Equal Peace? Women’s Empowerment and Multicultural Challenges in War-to-Peace Transitions: Rwandan Experiences
My PhD project is about peacebuilding and diffusion of gender equality norms in Rwanda and will study how norms about gender equality have changed over time, and the role of different actors in these processes of change. The project seeks to explore how gender equality norms are affected by and negotiated in a context of transition from war to peace, including different aspects of peacebuilding and what Rwandan experiences in this context have been. The study takes the local as its starting point, and focuses on the processes taking place at national and local levels and on the actors in this context. The agency of local actors and the relationship between the international, national and local levels will be of specific interest. The aim is to contribute to a growing body of literature on local processes of norm diffusion, and to increase our understanding of the different dynamics that are at play when norms and ideas about gender equality spread.