Dr. Daniel W. Hill, Jr.’s “Positioning Women in Conflict Studies,” co-authored with Dr. Sabrina Karim, critiques the conflation of gender equality with women’s inclusion in politics. They propose a framework distinguishing women’s inclusion, rights, harm, and roles, revealing varied impacts on political violence. Read more about Dr. Hill’s book here:
1. How does your book offer a new perspective on studying gender equality and political violence compared to previous research?
The book changes things up by pointing out that gender equality and the status of women as a group aren’t exactly the same thing. Gender equality has to do with ideas about femininity and masculinity, and the status of women has to do with women’s roles in politics and the economy, their legal rights, their health and well-being, and people’s attitudes about women in non-traditional roles. “Gender equality” has become a kind of catch-all label for anything about women, and one of our main points is that we have to keep these things separate if we want to understand whether and how any of them are related to political violence.
2. Can you give an example of how mixing up gender equality with simply including women in politics has caused misunderstandings in earlier studies?
The big thing you’re going to miss if you just lump all of these things together is that there are a few distinct explanations for why women’s status as a group would be related to political violence. Using “gender equality” as an umbrella term for anything to do with women makes it really hard to figure out which of these explanations are supported by the evidence and which aren’t.
3. What were some of the most unexpected discoveries you made about how different aspects of women’s status affect various types of political violence?
One thing that may surprise people is that we find very little evidence that women’s inclusion, meaning more women in politics, in the workforce, in school, and so on, is related to political violence. There is a common belief that greater inclusion automatically makes politics more peaceful, but we don’t find much evidence for this.
4. How can your new ways of measuring women’s inclusion, women’s rights, harm to women, and beliefs about women’s roles help policymakers reduce political violence?
We think that measuring all of these things separately will be helpful for policymakers, since it allows you to be specific about which aspects of women’s status are related to political violence. For example, we find that civil conflicts are more likely to occur in places where harm to women, by which we mean systemic harm to their health and well-being (including exposure to violence), is more prevalent, which contrasts with our findings about women’s inclusion and has different policy implications.
5. What key insights do you hope readers will gain from your book?
The main insight we hope to communicate is that although improvements in women’s status can decrease the potential for political violence, women simply having “a seat at the table” will probably not matter much unless it is accompanied by reductions in systemic physical harm, greater recognition of basic rights, and more widespread, positive attitudes about women in non-traditional roles.
