Mapping Grassroot Women’s Representations in Academic Research on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in the Global South

Abstract

Several feminists and academic scholars have written extensively on implementing the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda and how it has been localized in conflict and post-conflict settings. In the same light, the rising inquiry on the connection of academic writing to empirical studies provides resolution to how WPS agenda could be localized. The objective of this paper is to conduct an exploratory mapping of existing literature on how grassroots women are represented in the academic literature on the localization of the WPS agenda in the Global South. Using a thematic method of analysis, this mapping exercise identified four recurring themes across the academic literature namely the multiple interpretations of ‘grassroots women’ in the Global South, grassroots women and discursive construction of “women participant” in the WPS agenda, hierarchy formation in the representation of grassroots women within CSOs, and gender essentialism and stereotypical portrayal of grassroots women. On the one hand, the discursive and institutional construction of women’s participants identifies women as “non-participants” in the WPS agenda. On the other hand, they constitute the bottom layer of a participant hierarchy, making it difficult to reach meaningful participation. Beyond this institutional and discursive interpretation, we map women’s representation in gender essentialist stereotypes portraying them in their reproductive and caregiver identities. Connecting with critical feminist epistemologies and post-colonial feminisms, our results problematize the unequal power relations between the researcher and the researched as well as the participants themselves. We share concerns that the researchers' power to represent and interpret grassroots women and their engagement is often unchecked and unmitigated.