- What impact does gender difference make to political decision-making? - Will the political empowerment of women contribute to a more peaceful world? The role of gender has been increasingly recognized as central to the study and analysis of the traditionally male domains of war and international relations. This book explores the key role of gender in peace research, conflict resolution and international politics. Rather than simply 'add gender' the aim is to transcend different disciplinary boundaries and conceptual approaches to provide a more integrated basis for future study. To this end it uniquely combines theoretical chapters alongside empirical case studies to demonstrate the i

Introduction

Introduction
IngerSkjelsbæk and DanSmith

When decisions are to be made about politics and peace, what role does gender play? That is the focus in this volume of essays. For decades, much political and social science research remained blind to the very existence of gender – a blindness so obtuse that it sometimes seemed as if it had to be deliberate.

Whether planned or not, ignoring gender difference in research has meant that male norms and male behaviour have been taken to represent the human norm. This produces a gross distortion of reality. In most fields and sub-fields in the social sciences, this distortion has now been acknowledged, and serious efforts have been made to rectify the situation. These efforts have faced considerable opposition, though only some of ...

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