All-Female Contingents on the Front Lines of Peace and Conflict with Margaret Jenkins

Since 2010, an all-female peacekeeping contingent has been monitoring a fragile ceasefire between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the southern Philippines. Drawing on in-depth interviews with the peacekeepers, WAPPP Fellow Margaret Jenkins explains how this all-female unit responds to myriad sources of violence, and navigates conservative gender norms. Do these women feel they have been taken seriously by Islamist rebels and Filipino soldiers? What have been their main challenges and successes on the ground? This case is one of several that Jenkins is studying as part of a two-year research project funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada on the effectiveness and experience of all-female contingents working in conflict zones. Speaker: Margaret Jenkins, Research Associate on Peacekeeping, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace & Security, Georgetown University; Postdoctoral Fellow, Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada; WAPPP Fellow