The politics of evidence in international governance: UN Women and women's participation in peace processes

Abstract The United Nations, gender experts, and feminist activists have established a unique apparatus of international governance aimed at advancing gender equality. Within this framework, UN Women has emerged as a leading source of research on women's participation in peace processes, producing evidence to inform policy and advocacy efforts. This article examines how gender experts and other actors strategically mobilize evidence to advocate for women's participation in peace processes. By analysing key UN and national documents, the article explores the pervasiveness of the claim that women's participation in peace processes strengthens the durability of peace. Our analysis shows a significant imbalance between the political salience of this claim and the robustness of the supporting evidence. We argue that this imbalance stems from internal political and institutional competition for the legitimacy of gender expertise in international institutions, particularly the need for instrumental and technical framing of gender policies and programmes. We critically assess the implications of this use of evidence, arguing that while strong instrumental claims about women's roles in peace processes may facilitate policy adoption and programme implementation, they also create rigid gendered expectations of women's roles and inhibit further academic research by portraying the question of women's participation as settled.