About the event: The Women, Peace and Security sector advocates for the inclusion of designated gender experts in peace processes to improve outcomes for women. However, empirical support for the effectiveness of gender experts remains inconclusive. This talk explores whether gender experts serve as powerful advocates or powerless actors in efforts to advance gender-sensitive peace negotiation outcomes. Leveraging data capturing the gender and position of 2299 negotiation delegates across 116 comprehensive peace agreements finalized between 1990 and 2021, we find that gender experts increase the likelihood that peace agreements contain provisions for women. However, we find that gender experts primarily influence agreement outcomes by increasing women’s involvement in these processes. To examine this finding, we consider the impact of gender experts through the case of Northern Ireland, drawing from 42 interviews and archival work conducted between 2020 and 2023. We find that the systemic masculinized structure of peace negotiations hinders gender experts’ overall influence. Our mixed-methods findings explain how gender experts are simultaneously powerless and powerful. This study identifies the structural limitations of gender experts’ inclusion as the sole mechanism to advance women-specific provisions in peace processes, furthering our understanding of the gender dynamics of peace negotiations.

About the speaker: Elizabeth is a CISAC Postdoctoral Fellow and previously held fellowships at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation, the US Institute of Peace, and Northwestern University’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. Her research focuses on Women, Peace and Security, and explores women’s representation in peace negotiations. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and an M.A. in International Relations from the University of British Columbia. She previously worked as a Gender Specialist with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Kosovo and as a Gender Consultant for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Ghana.

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