Who cares in peacebuilding? Advancing a feminist peace by supporting peacebuilders with caring responsibilities

This article argues that gender-normative assumptions about motherhood marginalise women in formal peacebuilding, sustain the sector’s masculinist structures and practices, and undermine efforts to advance a feminist peace. Analysing the results of a global survey of peacebuilders, this article shows that women peacebuilders often find it difficult to remain in the sector when they become mothers and often feel less valued by management and colleagues. This arises, in part, due to assumptions about the commitment, competence and reliability of mothers, as well as a lack of organisational support for peacebuilders with caring responsibilities. This marginalisation harms the individual carer, as well as peacebuilding practices and outcomes, as it restrains organisational diversity, undermines progress towards gender equality, fails to effectively utilise ways of being and thinking that can arise from maternal practices, and hinders efforts to advance peacebuilding that is more attentive to the needs of others and acknowledges people’s interconnectedness.