Arifah Rahmawati and Wening Udasmoro, from Gadjah Mada University, who are the National Coordinators of the research project on The Gender Dimensions of Social Conflict, Armed Violence and Peacebuilding hosted by the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva), and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, convened a National Roundtable in Indonesia to present and discuss initial findings from the research conducted in Indonesia. The event was well attended, with 35 local researchers, national scholars, peace activists and policy-makers coming from across Indonesia and South East Asia to exchange and contribute on issues of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding in Indonesia. The audience was fully engaged in a very lively discussion, where issues of religious and local identities, gender roles and stereotypes, and the roles of policies in curbing conflict and improving women’s lives took a great place.
After the workshop in Yogyakarta, the project team headed to Surabaya, East Java, to conduct a Focus Group Discussion with 25 local political and religious representatives, academics, and peace activists specialised on the issue of mining. The invitees overall emphasised the complexity of the mining problem in Java, in which many actors are involved, and diverse costs and benefits are at stake. The attendants underlined that the situation in East Java is the result of a long-term historical development, as mining companies existed during the colonial era; and that gender relations in the region are highly contrasted. Some attendees noted that women in East Java remain very much controlled by men and that their contributions to public life are limited. Yet, initial findings from the project illustrate that women in East Java have taken a very active role in anti-mining demonstrations, even by physically challenging the police.
Overall, in spite of many contextual differences, the project team and the audience retained that a gender lens is necessary to uncover informal but crucial gendered mechanisms for conflict management, and to promote the positive roles that women and men are taking in conflict. The working group recognized that in spite of the improved status of women during conflict, where they often take over the roles of men who were victims of war or had to leave their home, become breadwinners and heads of households, and take part in peace agreements, post-conflict settings remain highly discriminatory for women. Discussions on the way forward highlighted that issues of identity building, trauma healing, and women’s empowerment (not only economic but tailored to women’s skills and intellectual aspirations) were crucial to managing conflicts and sustaining peace in a gender-sensitive way. The project is illuminating how, through a micro approach to gender and violent conflict, fine-grained analysis of gendered dynamics can support often hidden but promising grassroots conflict management and peacebuilding initiatives.