less.32 Bowles and Babcock (2009)33 showed that the reticence of women to negotiate higher compensation is linked to prescriptive gender stereotypes. Compensation negotiations are more problematic for female than male negotiators because making claim to greater monetary rewards for oneself violates prescriptions of the feminine stereotype. In another study, Bowles, Babcock and Lai (2007)34 found that female managers who negotiated for higher compensation were perceived to be less nice, more demanding, and insufficiently concerned about organizational relationships, whereas negotiating had little effect on the evaluations of male managers. These findings corroborate previous research on the cost of self-advocacy for women by Wade (2001)35, which showed that the pursuit of higher compensation aligns with the masculine stereotype of the agentic, breadwinning man, but it contradicts normative expectations that the communal woman be more concerned for others than for herself.36 It is not that women do not have the necessary skills or self-esteem to negotiate, Wade argues, but rather that they have learned that making requests for themselves is inappropriate and socially costly. 37 Since they need to weigh the social risks of negotiating against its potential economic benefits, women face a “compensation negotiation dilemma.”38 Another strand in recent research on gender and negotiation looks at the situational factors influencing the manifestation of gender effects, including the ambiguity of the

28 Amanatullah, E. T., & Morris, M. W. 2010. Negotiating gender roles: Gender differences in assertive negotiating are mediated by women's fear of backlash and attenuated when negotiating on behalf of others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 256- 267. 29 For further literature on the risks of social backlash for women who are self-promoting, see for instance Rudman, L. A. (1998). Self-promotion as a risk factor for women: The costs and benefits of counterstereotypical impression management. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 629–645; Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. (1999). Feminized management and backlash toward agentic women: The hidden costs to women of a kinder, gentler image of middle managers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1004–1010. 30 Bowles, H. R., & McGinn, K. L. 2008. Untapped potential in the study of negotiation and gender inequality in organizations. In J. P. Walsh & A. Brief (Eds.), Academy of Management Annals (Vol. 2, pp. 99-132). Philadelphia: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. 31 Small, D. A., Gelfand, M., Babcock, L., & Gettman, H. 2007. Who goes to the bargaining table? The influence of gender and framing on the initiation of negotiation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 600-613. 32 See for instance Amanatullah & Morris, 2010; Bowles; Babcock and McGinn, 2005. 33 Bowles, Hannah Riley, and Linda Babcock. "How can women escape the compensation negotiation dilemma? Relational accounts are one answer." Psychology of Women Quarterly 37.1 (2013): 80-96. 34 Bowles, H. R., Babcock, L., & Lai, L. (2007). Social incentives for gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 103, 84-103. 35 Wade, M. E. (2001). Women and salary negotiation: The costs of self-advocacy. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 25, 65 36 On gender-linked stereotypes, see also Eagly, 1987. 37 Wade, 2001. 38 See for instance Bowles, 2012 ; Bowles, Hannah Riley, and Linda Babcock. "How can women escape the compensation negotiation dilemma? Relational accounts are one answer." Psychology of Women Quarterly 37.1 (2013): 80-96.

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negotiation context and the presence of gender triggers. When a negotiation situation is ambiguous, parties must search the environment and their own mental schema for cues for how to enact the negotiation.39 In seeking to establish how to behave and what the appropriate standards of agreement are, negotiators are likely to rely on gendered norms and stereotypes.40 Scholars have identified three types of ambiguity: structural ambiguity about a negotiation’s agreement standards41, norm ambiguity about appropriateness of behavior in negotiations42 and type ambiguity, about the level of familiarity between the negotiators and their counterparts or constituents.43 The higher the ambiguity, the stronger the effect of gender stereotypes and gender triggers, which affect the salience and relevance of gender. Contemporary research on gender triggers is exploring various factors, including stereotype activation44, role congruence45, power dynamics46 and social cues47. Mediation Although it is much less extensive than that on gender and negotiations, research on the impact of gender in mediation and conflict resolution has been informed by studies in social psychology indicating that women are often socialized to take responsibility for others48; whereas men are frequently socialized to see conflict and competition as zero-sum games in which a fixed supply of goods and resources is to be distributed. 49 The implications for mediation, Weingarte and Douvan (1985)50 argue in one of the first seminal studies on male and female visions of mediation, is that women are likely to include the quality of the relationship between the parties and more equitable distribution of power as explicit goals to be achieved in mediating conflict. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to focus on the transaction at hand. Weingarte and Douvan also note that women mediators never considered gender irrelevant in their professional practice, but rather thought aspects of their sex-linked socialization and roles were relevant and valuable in their ongoing work. 51 Female mediators thought it influenced their vision of the role of mediator, and were often conscious of choosing co-mediators with gender in mind. Men, on the other hand, often questioned or denied the

39 Mischel, W. 1977. The interaction of person and situation. In D. Magnusson & N. S. Endler (Eds.), Personality at the crossroads: Current issues in interactional psychology (333-352). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 40 Bowles, 2012, 16. 41 Bowles, Babcock, & McGinn, 2005. 42 Kray, L. J., & Gelfand, M. J. 2009. Relief versus regret: The effect of gender and negotiating norm ambiguity on reactions to having one's first offer accepted. Social Cognition, 27, 418-436. 43 Bowles, 2012, 19-20. 44 Kray, L. J., Thompson, L., & Galinsky, A. 2001. Battle of the sexes: Gender stereotype confirmation and reactance in negotiations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 942-958. 45 Bear, J. B. 2011. Passing the buck: Incongruence between gender role and topic leads to avoidance of negotiation. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 4, 47-72. 46 Karakowsky, L., & Miller, D. L. 2006. Negotiator style and influence in multi-party negotiations: Exploring the role of gender. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 27, 50-65; 47 Stuhlmacher, A. F., Citera, M., & Willis, T. 2007. Gender differences in virtual negotiation: Theory and research. Sex Roles, 57, 329-339. 48 Bern, S,L.; Marlyna, W.; and Watson, C. "Sex Typing and Adrogyny: Futrher Explorations of the Expressive

Domain."Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 34 (1976):1016-23; Gilligan, C. In a Different Voice.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982. 49 Rubin, J., and Brown, B. The Social Psychology of Bargaining and Negotiation. New York:

Academic Press, 1975. 50 Weingarte, Helen R., and Elizabeth Douvan. 1985. Male and female visions of mediation. Negotiation Journal

1(4): 349–358. 51 Weingarte and Douvan, 353.

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usefulness of gender as an analytical category. Women, by and large, were more acutely aware than men of problems in legitimating themselves and their role as mediators. Gender also seemed to influence the goals of mediation, since women tended to put more emphasis on the process of coming to understand the parties, whereas men stressed the procedures to resolve or solve conflict in describing their activities. This was corroborated by a study by Kolb and Associates (1994), which argued that female mediators are more likely to behave consistently with an “enhanced communication” frame, viewing the aim of mediation as facilitating the parties’ communication and helping them to develop improved understanding of their situation. Male mediators, on the other hand, are more likely to behave consistently with a settlement frame, the primary focus of which is to get the parties to reach an agreement.52 Weingarte and Douvan also concluded that the institutional context often dictates the influence of gender on self-consciousness and performance, noting that the more institutionalized the mediator role was, the less likely it was to be seen as influenced by personal characteristics of the person occupying it, including gender. Research on the effectiveness of mediators more broadly shows that both the style of the mediator and his or her gender can matter. For example, Maxwell (1992) finds that male and female mediators are equally effective at reaching an initial settlement, but female mediators are more effective at mediating binding settlements. His results also seem to suggest that the greatest gender difference occurs in emotionally charged disputes. 53 More recent literature on gendered conceptions of mediator roles showed that women are more likely to see their role in mediation as facilitating either communication alone or both communication and the mediation process; men see their role more as facilitating the process. 54 Others have argued that while women tend to focus on understanding the parties, their differences, and their emotions, men concentrate instead on solving the problem presented and seeking an agreement. 55 Potter56 (2005) addresses the dearth of women at the senior level of mediation teams that engage the world’s most pressing conflicts, arguing that structural discrimination, family dynamics and the masculine nature of violent conflict, which are often advanced impediments to female inclusion, are not satisfying arguments. Rather, she argues, the problem seems to be a lack of imagination and will on behalf of decision-makers. More gender diversity in mediation teams, Potter argues, would lead to greater civil-society buy-in, the inclusion of new perspectives and issues indispensable to achieving durable peace and stability, and opportunities for positive role-modeling.

II) Peacemaking and Peacekeeping Much has been written on Gender in Peacemaking and Peacekeeping in the past fifteen years. The backdrop for this prolific literature is made up of a series of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions including, most notably for our purposes, Resolutions 1325 and 1889. UNSC Res 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security and Resolution (2000) addressed the

52 Kolb, D. M., and Associates. When Talk Works. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994. 53 David Maxwell, 2002. “Gender Differences in Mediation Style and Their Impact on Mediator Effectiveness,” Conflict Resolution Quarterly 9, No. 4 (Summer 1992): 353–364. 54 Picard, C. 2002. “Common Language, Different Meaning: What Mediators Mean When They Talk About Their Work.” Negotiation Journal, 18(3), 251–269. 55 Herrman, M. S., Hollett, N. L., Eaker, D. G., and Gale, J. 2003 “Mediator Reflections on Practice: Connecting Select Demographics and Preferred Orientations.” Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 20(4), 403–427. 56 Potter, Antonia. 2005. We the Women: Why Conflict Mediation is not Just a Job for Men. Geneva: Center for Humanitarian Dialogue.

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important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace building, and mandated increased representation of women in domestic armed forces and all peacekeeping operations. UNSC Res 1889 (2009) again emphasized women’s participation in “all stages of peace processes, particularly in conflict resolution, post-conflict planning and peacebuilding.”57 Following these resolutions, both the UN and individual countries have increasingly adopted female ratio balancing policies as a way to ensure equal representation of men and women in institutions that have historically been dominated by men.58 More broadly, the discussion around Gender in Peacemaking and Peacekeeping is situated within a body of literature on varying, gender-determined attitudes towards conflict. Women have been found to be, on the whole, more averse to militarism than men. According to Connover & Shapiro (1993), this difference is amongst “the largest and most consistent in the field of political psychology”, and is most pronounced in emotional contexts and in real conflicts, rather than in the abstract. 59 Explanations for this phenomenon have ranged from biological accounts of women’s innate superiority60 to differences in their early socialization61, women’s experiences as mothers62 and feminism63. The most compelling accounts have pointed to pervasive, gendered patterns of early learning of cognitive and affective orientations toward the use of violence, particularly as a form of conflict resolution. Empirical research by Miller, Danaher & Forbes (1986) showed that early in childhood girls and boys develop different patterns for the use of violence. Women learn to put off the use of violence until later in the course of a conflict than do men, to escalate its use more slowly, and to be more emotionally upset by it. Men, on the other hand, are generally socialized to accept violence as a strategy for conflict resolution. 64 Others have argued that the ways in which men and women comprehend and resolve conflict should vary significantly because as conflict reinforces difference and individuation it will be reassuring to men in their primary task of achieving autonomy but unsettling to women in their primary task of achieving relation. 65 Peacemaking

57 There is also a large body of literature, linked to the adoption of UNSC Res 1820 in June 2008, on sexual violence in conflict and during peacekeeping operations. For space considerations and because it bears no immediate relevance for humanitarian negotiations, this will not be covered in this review. Nor will the important research that has been conducted on the impact of gender equality on peace. 58 Christine Chinkin, “Gender and Armed Conflict,” in Clapham, Andrew, and Paola Gaeta, eds. 2014. The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Armed Conflict. 59 Conover, P. and Sapiro, V. 1993. Gender, Feminist Consciousness, and War. In American Journal of Political Science, 37(4), 1095. 60 Okin, S. 1990. "Thinking like a Woman." In Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference, ed. Deborah Rhode. New Haven: Yale University Press . 61 Miller, J. 1976. Toward a New Psychology of Women. Boston: Beacon Press. 62 See for instance Chodorow, N. 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press or Elshtain, J. 1981. Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 63 Cook, E, and Wilcox, C. 1991. "Feminism and the Gender Gap: A Second Look." The Journal of Politics 53:1111-22 . 64 Miller, P., Danaher, D., and Forbes, D. 1986. "Sex-Related Strategies for Coping with Interpersonal Conflict in Children Aged Five to Seven." Developmental Psychology 22:543-48 . 65 Gilligan, C. 1982. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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Much of the recent literature on Gender in Peacemaking consists of policy briefs and reports that (1) lament the failure of Resolution 1325 to actually result into meaningful participation of women; (2) highlight the importance of increased female participation; and (3) offer a number of recommendations on how to improve the translation of Resolution 1325 commitments into action. For instance, a recent report by UN Women (2012)66 deplores that over a decade after the adoption of UNSC Resolution 1325 (2000), women are still strikingly absent from peace negotiations, representing between 4-9% of involved parties. Since October 2000, it states, only marginal progress has been made with regard to the number of women in formal peace processes or the design and conduct of peace talks in ways that would give greater voice to women, particularly from civil society. This is in spite of growing participation of women in politics and the security sector, greater awareness about the differentiated impact of war on women and girls67 and the role they can play in conflict resolution, and evidence that peace negotiations characterized by high civil society involvement are less likely to result in resumed warfare. This matters, the report explains, because it is at the peace table that crucial decisions about post-conflict governance are made. Similar briefs by the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (2013)68 and the International Peace Institute (2013)69 also highlight the importance of women presence during peace processes due to the substantial influence on the long-term legal and political realities related to gender equality of the resulting agreements. The participation of women at the peace table “contributes to a more comprehensive peace agreement and bolsters the prospect of sustainable peace,” notably by lending greater weight to issues specifically affecting women and including a broader range of (mainly civil society) actors in the process.70 They therefore recommend that women should be included at all levels in negotiations to formulate and implement peace agreements, and that the provisions of peace agreements should be designed with the particular status and situation of women in mind and, where appropriate, include special provisions for women. A more thorough study of women’s contribution to conflict resolution and assessment of UNSCR 1325 is Anderlini’s (2007)71 comparative analysis of women’s participation in five important aspects of international peace and security, namely conflict prevention; peace negotiations; post-conflict disarmament; demobilization and reintegration; governance; and transitional justice. She argues that while women are typically underrepresented in formal negotiations due to social and institutional biases, when they do they “bring the voices of victims to the table” and broaden the talks’ agenda to include the economic, social and cultural roots of the conflict. She uses the example of the "corridor lobbying," of Liberian women during the 1994 Accra conference to illustrate informal ways in which women have historically influenced peace negotiations. In post-conflict governance, Anderlini argues that women are

66 UN Women. 2012. Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations: Connections between Presence and Influence, 2nd edition. [http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/03AWomenPeaceNeg.pdf]. 67 See for instance Chinkin, Christine and Kaldor, Mary. 2013. Gender and New Wars. Journal of International Affairs 67(1): 167-187 and Kaldor, Mary. 2012. New and Old Wars : Organised Violence in a Global Era, 3rd edition. Cambridge : Polity Press. 68 Bell, Christine. 2013. Women and peace processes, negotiations, and agreements: operational opportunities and challenges. Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center, Policy Brief. 69 International Peace Institute. 2013. Women in Conflict Mediation: Why it Matters. [http://www.ipinst.org/media/pdf/publications/ipi_e_pub_women_in_conflict_med.pdf] 70 Potter, Antonia. 2008. Women and negotiations with armed groups. Geneva: Center for Humanitarian Dialogue 71 Anderlini, Sanam. 2007.Women Building Peace: What They Do, Why It Matters, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

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often considered a moderating influence on their male counterparts; they are perceived to be more honorable, more worthy of trust, and less likely to succumb to corruption. Although they are also perceived to be able to move beyond personal interest to work cooperatively in finding solutions to shared problems, she writes, women are often pushed out of the public sphere once “normalcy” is reinstated. In the field of transitional justice, she argues, women bring a special focus on social justice and their inclusion in tribunals and truth commissions lends a deeper sense of compassion to the formal process. Anderlini concludes that gender sensitivity in programming is highly important complex for sustainable peace. To truly achieve gender equality goals and mainstreaming, Stiehm (2001) argues, institutions need to overcome inertia to focus their resources on policy implementation and institutionalization.72 Peacekeeping UNSCR 1325 has also given rise to prolific literature on the importance of gender-balanced peacekeeping operations. Despite recent efforts, there are very few female peacekeepers. 73 Many studies have called for the greater involvement of women in peacekeeping operations, dispelling myths that female participation would encounter staunch resistance in traditional societies and showing that the resistance was instead due to biases amongst contributing countries.74 Women, DeGroot (2007) notably argued, are particularly valuable to peacekeeping operations precisely because socialization and cultural conditioning relating to violence and conflict are so gender-determined.75In most militaries, he says, training accentuates stereotypical male characteristics, including physical strength and aggression, while diminishing typical female attributes such as sensitivity and compassion. Since in peacekeeping “violence signifies failure,”76 if women are more prone to be peaceful and seek conciliation, regardless of whether this is for reasons related to biology or cultural conditioning77, they can be of great value to those operations. Studies of women in the military provide an interesting nuance to this argument, showing that female soldiers partly internalize the military’s masculine ideology and reshape their gender identities according to the hegemonic masculinity of combat soldiers.78 The local population’s expectations and perception of women peacekeeper behavior, however, is also crucial, DeGroot argues. “The presence of a man in a tense situation can be provocative, even if that man has no intention to provoke. On the other hand, the woman tends to calm stressful situations because she is expected to be peaceful.”79 Indeed, previous research has for instance shown that men react differently to confrontations with female and male police officers, with the latter often escalating into a contest of male dominance. 80 The presence (even

72 Stiehm, Judith Hicks. 2001. Women, peacekeeping and peacemaking: Gender balance and mainstreaming. International Peacekeeping 8(2): 44. 73 For a more detailed account of this deficit, see for instance Olsson, Louise. 2000. Mainstreaming gender in multidimensional peacekeeping: A field perspective. International Peacekeeping 7(3): 1-16. 74 See for instance Olsson, 2000. 75 DeGroot, Gerard J. 2007. A few good women: Gender stereotypes, the military and peacekeeping. International

Peacekeeping 8(2): 23–38. 76 DeGroot, 2007, 34. 77 See above for a reference to the debate on the root causes for differences in behavior according to gender. 78 Sasson-Levy, Orna. 2003. Feminism and military gender practices: Israeli women soldiers in ‘masculine’ roles.” Sociological Inquiry 73(3): 440–65. 79 DeGroot, 2007, 35. See also Olsson, 2000, 10. 80 Stiehm, Judith Hicks. 1997. “Peacekeeping and Peace Research: Men's and Women's Work”. Women and Politics 18(l): 42.

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token) of female peacekeepers, DeGroot therefore posits, has empirically improved the operation’s chance of success and significantly decreased the incidence of sexual abuse, rape and prostitution, which have marred UN peacekeeping operations.81 This is partly because “male soldiers are less inclined to assert their dominance if female soldiers are present” and “men behave better when in the presence of women from their own culture.” 82 In situations where women and children generally make up 80% of the refugee population, female peacekeepers might also be both less threatening and more able to address some of their needs.83 These arguments have not gone uncontested.84 In particular, some have decried gender mainstreaming UN documents as reinforcing gender stereotypes.85 Yet more recent empirical studies corroborate the negative correlation between increased women representation and sexual abuse allegations., although gender equality record of the peacekeepers’ countries of origin also appeared to be an important variable. 86 Questions for Research on Gender and Humanitarian Negotiations Based on the reviewed literature in the fields of negotiation, mediation, peacemaking and peacekeeping, a number of preliminary questions emerge for research on the impact of gender on humanitarian negotiations.

How do gender stereotypes play out in a setting of humanitarian negotiations? In particular, might prescriptive stereotypes on the role of women as selfless caregivers, which disadvantage women in advocating on their own behalf in compensation negotiations for instance, be an advantage when it comes to humanitarian negotiations?

In 1987, Eagly posited that men are expected to be “agentic, task-oriented, and self-assertive, and women are expected to be communal, socially oriented, and selfless” – how potent are these stereotypes today? Does their relevance vary across socio-cultural contexts? Do other factors affect these expectations (e.g. organization “brand recognition,” hierarchical position, nature of the counterpart (state vs. NSAG))?

81 For more details and an example of a UN report on the topic, see for instance UN General Assembly, 2006.

“Report of the Secretary-General on Special Measures for Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse”, UN doc.,

A/60/861. Other scholars have cautioned against diverting the responsibility for sexual violence in peacekeeping

operations to women and away from troop-contributing countries, which need to exercise accountability and

prosecute sexual violence committed by their peacekeepers. See for instance Simic, Olivera. 2010. “Does the

Presence of Women Really Matter? Towards Combating Male Sexual Violence in Peacekeeping Operations,”

International Peacekeeping 17(2): 188-199. 82 DeGroot, 36-37. This is also supported in reports by the UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) stating that “Women’s presence improves access and support for local women; it makes male peacekeepers more reflective and responsible; and it broadens the repertoire of skills and styles available within the mission, often with the effect of reducing conflict and confrontation.” In Rehn, E and Sirleaf, E. 2002. Women, War, Peace: The Independent Experts’ Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women’s Role in Peace-building. New York: UNIFEM, 63. 83 Olsson, 13. 84 See for instance Simic and Jennings, K. 2008. “Protecting Whom? Approaches to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN Peacekeeping Operations” Olso: Fafo Report. 85 Valenius, Johanna. 2007. A few kind women: Gender essentialism and Nordic peacekeeping operations. International Peacekeeping 14(4): 510-523. 86 Beardsley, Kyle and Sabrina Karim. 2016. “Explaining Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peacekeeping Missions:

The Role of Female Peacekeepers and Gender Equality in Contributing Countries,” Journal of Peace Research ,

53(1): 100–115 .

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If gender stereotypes are indeed helpful for women in a humanitarian context, are they instrumentalized by female negotiators, and if so how?

In these contexts, is there a tradeoff between ambition in the negotiation and sympathy?

Is there a difference in how women are perceived in terms of being 1) trustfulness and 2) threatening?

How do the various dimensions of gender (in)congruence interact in the work of female field negotiators – namely the congruence with the caregiving role and the incongruence with their presence in hypermasculine conflict settings – and what is their net effect?

According to previous theory, frontline humanitarian negotiations are likely to see a high differential impact of gender since they involve both face-to-face negotiations, where negotiators communicate in person (1), and in situations that exacerbate gender stereotypes (2). Is this the case? Are there counterfactuals (i.e. examples where one of the two conditions above is not met)?

More specifically, the overwhelming majority of interlocutors of humanitarian negotiators in the field are men who are in a position of power vis-à-vis the latter: does the arguably stereotypically masculine nature of the negotiations at hand (conduct of hostilities, …) as well as the stereotypical power differential (man in charge vs. woman with less power) reinforce the gender differences in negotiation outcomes? If so, how? What other factors might mitigate this effect (cf. above)? How does this vary across specific issues (e.g. weapons vs. food)?

Conversely, might stereotypically self-promoting male behavior be a hindrance in a context of humanitarian negotiations? If so, in which particular settings?

What is the effect of reduced ambiguity, in particular role ambiguity, on the salience of gender in a humanitarian context?

Since humanitarian negotiations have an important relational component, is there evidence that supports the claim that women lend more importance to the quality of the relationship and men to the outcome of the negotiation?

The percentage of ICRC female delegates (about 40%) exceeds averages in high-level mediation and peacemaking efforts (4-9%). Has there been evidence that this has lead to a broadening of the negotiations’ agenda to include more issues affecting women or a diversification in the approach to negotiations?

How do the exacerbated masculinities of combatants in frontline situations affect the acceptance of female negotiators?