Gender and Civil Resistance: The Case of Kosovo

Women are active participants of civil resistance movements all around the world that fight injustice, violent conflicts and militarization, among others. However, even if they have active roles in resistance women tend to be left out of major political processes soon after the struggle ends. This paper aims to analyze the concept and practice of 'gendered civil resistance', showing how civil resistance is not gender neutral. It also analyzes how gender can be a power structure within the nonviolent movement that predetermines certain roles for men and women or creates hierarchies between them and how this structure is reproduced time and again. The paper will use the case study of the civil resistance in Kosovo during the late eighties until 1996-1997 to illustrate that despite the central role women played in nonviolent resistance they were eventually sidelined and left outside the peace negotiations and reconstruction process.