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ECPR

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Intersectionality and Peace-building through Transnational Women Networks in the post-Yugoslav Space

Contentious Politics
Gender
Social Movements
Women
Identity
Southern Europe

Abstract

By addressing intersectionality, women organizations sustain peace-building as they consider issues from a multiethnic perspective and across boundaries instead of reinforcing stereotypes and divides. How women comprehend and discuss intersectionality is thus a fundamental question in the prospect of a long-term peace, but it is constrained by the institutional and societal structures in which women evolve. As these structures block women political opportunities and their access to formal politics, they mobilize through more informal channels. In 1998, Keck and Sikkink proposed an analytical framework to study the influence that these informal channels have on opening new opportunities when they are transnationally connected with others. Through a “boomerang effect” the network they create contribute to overcoming obstacles when national politics are blocked. Researchers who have analyzed the relation between intersectionality, women and peace-building have limited their studies to specific cases without addressing the potential influence of these transnational women networks. This research aims to fill that gap by providing an analysis of transnational women networks in the post-Yugoslav space. In the six entities that emerged from the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, women organized in associations that promote peace and they developed relations beyond borders. The cross-cutting of identities in the post-Yugoslav space is also particularly interesting to study how women organizations address the question of intersectionality at the national and transnational levels. This research questions how the limits and opportunities faced by women at the national level influence the way they construct intersectionality discourses at the transnational level, and what perspective concerning peace they sustain. It also aims to highlight the mechanisms through which women networks pressure national governments in favor of peace. This analysis will aim to demonstrate how by addressing intersectionality at the transnational level, women in the post Yugoslav space contribute to build peace.