Bridging Divides: Gender center-periphery inequality amongst conflict and violence in Colombia

This research arises from the essential to listen to narratives that often fall outside hegemonic discourses on gender, politics, conflict, and peace. Through a qualitative, participatory, and intersectional methodology, we engage with the voices of rural, Afro-descendant, and Indigenous women in Montes de María, Urabá, Chocó, and Caquetá in Colombia. Our aim is to understand how they perceive the impact of center–periphery dynamics on Colombia’s armed conflict and on peacebuilding processes, with particular attention to gender inequalities across these territories. Our findings show that women in these regions face multiple and intersecting forms of violence: structural, armed, political, and domestic. Yet, they simultaneously mobilize practices of resistance, care, leadership, and memory that shape grassroots politics and livelihood. The study highlights women in the peripheries as transformative actors, whose practices challenge the centralization of power, knowledge, resources, and legitimacy. At the same time, it identifies internal tensions among feminist agendas, marked by ethnic, generational, territorial, and resource-based differences, which broaden the political repertoire of feminism. Our analysis also explores the structural conditions that women face, such as the “triple workday” and “triple insecurity,” and emphasizes the strategic role of memory as both political economy and symbolic resistance. Finally, it questions the effectiveness of national and international normative frameworks when they fail to adapt to local realities. We argue that the activism of women in the peripheries constitutes a profound political proposal for social transformation and for the construction of a more inclusive peace. Coauthors: Angelika Rettberg, María Gabriela Vargas and Santiago Giraldo.