Katherine Marshall and Susan Hayward fill a significant need with their anthology, Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding: Illuminating the Unseen. While the intersection of religion and peace is a commonly discussed topic, examining the ways that women play a critical role in peacebuilding efforts is often overlooked. Likewise, women of faith are frequently excluded from peacebuilding efforts, and male activists have failed to recognize existing gendered consequences. With this in mind, Marshall and Hayward, along with fifteen contributors, set out to acknowledge and create dialogue around such issues while acknowledging the insight and creativity that women have demonstrated in working for peace despite challenges.
Over two sections and fourteen chapters, Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding calls for changing the paradigms in peacebuilding. Giving attention to women’s invisibility, Marshall and Hayward explain, “globally recognized women peacebuilders are few and far between. And . . . among peacebuilders with clear religious affiliations it is exceedingly rare to see women stand out” (2). They point out that as women are marginalized within religion, so too are they marginalized within peacebuilding. A historically male-dominated field, it is men who sit at negotiating tables. Women’s needs are generally ignored.
Exploring distinctive approaches in different religious traditions, contributors make an argument for religious and secular organizations to support and strengthen the activism of women religious leaders who work for peace. Through an examination of women’s peacebuilding efforts in Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism, authors define gender norms and their impact on women’s roles throughout history, both social and political. Although women’s work within peacebuilding is often limited or invisible, contributors offer multiple examples of the ways women are leading critical efforts. While far from an exhaustive exploration of traditions, this volume offers a first step toward analyzing women’s peacebuilding efforts across various religions. In addition, it disrupts stereotypes that distort understanding of women’s work for peace.
An analysis of various case studies of women and faith in action is revealing. Contributors demonstrate the many ways that efforts towards peace are being achieved by women who ground their work in their religious traditions. While both positive and negative repercussions occur due to gendered roles within religion, women are “pioneering new approaches” (133) to resolve conflict in war zones. Likewise, women are key leaders in working towards positive social change through peacebuilding efforts. Confronting the invisibility that women experience, “tensions between local cultural norms and a modern view of empowerment” (138) have been navigated. Dialogue focused on religious and secular perspectives of gender has allowed bridges to be built between the two, which in turn has had an impact, countering misogynistic interpretations of gender roles.
In Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding: Illuminating the Unseen, Marshall and Hayward have brought together important contributions that interweave dialogue to addresses gender, religion, and peacebuilding. This volume is an important resource that has laid the groundwork and begun a critical conversation that needs to continue. Undergraduate and graduate courses with the appropriate focus would benefit from this text. It is also an important resource for those who are engaged in activism, peacebuilding, and positive social change.
Gina Messina-Dysert is Assistant Professor of Ministry at Ursuline College.
Gina Messina-Dysert
Date Of Review:
June 25, 2016