GENDER AS A CATEGORY FOR ANALYSIS OF CONFLICT

In this encyclopedia entry, "Gender as Category for Analysis of Conflict", J. P. Linstroth, points out how increasingly we are faced with situations and international issues of crime, refugees, epidemics, feminist movements, and human rights, all of which have considerable influence on the construction of gender and the role that gender plays in conflict across the transnational realm. These are challenges as much to the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, and for countries around the world. What is obvious is that even though we may accept and recognize the global is progressively impinging on local communities at an unprecedented scale affecting indigenous peoples and those living in the developing world to detrimental degrees such incursions are not isolated in history. Now we face a surfeit of other dilemmas in relation to gender, especially in outlawing forms of gender violence and female oppression by men in male dominated societies. There is also the international illegal trade in arms and drugs whereby women become victims in other ways through black market economies and outlawed activities, especially in relation to gender beyond the simplicity of statistics for informal economies. Women are often silent and muted victims and invisible to most observers in addressing such harmful processes across borders.