Grenoble, 2007

Gender and Conflict Transformation

Modus Operandi (Modop) has chosen online courses as a key strategy in the dissemination of its research findings because it provides a good balance between on the one hand the number of people that can be reached and on the other hand the interaction that can be established between the providers and readers of the information. Moreover this method is less costly than organising face-to-face meetings. Two courses that Modop has developed in cooperation with the Network University are “Gender and Conflict Transformation” and “Post-conflict Politics: state and society”. Modop also moderates a course on “Transforming Civil Conflicts”, to wich another file is dedicated. [link to MO004]

The motivation to develop the course on gender and conflict transformation originates from the observation that gender became a buzz word in development circles in the ‘90’s, with everyone “having to mainstream gender in development project and programs”, without a clear understanding of what gender is and how it makes a difference in program management. In this period, Claske Dijkema was working in South Africa and confronted with the widely shared belief that there is a link between gender and conflict in the sense that women are more peaceful than men and, if left to rule, there would be less war. Together with a number of conflict and women’s organisations Claske started to investigate this question at the Network University in Amsterdam and the online course on Gender and Conflict Transformation is the outcome. It shares the lessons that organisations like International Alert, ACORD (Judy el Bushra) and Kegme have learned over the years. Gender certainly does matter in conflict transformation but women are not necessarily more peaceful than men.

The documents in this file explain why.

If you are interested in following this course, please have a look at the demo course www.netuni.nl/democ/gct

If you would like to have more information about it or get in touch with one of the course moderators, please write to Claske Dijkema, claske@modop.org

Documents