What does it take to build up women’s rights after the war?

This nuanced compilation looks at women’s empowerment after Sierra Leone’s civil war, from different perspectives

“War, Women and Post-conflict Empowerment: Lessons from Sierra Leone” depicts the everyday struggles of women trying to improve their lives while illuminating the political, legal, and economic conditions of Sierra Leoneans after the civil war.

The book includes 13 chapters, focusing on various aspects of women’s and girls’ lives following Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war. It brings together numerous narratives about a single country from a variety of perspectives, professions, and academic disciplines. Authors include academics from African Studies, English, gender studies, political science, public health, history, and sociology alongside practitioners, activists, and diplomats with firsthand experience advocating for political change in Sierra Leone. The range of perspectives paints a rich and nuanced picture of the challenges and successes faced by women and girls in postwar Sierra Leone.

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The book tackles four main themes, which build upon one another. After introducing its conceptual frameworks, the writing flows into narratives about women in politics and then transitions into similar stories about women’s legal, social and economic empowerment. Finally, it examines what advancing women’s empowerment looks like in real life.

The section on conceptual frameworks considers how success should be measured in postwar countries. Editors Josephine Beoku-Betts and Fredline A. M’Cormack-Hale note that, after the war, women did not get noticeably more involved in Sierra Leone’s formal politics at the national level. However, they emphasized other significant changes, such as women chiefs’ work to promote an African conception of feminism and women’s networks’ ability to mobilize quickly and effectively to counter the shortcomings of international organizations and the government during crises.

Arthur Onipede Hollist’s chapter examines two Sierra Leonean novels written about women and the war, suggesting that storytelling helps individuals and societies imagine new possibilities. He concludes by suggesting that postwar empowerment programs should encourage participants “to tell and listen to stories” to rethink societal hierarchies usually taken for granted, including gendered inequalities.

The section on women in politics examines violence against women in politics; women’s customary authority as chiefs and includes LaRay Denzer’s biography of the prominent female leader Zainab Hawa Bangura. Like many women in conflict and post-conflict states, Bangura has tackled social issues in a variety of ways. She has founded NGOs dedicated to democracy, good governance, women’s rights, and development; worked for international organizations; held ministerial portfolios; and formed a new political party through which she ran for president in 2002. Devoting a full chapter to an individual female leader is a welcome and all-too-rare recognition of the multiple and changing roles that women play in development and peace promotion.

In the third part of the book focusing on women’s empowerment in legal, social, and economic spheres, Lyn S. Graybill discusses the effect that the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic had on gains that women had made in the wake of the civil war.

Sierra Leone’s postwar Truth and Reconciliation Commission had called for reforms to increase women’s representation in politics and reduce women’s marginalization in education and health care. In 2007, Parliament passed new laws addressing child marriage, domestic and sexual violence, and women’s inheritance and property rights. But enforcement was uneven — in part because Ebola disproportionately affected women. Women were more likely to be front-line caregivers both at work and home and as a result, more likely to contract Ebola. Quarantines and school closures resulted in an increase of sexual assaults and unwanted pregnancies and a decline in girls’ school enrollment. With government resources funneled into the health crisis, agencies were less able to respond to violence against women. As Graybill points out, the gendered consequences of Ebola remind us that women’s postwar gains are “fragile and ephemeral.” Sustaining any postwar gains for women requires dedicated resources and long-term commitments from all corners of society.

The book’s final section focuses on mobilizing those involved — within and outside the country — in helping move women forward. The section’s four chapters show the many people and institutions struggling for women’s rights in contemporary Sierra Leone. M’Cormack-Hale notes that advancing pro-women legislation is a long and arduous process requiring sustained cooperation among various networks of individuals, groups, community organizations, formal political parties, national bureaucracies, and international groups

The struggle for women’s rights does not stop when a peace agreement is signed. It is a prolonged, messy and difficult effort with many threats and sources of insecurity, especially for women. “War, Women and Post-conflict Empowerment” is innovative, in that its authors avoid focusing only on formal, national political institutions.

I would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in present-day Sierra Leone or in women and postwar societies. It provides a model for other inquiries into women’s rights in the wake of war, illustrating how a broad focus from a diverse set of scholars, activists, and practitioners enables a more thorough and effective description of the multifaceted feminist struggles in post-conflict societies.

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Miriam J. Anderson (@miriamjanderson) is an associate professor in the department of politics and public administration at Toronto Metropolitan University, author of “Windows of Opportunity: How Women Seize Peace Negotiations for Political Change” (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of “Transnational Actors in War and Peace: Militants, Activists, and Corporations in World Politics” (Georgetown University Press, 2017).

Read more in this summer’s APSRS:

No, Batman didn’t save the Congo and other book reviews

Nigeria’s harsh police culture grew from colonial abuses

‘Islamic State in Africa’ explores nine militant Islamic groups

Apartheid casts a long shadow across South Africa

Paul Farmer’s last book teaches still more about pandemics

‘Born in Blackness’ is a compelling, unforgettable read

Find all the books in our ninth African Politics Summer Reading Spectacular here.