Personal Reflections: Aligning Women's Voices for a Plural, Impactful Future

The Naples conference left me both inspired and challenged, raising questions that demand deeper reflection. I arrived eager to listen and learn, but my academic instincts took over: how do we examine the concepts that drive our shared commitment to peace and women’s voices? The recent event confirmed just how vital it is to interrogate our own narratives and ask where we want to go next.

Missing Definitions: Which Peace are we talking about?

One of the most significant takeaways for me was how often "peace" was invoked yet rarely defined. This absence matters greatly. Is peace understood here as social harmony, political stability, economic justice, or all of these? Historical narratives, such as those of Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca or Matilde Serao in Italy, reminded me that women have always shaped political transitions, even when their contributions are erased from official accounts. But what peace did they seek? Listening to voices from Ireland, Turkey, and across the continent, it became clear that peace means different things to different communities, shaped by their unique histories and lived realities. Without acknowledging this diversity, we risk speaking of an idealized, abstract peace rather than confronting the concrete realities that require our action.

A Troubling Absence: Speaking of Peace Without Naming War

Equally striking to me was the relative silence on war itself. In a world marked by numerous conflicts, can we truly speak of peace without naming war?

Avoiding talk of war risks transforming peace into an abstract concept, disconnected from the reality of women who live, resist, and rebuild amid violence. As researcher Mary Kaldor points out, peace is fundamentally political: it must address the very structures of injustice and power that perpetuate conflict. For UWE, embracing this complexity is not only a moral imperative but also a strategic necessity.

Beyond a Monolithic Narrative : Women Are Not "Naturally" Peaceful

My interdisciplinary background encourages me to question oversimplified narratives, inviting a deeper exploration of complex realities. One persistent myth portrays women as "natural peacemakers." This notion, though commonly accepted, inadequately captures the intersectional realities and agency dynamics fundamental to understanding women’s contributions to peacebuilding.
Research and lived experience demonstrate that women are primarily citizens, professionals, activists, and at times combatants. Their roles in peacebuilding are diverse and shaped by sociocultural histories, multiple identities, and the power dynamics in which they operate. The concept of intersectionality is especially useful in this context, revealing how factors such as ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, and others distinctly influence the experience and expression of peace. Peace in Ireland doesn't mean the same thing as peace in Ukraine, France, or Turkey. Acknowledging these variations allows local agency to emerge more clearly and helps avoid trapping women in stereotypes that ultimately reinforce inequalities.

Invisibility: From Official Negotiations to Daily Reality

A powerful moment from Isabel Boli’s philosophical presentation highlighted another crucial issue: the invisibility of women in peace processes. This invisibility in formal negotiations reflects a broader societal silence about women's struggles and contributions. 
While histories and social dynamics may differ between countries, invisibility remains a shared burden. Women have driven political and social change for centuries, even when their stories go untold. This absence is further reinforced by reductive narratives that spotlight only “iconic” or radical feminist figures, leaving the work of “everyday women”- those who sustain communities, negotiate peace informally, or mobilize at the local level - largely unseen.

The Risks of Oversimplification: the example of "Gender Apartheid"

Giuliana Cacciapuoti’s reference to “gender apartheid” to describe the conditions faced by women in the Arab-Islamic world was undoubtedly a powerful call to awareness. Yet, feminist scholars and political scientists have shown how such sweeping labels, while spotlighting grave injustices, can flatten diverse realities and reinforce colonial and orientalist “saving Muslim women” narratives. This risks reducing women to victims alone, obscuring their agency and the context-specific resistance strategies they develop." When we flatten realities, we lose sight of local agency, diversity, and the real texture of resistance.

Our Strength in Diversity: Orchestrating Without Imposing Uniformity

The conference underscored that our movement’s strength is its plurality: diverse stories, identities, and struggles coexisting. So, amid all this plurality, the challenge is alignment, not uniformity: orchestrating these differences with a common mission to build collective power while respecting the integrity of individual narratives. Anne Nègre's words at the General Assembly capture this tension: "The challenge for UWE is to continue to exist." Our mission must mobilize courage and commitment to sustain justice as an ongoing process, never finished.

Strategic questions: UWE’s Identity at a Crossroads

Anne Nègre's call to unify women's organizations around peace and strengthen our lobbying, particularly on Ukraine, places UWE at a defining crossroads. Must we choose between remaining an organization focused on equality and education, or becoming a politically engaged actor that directly confronts systemic injustices, inequalities, and wars?

This reflection demands conceptual clarity: what kind of peace are we working toward? If we mean only the absence of armed conflict, our role remains limited. But if we envision peace as a justice-driven transformation of power structures and social relations, our work necessarily becomes political. Our association's impact and legitimacy depend on making this distinction clear to ourselves and to others.

There are practical implications too. If UWE seeks to remain influential and secure EU funding, we may need to broaden our focus beyond gender, to include diversity, equality, and inclusion in all forms, across ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status, and more. As Anne noted, the term “gender” itself is becoming controversial in European political arenas, separation between “women” and “men” is increasingly seen as outdated. Innovative, intersectional projects are not only more responsive to the current European context but may also secure broader relevance and resources.

Harnessing Our Skills for Transformation

This conference reaffirmed a conviction: women's skills and voices are powerful tools, not only for empowerment but for shaping just and resilient peace. Real “empowerment” means taking risks, asking hard questions, and shaping innovative policy and practice.
Hannah Arendt’s words resonate profoundly here: "The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution" reminding us that progress is never guaranteed but demands continual renewal and vigilance.

Conclusion: A Call for Nuance, Cohesion, and Innovation

What does this mean for ASFDU and UWE? To me, it means becoming ever more vigilant about the words and stories we tell, and ever more creative in how we align our diversity behind united action for equality, peace, and dignity. By valuing complexity and rejecting oversimplification, we sharpen our capacity to create real and lasting change. Together, our voices, in all their richness, must not merely echo but resound with transformative power to shape a just world.

Naples, layered, contrasting, deeply historic, mirrored both the complexity and beauty of building peace. The warmth of UWE colleagues, the honesty of exchanges, and the sense of shared purpose left me grateful and motivated to contribute, as CER, to a stronger, more visible UWE in Europe.

ASFDU extends its warmest thanks to our Italian hosts, UWE's outgoing and incoming leadership, and all participants who contributed to making this edition memorable.

References

Feminist Theory and Gender Studies

• Bantekas, I., & Karimi, A. (2025). Gender apartheid under the Taliban: Key elements of an ideology designed to disempower Afghan women. William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice.
• Bennoune, K. (2024). The Afghan women's movement and gender apartheid.
• bell hooks. (2000). Feminism is for everybody.
• Sobat, T. (2025). Critical reflections on the concept of “gender apartheid” in the context of Afghan women’s rights activism.

Political Science and Conflict Studies

• Arendt, H. On Revolution.
• Kaldor, M. (2013). New and old wars. Stanford University Press.

Peace and Security Studies / Regional Reports

• Ballard Brief. (n.d.). Lack of female representation in peace processes in the MENA region.
• RESIST Project, Maynooth University. (n.d.). Women, peace, and security. Retrieved from https://theresistproject.eu/