‘Soft ways of doing hard things’: women mediators and the question of gender in mediation

Abstract

Arguments in favour of increasing the number of women mediators rest on existing research in the field of Women Peace and Security that suggests that where women are included in peace processes that they create more sustainable agreements. It is often suggested that women mediators will bring different-'soft'skills to mediation and that they will be catalysts to women's empowerment. Drawing on a series of interviews with women mediators in Northern Ireland the article does two things. First, it explores the skills that women felt they brought to their work, and second, it draws out the relationship between mediation and gender as perceived by the participants. What the results demonstrate is that while participants did not consider it the role of a mediator to advance a particular normative agenda through their work, this did not translate into a gender blind approach in practice.

Glocal Peace Mediators as Norm Translators

“…The United Nations, among others, now seems to privilege generic, technical and international expertise over local and practice‐based knowledge of political actors (Convergne 2016; Stanton 2018). Human rights norms, such as the respect and promotion of gender equality, which has become a widely shared norm in the peace mediation context, can serve as a particularly visible example (Turner 2019). However, as this article has argued by drawing, in particular, on critical legal pluralism and the concept of norm translation, peace mediators continue to navigate a complex normative universe.…”

“…The findings of this study carried out by Catherine Turner confirm that the women mediators did not want to impose any norms, including on women’s equality and women’s rights, which would have implied bringing an “agenda” to their mediation practice. However, when faced with gendered inequalities in the context of male‐dominated hierarchical environments, the mediators did feel a need to address such inequalities and “to make sure that women’s voices were heard” (Turner 2019: 15). As a result, as Turner concludes, “even in the absence of a feminist ‘agenda’, the women brought skills and approaches to their practice as mediators that challenged gender conflict structures and increased the inclusivity of the process” (Turner 2019: 18).…”

“…However, when faced with gendered inequalities in the context of male‐dominated hierarchical environments, the mediators did feel a need to address such inequalities and “to make sure that women’s voices were heard” (Turner 2019: 15). As a result, as Turner concludes, “even in the absence of a feminist ‘agenda’, the women brought skills and approaches to their practice as mediators that challenged gender conflict structures and increased the inclusivity of the process” (Turner 2019: 18). An important lesson hence is that the translation of certain norms, as on gender equality and the participation of women in peace processes, can take different forms and, to some extent, occur implicitly.…”

“…It argues that relying on this unorthodox approach to law, which breaks with the dominance of legal positivism, allows shedding new light on the normative dimensions of peace mediation, and it suggests considering peace mediators themselves as embodying the normative pluralism of peace processes. Through this approach, and by building on legal‐anthropological work on transnational human rights norms (Merry 2006; Merry, 2008) as well as on recent empirical studies on peace mediators (Hellmüller, Palmiano‐Federer and Zeller 2015; Convergne 2016; Turner 2019), the article also adds to the existing international relations scholarship on norms and norm translation, which has not focused on mediation as a site, or on the involvement of mediators as a form of agency. Particular emphasis will be given to the existing research on interactive norm translation and multidirectionality (Zwingel 2012; Zimmermann 2017).…”

Feminist Peace Research in Europe: A Snapshot

“…A first track of WPS research centers on international negotiation and mediation, which in turn has focused on patterns of representation within diplomatic institutions (Towns and Niklasson, 2018;Niklasson and Robertson, 2018;Rumelili and Suleymanoglu-Kurum, 2018) and on mediation. The work on mediation explores women who participate in mediation (Aggestam and Svensson, 2018) and women's influence in international peace negotiations (Paffenholz, 2018;Turner, 2018Turner, , 2020. These works capture an area in the practice of the WPS agenda where much is still unknown.…”