Disrupting the Saviour Politics in the Women,Peace and Security Agenda in the Global South: Grassroots Women Creating Gender Norms in Nepal and Sri Lanka

Abstract

Saviour politics permeates some understandings of global gender norms by those who construct the Global North as the origin of global gender norms, and less attention is given to how saviour politics functions within the Global South, wielded by some privileged women against grassroots women. We argue that grassroots Global South women, despite their marginalisation, are global gender norms actors and deserve greater decision-making power on the local and international stages. We show how the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and the broader WPS agenda focus on global gender norms construction in Nepal and Sri Lanka. We rely on qualitative methods. We highlight work done by grassroots women from diverse castes, ethnicities, religious backgrounds, abilities, education and social locations that construct global gender norms. This article adds to the WPS, Global South-Global North relations and global gender norms building.

Introduction

This article critiques the perception of global gender norms as deposited in the Global South by Global North actors and enacted within the Global South by privileged Global South women. We disrupt such saviour politics and argue that grassroots Global South women, who are often marginalised, are global gender norms actors, deserving of greater decision-making power within local and international arenas. Specifically, we examine the implementation of the United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1325 (hereafter 1325) on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), which launched the WPS agenda, an area of scholarship and advocacy that enhances women’s equality and participation in peace and security matters (Basu, 2016), in Nepal and Sri Lanka. This article builds on previous studies suggesting that global gender norms creation provides the opportunity for both the (re) production of power and resistance opportunities (Cislaghi & Heise, 2020; Medie & Kang, 2018; Wilchins, 2019).

The UN encourages countries to implement 1325 and related WPS principles by adopting WPS National Action Plans (NAPs). NAPs are national-level strategy documents to help governments outline their priorities, aims and activities, as well as coordinate the implementation of WPS policies, both at the domestic and international levels. To date, 98 UN member states (51%) have adopted a WPS NAP (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom [WILPF], 2021). There is a widespread perception that 1325 and WPS principles derive from the Global North and must be deposited in the Global South. This construction reproduces racial hierarchy by assuming that the Global South requires assistance from the Global North through ‘a discourse…that perceives of individuals in the Global South as merely recipients of norms’ (Hasstrup & Hagen, 2020; Parashar, 2019, p. 829). This view of 1325 localisation adheres to what we define as saviour politics whereby some Global North feminists see themselves as ‘saving’ Global South women based on imperialist views that see the Global North as ‘civilised’ and the Global South as ‘backward’ (Cronin-Furman et al., 2017). Such constructions both sideline and invisibilise the origins of 1325 and the WPS agenda, as well as many global gender norms, which trace to Global South actors. Basu (2016) has derided the association of the WPS agenda with the international level and the Global North, drawing attention to the participation of Global South governments––including Bangladesh, Namibia and Jamaica––and Global South civil society organisations (CSOs) that played integral roles in the adoption of 1325 in 2000. In the years since 1325’s launch, Global South actors have continued to contribute to the development––and expansion of––the WPS agenda (Basu, 2016).

While highlighting the saviour politics leveraged by some WPS actors in the Global North against the Global South, we complicate this framing by pointing to the saviour politics at play within the Global South. Privileged Global South women frequently dominate local nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) where they hold top positions, such as heads of organisations and board members. Such privileged women are best positioned to access donor funds and to influence the localisation of 1325 and the WPS agenda (Horst, 2017; Madsen, 2018). Some of these privileged Global South women seek to ‘save’ marginalised women at the grassroots, presuming that they know what is best for all Global South women while often gatekeeping grassroots women from participating in 1325 NAP development and implementation and other WPS activities (Horst, 2017; Luna & Whetstone, 2022). Yet most privileged women in the Global South typically have little understanding of grassroots women’s needs and interests, and most remain unaccountable to these women, who are excluded from, or marginalised within, NGOs (Horst, 2017; K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019; Narayanaswamy, 2014, 2016).

The saviour politics imposed by some Global North and Global South actors in WPS implementation is addressed in our argument, which shows how saviour politics is not only a Global North-Global South problem but also a privileged-unprivileged Global South issue. We further argue that unprivileged grassroots women are engaged in global gender norms creation. We draw on our previous research in Nepal and Sri Lanka (K. C. et al., 2017; K. C. & Whetstone, 2021, 2022; Whetstone, 2020) to highlight work done by grassroots women from diverse castes, ethnicities, religious backgrounds, abilities, education and other social locations that have added to the global gender norms regime. To show our argument, we use qualitative methods such as interviews (from women ex-combatants, war widows, activists and peacebuilders) and review policy, news and NGO documents.

This article proceeds as follows. First, we overview our methodology and methods, elaborating on why Nepal and Sri Lanka’s WPS experiences offer a productive comparison. Second, we outline the literature that disrupts the perception that Global North actors ‘save’ Global South women and stress how some elite women in the Global South also enact saviour politics on grassroots Global South women. In the next section, we outline the WPS agenda’s localisation in Nepal and Sri Lanka to show that Global South women––particularly the most marginalised––are gender norms actors contributing to global gender norms. The fourth section overviews the implications of our findings, solidifying the case that grassroots Global South women are global gender norms actors. We end with our conclusion, which highlights the article’s main findings.

Methodology and Methods

This article follows a feminist interpretive methodology, seeking understanding (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012) of the saviour politics enacted in WPS implementation by comparing the WPS experiences of Nepal and Sri Lanka, two conflict-affected countries in South Asia that saw armed fighting end in 2006 and 2009, respectively. A feminist methodology requires close attention to embedded power dynamics and is oriented towards promoting justice, two practices this article takes seriously (Ackerly & True, 2010). Nepal and Sri Lanka make an excellent case study comparison given that both are peripheral powers in South Asia impacted by structural violences that penalise marginalised communities. In Nepal, marginalisation is based largely on gender, caste and class, while in Sri Lanka mainly on gender, ethnicity and religion, although caste and ethnic structural violences impact both countries. Nepal’s civil war was launched by Maoists seeking democracy by overthrowing a long-standing monarchy (K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019). Sri Lanka’s civil war was an ethnic conflict between the Tamil minority against the Sinhalese-majority dominated state carried out principally by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and Sri Lankan state security forces (Whetstone, 2020).

The WPS regime easily found a place in both countries, although there are important differences in how WPS policies and activities have, respectively, taken shape on the ground in Nepal and Sri Lanka. In 2011, Nepal was the first South Asian country to implement a WPS NAP, which has been widely applauded for its appearance of inclusion (K. C. & Whetstone, 2022). Nepal’s NAP ended in 2016 and a second NAP is in the works. Sri Lanka’s governments long resisted NAP development, which has been attributed to both state and societal resistance to women’s political participation (Singh, 2017) but is also likely linked to state refusal to address the root causes of Tamil grievances and state unwillingness to rectify structural and direct violence against minority communities (Bastian, 2013; Höglund, 2019). A NAP is currently being drafted in Sri Lanka, although it has yet to be finalised.

We suggest that Nepal’s status as the first South Asian country to implement an NAP—and one that has been roundly praised for being inclusive––and Sri Lanka’s long-stemming resistance to a NAP that has led, to date, to the strictly informal implementation of the WPS regime by international development and local actors, offer a theoretically productive contrast. The differences in Nepal and Sri Lanka’s WPS experiences allow us to highlight how saviour politics operates both in official WPS processes carried out through state-NGO collaboration as well as in informal processes led by NGOs. In both cases, WPS implementation has resulted in some elites dominating the WPS regime, even as grassroots women engage in work supporting WPS principles (K. C. & Whetstone, 2022). We highlight the embedded saviour politics that operate in so-called progressive spaces associated with promoting women’s political participation. In both Nepal and Sri Lanka, saviour politics enacted by some privileged Global North and Global South actors invisiblises the WPS work being carried out at the grassroots level by less privileged Nepali and Sri Lankan women, most of whom lack access to WPS mainstream forums and funding networks.

To show our argument, we use qualitative methods, including previously collected interviews (from women ex-combatants, war widows, activists, peace- builders, members of civil society) that draw on our separate fieldwork carried out in Nepal over 2014–2015 and in Sri Lanka during fall 2017. In Nepal, in- depth interviews lasting between one to two hours were conducted face-to- face and one-on-one with thirty-five women former combatants and twenty-two non-combatant women who were either community leaders or activists. After obtaining consent, interviews were recorded. All names have been changed to protect participants’ identities, although the names accurately reflect the gender, caste and ethnicity of research participants. Fieldwork in Sri Lanka consisted of semi-structured interviews with members of civil society that were unrecorded to provide a more relaxed interview setting. Notes were written up 15 minutes to one hour following the interviews. This process did not allow for direct quotes but made research participants more comfortable. The decision to forego recording interviews was made because the researcher is an outsider to Sri Lanka and due to the unresolved roots of the civil war, which has led to insecurity for minorities and many NGO workers and peace activists. Interviews were mainly conducted face-to-face and one-on-one, but also included one Skype interview and an interview with two participants. In most cases, names have been changed except where participants indicated that using their real names was permitted. We supplement our interview data with a review of policy, news media and local NGO texts. Saviour politics in the Global North and Global South.

The WPS agenda’s implementation since 2000 has had contradictory effects, both promoting some progressive change––such as bringing rhetorical attention to women’s interests in armed conflicts––while also reinforcing hierarchical power relations (Hamilton et al., 2021). Analysing the whole of WPS policy discourses suggests that the (re)production of deeply embedded power hierarchies is gendered into WPS activities in ‘racialised, sexualised and classed ways’ (Martín de Almagro, 2018, p. 397). We add to critical WPS scholarship by disrupting the view that global gender norms––assumed by many WPS actors to derive from the Global North––are simply deposited in the Global South. Building off Basu (2016) and Parashar (2019) we underline locally driven gender norms by grassroots women to show that grassroots Global South women are major contributors to gender norms making and deserve greater decision-making powers in WPS activities. However, grassroots women are often ignored in WPS work by some Global North and Global South actors. This section develops our framework of saviour politics, which is rooted in the growing literature critiquing the outsized role of Global North actors in WPS activities and which also illuminates the ‘saviour’ roles of some elite women in the Global South working in the WPS regime.

Saviour politics underscores the WPS regime, where WPS itself is widely understood to be ‘a global “norm”’ (Parashar, 2019, p. 829) and one commonly perceived as rhetorically situated in the Global North, even as Global South governments and CSOs were pivotal in the adoption of 1325 by the UN Security Council and engage in WPS activities and norms diffusion (Basu, 2016; Parashar, 2019). Saviour politics in WPS implementation in part takes shape when Global North feminists use the WPS agenda as justification to ‘save’ their ‘sisters’ in the Global South, who are therein metaphorically rendered agentless. Such saviourism bypasses the embedded colonial logics of militarised interventions that some Global North WPS actors see as helping to ‘empower’ what they have constructed as essentialised Global South women, who are assumed to share all the same interests and needs (Parashar, 2019). For instance, in an analysis of WPS NAPs and WPS activities in Burundi, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Great Lakes in Africa, Martín de Almagro (2018, pp. 404, 409) suggests that WPS discourses have generated a universalised ‘brown’ Global South ‘woman participant’ who requires outside knowledge obtained through ‘white training’ in order to become ‘competent.’ This embedded narrative justifies Global North interventions by intergovernmental organisations and NGOs that displace local knowledge and prioritise Global South women who work with outside WPS actors (Martín de Almagro, 2018; Parashar, 2019).

Although the efforts of Global South actors in developing and enhancing progressive gender norms have been downplayed by some Global North actors, we also highlight how some privileged Global South actors have undermined, ignored and made invisible the efforts of marginalised Global South actors, by engaging in saviour politics. Narayanaswamy (2016, p. 2168) aptly calls this ‘an internal North–South divide’ in the Global South, referring to the dominance of elite women in local NGOs. We suggest that the internal North–South divide follows similar logics to the behaviour of (some) Global North feminists wanting to ‘save’ their less privileged ‘sisters’ in the Global South. In this situation, (some) elite local women use their privilege to ‘save’ women they deem lacking appropriate gender norms. In WPS activities, this is reflected in discourses from privileged Global South women who speak of wanting ‘give back to’ local women who lack access to the information networks and funding available in Global North dominated WPS networks (Hamilton et al., 2021; Martín de Almagro, 2018, p. 411). This discourse is condescending and implies that grassroots women lack the ‘right’ kind of knowledge. We contend that global gender norms making is held back by the saviourism that permeates WPS implementation. What takes shape is a WPS agenda that misses grassroots women’s issues (Martín de Almagro, 2018). Orock’s (2007, p. 93) study in Cameroon suggests how mainstream priorities of gender equality typically advance only the rights of privileged women:

Gender equality is increasingly politicised as a springboard for a few elite women to move up the hierarchy and enhance their professional qualifications. In other words, they [privileged women] are using the formal commitment to gender equality as a means of maximising their own opportunities.

The above quotation resonates with Tamang (2009, p. 78) who argues that Nepali elite women speaking and representing non-elite women politically and philosophically are wrong even as the logic of privileged women protecting unprivileged women is often normalised, especially in NGO work (Narayanaswamy, 2016).

Understanding how some Global North women’s enactment of saviour politics echoes some elite Global South women sets up our contention that such logics are disrupted by examining the ways that grassroots women in the Global South are already creating global gender norms. By highlighting grassroots women’s political work, we undermine the embedded colonial discourses that imply the need to bring ‘enlightened’ gender norms from the Global North to the Global South where only elite local women working in NGOs who have received outside knowledge can ‘show’ grassroots women ‘the way.’ We turn now to our cases exploring the WPS agenda in Nepal and Sri Lanka before overviewing the progressive gender norms that grassroots women in Nepal and Sri Lanka have created.

1325 and the WPS Agenda in the Nepali and Sri Lankan Civil Conflicts

This section reviews Nepal’s and Sri Lanka’s respective civil wars and experiences with 1325 and the WPS agenda to contextualise the global gender norms building of local women. This background sets the stage for our findings section that overviews the gender norms built by grassroots women that support the aims of 1325, showcasing how grassroots Nepali and Sri Lankan women’s activism has––contributed significantly to global gender norms.

1325 NAP and the WPS Agenda in Nepal’s Civil War

Nepali women made a significant contribution to Nepal’s civil war and in the process constructed gender norms both as armed combatants and in non-combatants roles. The country was ruled by a monarchy for 240 years. Under this monarchical rule, a social hierarchy on the basis of gender, caste, class and ethnicity was pervasive and defined access to opportunities, resources and privileges (K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019). Maoist rebels declared a civil war––also known as a ‘peoples war’––from 1996 until 2006. The war killed 17,000 people, and rendered around 3,000 missing, 8,000 disabled and an estimated 200,000 displaced (Relief Web, 2004). The Maoist war aimed to end the feudal monarchical rule and establish a new democratic republic. The Maoists had a powerful emancipation message for the oppressed rural population, including women, lower castes and marginalised groups. Estimates suggest that women made up 30%–40% of the total Maoist combat force (Gautam et al., 2001). The Maoists’ promotion of women’s empowerment led high numbers of Nepalese women to join the war. Both those women who joined the war to fight and those women who stayed outside of fighting contributed to establishing gender norms. This was influenced by the burden of caretaking for both private and public affairs disproportionately shifting onto women who stayed back (K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019). A peace accord was signed in 2006, resolving the prolonged war. The Maoists became the top political party in Nepal after winning most of the seats in the 2008 Constituent Assembly election (K. C. & Whetstone, 2022).

The transition from conflict to post-conflict led to many gendered and inter- sectional-based challenges for women. For instance, the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration process (DDR) promulgated by the UN and the Nepali government overlooked women ex-combatants’ demands. Women ex-combatants faced numerous struggles although they sought to reintegrate into the community. Women continue to face stigma, discrimination, job insecurity, violence, inequality and poverty in the post-war context (K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019). For example, war-wounded women ex-combatants developed lifelong disabilities. Further, some women broke wartime inter-caste marriages (especially low-caste women marrying upper-caste men), which led to stigmatisation and low-caste women-headed households have faced extreme poverty (K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019). After 2008, in Nepal’s new democratic republic era, gender equality and women’s empowerment were placed high on the government’s agenda and as a result, key legislative acts were launched. This included the 5-year strategic plan of the National Women’s Commission (2009–2014) to advance equality and end discrimination against women in Nepal. Similarly, other measures included the Domestic Violence (Crime and Punishment) Act, 2009, the National Women’s Commission Act, 2007, Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act, 2007, the Gender Equality Act, 2006 (Bhattacharya & Burns, 2019), the Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act 2015 and the Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Right Act 2018, among others (MWCSC, 2020).

The country launched its first WPS NAP in 2011, which lasted until 2016, and the country is currently preparing its second NAP (MoPR & 1325 Action Group Nepal, 2016). Nepal’s NAP was built on five pillars: Participation; Protection and Prevention; Promotion; Relief and Recovery; Resource Management and Monitoring and Evaluation. The NAP’s formulation was participatory, engaging the government, civil society and donor community and it supported the WPS agenda to some extent (MoPR & 1325 Action Group Nepal, 2016). The NAP promotes women’s participation at all levels including politics, security and other sectors (K. C. & Whetstone, 2022). For example, Nepal’s recent 2015 constitution enacted gender quotas that reserve 33% seats for women in the Constitutional Assembly, 34% of seats at the provincial level and 40% of the seats in local government (K. C. & Whetstone, 2022). As a result, women’s political participation in various levels of government drastically increased from 5% (in 1997) to 40% (in 2017). Additionally, a 20% women’s quota was adopted in Nepal’s Armed Police Forces, Army and Police (1325 Action Group Nepal, 2016).

Despite these advancements, Nepali women continue to experience multiple oppressions in their everyday lives on the basis of their gender, caste, sex, class, ethnicity, position, education, income, health and employment. Inequality Index value of Nepal is 0.476, meaning it ranks 115th out of 162 countries (Human Development Report, 2019). This suggests that more work needs to be done in terms of WPS activities to address such systemic inequality. Research suggests that the implementation of Nepal’s first WPS NAP (2011–2016) was elite-centred, top-down and hierarchical in that it largely neglected Dalit ¹ women, Indigenous women, women ex-combatants and Madhesi ² women issues who are in dire need of support in post-war contexts (K. C. & Whetstone, 2022). For example, in the 2017 local election, the higher positions quota seats were mostly occupied by privileged, upper-caste and elite women (Paswan, 2017) and like other elite Global South women, these women presume themselves to be protectors of non-elite women in the Global South (K. C. & Whetstone, 2021).

Similarly, accessing WPS funding is a centralised process that is concentrated in a few national women’s organisations and is further highly bureaucratic, which is why grassroots women’s organisations face barriers in accessing these funds. Dalit women, Madhesi women, Indigenous women and women living in poverty experience worse discrimination due to oppressive structures rooted in caste, class and other discriminations. For example, in Nepal, the gender-based violence rate is significantly high for Dalit women, 56%, and 80% of Dalit women live under the poverty line (Center for Dalit Women Nepal [CDWN], 2022). Both state and non-state actors marginalise underprivileged or grassroots women who also contribute to 1325 activities and construct local gender norms but are often invisible and prevented from getting benefits equal to a privileged, elite, upper-caste woman. We turn now to examine Sri Lanka’s unofficial adoption of the WPS agenda. Although different from Nepal’s official adoption of the WPS agenda through a WPS NAP, the same issue of ignoring and invisiblising marginalised women’s issues arises.

1325 and the WPS Agenda in Sri Lanka’s Civil War

During Sri Lanka’s internal armed conflict that lasted from 1983 until 2009 and into the present post-war period, we make the case that grassroots Sri Lankan women contributed to global gender norms building, specifically by troubling motherhood as inherently socially conservative. Sri Lanka’s post-war period remains rife with injustices related to the aftereffects of the conflict, as well as barriers to women’s full and equal rights. This section overviews Sri Lanka’s civil war that pitted the Sinhalese-dominated government against the LTTE.

An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 citizens may have died in Sri Lanka’s internal conflict and an estimated 100,000 were forcibly disappeared (HRW, 2010; Jegatheeswaran, 2021). Following British colonial occupation––which had favoured the minority Tamils over the majority Sinhalese––Sinhalese voters used their electoral advantage to favour the Sinhalese community (Morrison, 2001). Over the 1970s, as Tamil political parties failed to end anti-Tamil discrimination, some Tamils joined armed groups that sought an independent Tamil land, most notably the LTTE (Tambiah, 1986; Thiranagama, 2011). In 2009, the government, under Mahinda Rajapaksa, defeated the LTTE. Requests by the UN to investigate alleged crimes against humanity in the last stages of the war when 40,000 civilians suspected to have been killed by the government were rebuffed (Thiranagama, 2011). Rajapaksa’s government attempted to heal the country post-war by assigning reconstruction to the Sinhalese-dominated military, downplaying or ignoring state human rights abuses and promoting economic development (Bastian, 2013; Höglund, 2019).

Sri Lanka’s government has largely ignored the obligations of 1325 and the WPS agenda. Although women participated in the 2002 peace talks between the LTTE and government as part of 1325 principles, it was confined to three elite women who worked in NGOs and only had the power to make recommendations (Bandarage, 2010). Although Maitripala Sirisena’s government that came to power in 2015 promised transitional justice, since 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, former defence minister and brother of Mahinda Rajapaksa, had until very recently halted even rhetorical support for transitional justice (Höglund, 2019; Jegatheeswaran, 2021). In a climate of increasing antiminority violence (Haniffa, 2015; Rathore & Arora, 2020), various governments have given little attention to the WPS agenda (Singh, 2017). Any actions supporting 1325 and the WPS agenda have been carried out by international development organisations, local NGOs and grassroots women.

1325 work by the international development sector in Sri Lanka has been criticised for poor execution. Nesiah (2012) argues that initial post-war 1325 projects for women’s ‘business’ opportunities––which fell in line with Mahinda Rajapaksa’s economic approach to post-war healing––failed to consider differences among women. Treating Sinhalese and Tamil women as equally conflict- impacted ignores the theatre of war’s concentration in Tamil-majority areas. Furthermore, while increasing women’s economic power is not a bad thing, it does not address the root causes of the war that stem from structural barriers related to ethnic, religious, caste and gender identities (Nesiah, 2012). Despite the state’s failure to commit to 1325 and WPS obligations and international development’s failure to actualise the principles of 1325 by transforming gender norms, grassroots Sri Lankan women have made strides in promoting the core of 1325, that of women’s participation in peace and security matters. We turn now to our findings, first overviewing the Nepal case before returning to the Sri Lanka case.

Grassroots Women in Nepal and Sri Lanka as Global Gender Norms Actors

Our previous work emphasised the vital role that grassroots women–marginalised by ethnic, religious, caste and ability markers, who are more likely to be socioe- conomically disadvantaged and may face additional burdens as ex-combatants, war widows and/or women heads of household––play in promoting the WPS agenda (K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019; K. C. & Whetstone, 2022; Whetstone, 2020). This section outlines cases showing how grassroots women in Nepal and Sri Lanka contribute to global gender norms building. In Nepal, we emphasise that this has taken the form of grassroots women’s roles in the Maoist war, both as fighters and as caretakers, and in Sri Lanka as grassroots women mobilising as mothers for peace. These are by no means the only roles that women have taken in Nepal or Sri Lanka. We use these examples to show our argument that grassroots Nepali and Sri Lankan women are active builders of progressive gender norms.

Women Changing Gender Norms During and After the Maoist War

Nepali women are challenging old gender norms and rebuilding new gender norms. Women’s issues gained attention in Nepal after 1991 when the country became a signatory of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which not long after also saw the establishment of the National Women Commission in 2002. In September 2002, an eleventh amendment to the National Civil Code provided women with inheritance rights from birth. Also, the rise of the NGO movement, in which women have participated in advocacy, including social mobilisations and meetings (Tamang, 2009, pp. 66–77) has brought a major shift in social justice issues and increased awareness of women’s rights.

Nepal’s civil war was the first time in Nepali history that women collectively challenged gender norms, and women from the grassroots participated widely in this project (K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019). This war also shifted Nepal’s social and political landscape by advancing an agenda that advocated for gender, caste, and ethnicity changes. As a result of these efforts, Nepal’s local councils, also called ward committees (formed after the new constitution in 2015), reserved two out of four seats for women and Dalit women. Consequently, 11,630 women were elected to local government bodies in 2017 (Taormina, 2017). Although the law prohibits the caste system, it is still widely practiced, and Dalit groups face worse discrimination at all levels due to casteism. Anjana Bishankhe, a former Dalit parliamentarian, says ‘she and other Dalit women elected under quotas faced pushback from colleagues who said they didn’t deserve their positions’ (cited in Taormina, 2017). Dalit activists, scholars and various Dalit organisations such as the Center for Dalit Women, Nepal’s Dalit women’s groups and Nepal’s Feminist Dalit Organization are fighting hard to end caste discrimination and create new gender norms. Also, LGBTQ+ people in Nepal face stigma, violence, discrimination and members of LGBTQ+ and the Blue Diamond Society (BDS) of Nepal have been fighting hard for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community since 2001 (Bista & Gurung, 2021). LGBTQ+ people are not homogenous and likewise, neither are women and girls, with women and girls from low-caste and underprivileged backgrounds facing extreme discrimination. There have been some big moves; the new constitution 2015 recognises LGBTQ+ people’s rights, including the Supreme Court ordering the government to issue passports for ‘third gender’ categories. In the 2021 census, Nepal introduced a ‘third gender’ category as part of its census. All of these progressive steps are part of the process of building new gender norms. Now we turn to women in the Maoist war and gender norms.

The Maoist war changed many local gender norms, and not simply for those who took up arms. For example, during the war, women performed new gender roles and responsibilities that were previously reserved for men.

The given quote illustrates Sarita Tamang’s (an Indigenous woman) experience of the Maoist war and the post-war era:

In the war, I, including my fellow women ex-combatants, did men’s roles such as hard military training, leading the battalion, planning attacks, carrying guns, giving speeches with confidence in front of 300+ people. After the war, I’m back in the community; I don’t feel hesitant to perform men’s roles like participating in political meetings, speaking with confidence against inequality and injustice, etc. (August 2014, Chitwan, Nepal)

Another account includes Shanti B. K., a Dalit woman ex-combatant who served as a company commander in the Maoist conflict, shared her story:

My former combatants’ friends told me about ‘Mahila, Shanti ra Surakhya’ (Women, Peace, and Security) and UNSCR 1325. We don’t know if this [1325 NAP] is also for us [Maoist women ex-combatants]. We are working hard to rebuild our lives and community, but we are not treated equally as other women; people still perceive us as perpetrators and spoilers. Maybe that’s why they don’t include us in 1325 NAP. (July 2014, Chitwan, Nepal)

Another narrative of Seti Tamang, a war-disabled woman ex-combatant.

I was wounded and lost my right leg fighting for this country and people’s rights in the war. Nepal’s politics changed forever for the better due to our contribution, but we are now treated like non-citizens. Society is punishing us for our past doings, and we crossed gender lines by becoming combatants and taking up arms. But, I’m not giving up; I will keep pushing for women’s rights because we women are still not equal, and I tell this regularly to my war peers. (August 2014, Chitwan, Nepal)

Pulmaya Tharu, an Indigenous woman ex-combatant, shares what she learns in the war and how she uses those lessons in her everyday life after returning from war:

After fighting in the war, I learned that women could also fight and do everything, such as fighting, leading, training, communicating, and teaching equal to men. We are behind only because we are discriminated against as women and from poor family backgrounds. Now, I teach my daughter that she is equal, she must work hard, and she can do all things that man does. (June 2014, Chitwan, Nepal)

The above narration excerpts show that these women ex-combatants––Sarita, Shanti, Seti and Pulmaya––who are all from the grassroots, contributed to shifting gender norms. Sarita and Pulmaya are Indigenous women, Shanti is a Dalit woman and Seti is a war-disabled woman. These four women joined the war as means to promote a better future for all women, regardless of caste, class, ability or ethnicity. This shows the ways that grassroots women have played an active role in constructing gender norms that promote an inclusive and participatory future for all Nepali women. Pulmaya’s case shows that she is translating her lived experience of women’s rights and gender equality to her daughter and teaching her daughter to challenge the normalisation of gender norms construction. Seti’s story shows how women + living with a disability + ex-combatant + living in poverty are forced to undergo greater and more diverse struggles than non-disabled women. Seti’s everyday activism––fighting for all women’s rights and creating awareness among war peers is an example of how women contribute to gender norms in their everyday lives. Shanti’s narrative indicates that ‘fancy’ policies such as 1325 and NAPs are elite-centred and reproduce hierarchies. Further, it also shows that the framing of 1325 NAPs is built in a way that either grassroots women do not see themselves fitting into these frameworks or that these frameworks do not fit grassroots women’s needs; both ways have excluded grassroots women from official WPS activities. These lived stories of women ex-combatants show how they shape and reshape gender norms but are often invisible and left out of mainstream national and global gender norms processes.

We emphasise that these findings show that women’s participation in the Maoist war was well-received, but that Nepal’s 1325 NAP on WPS excludes women-ex-combatants’ needs (Giri, 2021; K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019). Nepal’s 1325 NAP is internationally famous, but locally absent. This resonates with Madsen’s (2018, p. 77) study in Rwanda, where local women’s groups were unacquainted with 1325 NAP.

Similarly, in Nepal’s 2017 local election, in the majority of deputy mayor seats––women were elected but most were upper caste and elite women (Paswan, 2017). This shows how grassroots women (such as the Dalit women, women ex-combatants, war widows and single women) have been excluded from mainstream politics. This corroborates Orock’s (2007, p. 94) study in Cameroon, who writes that ‘middle-class or white-collar women in the urban sector have gained more from the gender-equality project than have their rural and grassroots sisters. This is because the campaign for gender equality is most effective among the increasingly gender-sensitive institutions and bureaucracies in the public and private sectors.’

We argue that the notion of saviour politics by elite women enacted against non-elite women is widely present in Nepal’s post-war politics. An article by Jhankeshwar Das’s (2022) work published in Nepal Record resonates with our argument concerning saviour politics in Global South. This article critically analyses two types of feminist practices that exist in Nepal. The first one is called ‘Dijju Feminist’ and is practiced by a group of women from aristocratic and high caste family backgrounds who have access to donor funding and typically run big NGOs and have wide funding networks. These feminists wear a feminist hat and claim to be feminists. However, their feminist agenda only benefits a few privileged women and girls and does not focus on ending existing structural discrimination. They are gatekeepers and active agents who de-rail the feminist agenda. The second type of feminist identified by Das is known as ‘Real Feminists’. This group of women has long fought hard to bring gender equality to Nepal. Their main agenda of feminism is to dismantle patriarchy and bring fundamental structural transformation that disrupts all forms of violence. These feminists come from diverse backgrounds. Their feminism is not limited to one group of women, but their mission is to secure rights for all women and girls. This new movement against privileged feminists received significant support from grassroots feminists.

The Role of Grassroots Sri Lankan Women in Creating Global Gender Norms

Sri Lankan activists have been promoting what is now the WPS agenda long before the adoption of 1325 by the UN Security Council in 2000 and the development of the WPS regime. Samuel (2006) documented the history of Sri Lankan women’s peace work going back decades, emphasising how this contribution has been ignored in mainstream scholarship. This is significant as the societal pressures on Sri Lankan women to remain confined to the home are significant, with politics deemed ‘dirty’, dangerous and masculine and therefore an inappropriate space for women (Interviews with women’s NGO workers, Duminda, Umika and Aisha, all names changes, October 2017, Colombo). Some peace work has been done by local women’s NGOs, which are concentrated in the capital of Colombo, where many feminists play an important role as allies to grassroots women (Samuel, 2006; Thiruchandran, 2012). We, however, underscore the transformative work of grassroots Sri Lankan women, specifically the Mothers’ Front, the Association of War Affected Women and Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared.

Mothers’ Front

Enforced disappearances were a regular occurrence throughout Sri Lanka’s civil war, with thousands detained without warrants, and many tortured and killed (de Mel, 2001; Jegatheeswaran, 2021; Samuel, 2006). The Mothers’ Front––composed mainly of grassroots women––contributed significantly to improving human rights and democracy in the early decades of the civil war by advocating for justice for the detained, disappeared and murdered (de Mel, 2001; Kailasapathy, 2012). The group organised as two branches, the Northern Mothers’ Front (NMF) and Southern Mothers’ Front (SMF), the former of which was composed of majority Tamils and the latter predominantly Sinhalese (Samuel, 2006).

Although founded in 1984 by seasoned (elite) activists, the NMF’s membership included mostly grassroots women new to activism. The group was dedicated to a nonviolent approach to resolving Tamil grievances against the state (Kailasapathy, 2012). The NMF’s first major action was the demand for the return of some 500 Tamil young men captured by the state without warrants or charges. Performing maternal rage and grief at the local government building in Jaffna, the women demanded the immediate return of the disappeared. The apparent fear instilled in officials by the mothers succeeded in the young men’s return. The NMF went on to decry the government’s harassment of young Tamil men and systemic military rape of Tamil women. The group also provided direct services to the suffering Tamil community that had been cut off from food and petrol lines. In this work, the NMF received important allyship from Sinhalese-majority women’s NGOs (Samuel, 2006; Thiruchandran, 2012).

Recalling the NMF’s first action in which the NMF was joined by thousands (an estimated 5,000 and 10,000 supporters) in the march to demand the return of the disappeared young men from the local government representatives, co-founder of the NMF, Sarvam Kailasapathy, explained how the women made their demands:

We said we are citizens of this country and citizens don’t get treated like this. Some of us then went up the stairs to the GA’s room [the Government Agent, the local government office]. I thought the stairs would collapse, the women were climbing them, screaming, crying, wailing, banging their heads… [After making their demands] [b]y the evening of the following day, all the boys were brought back [home] by ship except for about 20. There was so much joy and relief that night. This was something we achieved. We were able to prove ourselves to the conservative community of Jaffna and they had to accept that women were able to do it … Saraswathy, who was one of our strong mothers, said that morning [as she readied to leave for the march on the government office] her husband had asked her ‘where are you going. You haven’t cooked lunch for me?’ and Saraswathy said she gave him the vegetable knife and said ‘Here, today it is your turn to cook’ and left for the march. A lot of women found a new confidence that day. (quoted in Kailasapathy, 2012, pp. 102–104)

The NMF disbanded when its leaders refused to come under LTTE authority in 1987 when the LTTE insisted that the NMF could no longer operate autonomously. Grassroots members, however, stayed on under the LTTE to produce prosthetic limbs for Tamils harmed during the fighting (Kailasapathy, 2012). Although this work did not resist the LTTE’s authoritarian power structure, the women engaged in public roles that saw them supporting the LTTE and helping the many suffering in the war. This expression of agency enabled the women to continue as activists, support the LTTE and strengthen the broader Tamil community at a time of intense violence and repression committed by the government. In an interview with Silvy Thiruchandran, an ally to the NMF, she explained that feminists often discount women’s mobilisation through motherhood, even as it was motherhood that allowed the NMF to engage in activism in the constraining environment of ultranationalist armed Tamils and state forces. Thiruchandran refers to motherhood as a unique form of political organising that allows activists to protest in ‘the first person,’ which she implies is a way of protesting as a person living in a web of connections that emphasises activists’ emotions. Although not successful in meeting all their aims, the work of NMF women supported the Tamil community and secured political successes, such as the return of some of the disappeared (Interview, October 2017, Colombo).

Like the NMF’s founding by privileged women, the SMF was founded in 1990 by two men politicians with the political opposition party, the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLPF) and the SMF’s president was Dr. Manorani Saravanamuttu, a medical doctor from an elite family. However, like the NMF, the SMF included mainly grassroots membership (de Mel, 2001). The disappeared and murdered in the south were linked to an offshoot of the civil war, that of an insurrection by a minor Sinhalese nationalist party composed of economically disadvantaged young Sinhalese men, the People’s Liberation Front (JVP), against the government. The government’s counterattack against the JVP targeted all young Sinhalese men, whether part of the JVP or not, with thousands disappeared and murdered. The SMF demanded a return of their disappeared, an end to the violence and compensation for their losses. Grassroots members used a religious ritual of cursing as part of their activism, considered ‘peasant’ by many elites (de Mel, 2001). The typically private act of cursing was done for public spectacle by the SMF as the women begged the gods to punish––quite violently––those who had harmed their children (de Alwis, 2001). One SMF member was witnessed chanting at a protest:

They [the government] didn’t take just one of my sons, no, they didn’t even stop at two, they had to take all three of my own boys that I carried in my womb, fed with my blood milk (le kiri kala) and nurtured for the past 20 years … Even if these beasts (thirisan) live freely now, may they suffer the consequences of their actions unto eternity, in all their future lives. (de Alwis, 2001, p. 213)

Some feminists associated with local women’s NGOs as well as other left-leaning elites thought it unrespectable for the SMF to engage in cursing. Other feminists criticised the SMF’s use of political motherhood as reinforcing stereotypes about women (de Alwis, 2004). Further, as the feminist scholar and activist de Alwis stresses, the SMF’s lack of autonomy from the SLFP led to their demise as an organisation (Interview, October 2017, Colombo). Although the SMF ended its organising in 1994, this was not before its grassroots membership challenged the notion that women, mothers and religious practitioners could not demand vengeance. The SMF’s actions also proved integral to the election of the SLFP’s Chandrika Kumaratunga, the country’s first woman president, who notably fulfilled some of the main demands of the group once in office, including reparations (de Alwis, 2004). The SMF provide an important theoretical insight regarding peace, which is that peace necessitates justice, and that progressive gender norms include anger.

Association of War Affected Women

The Mothers’ Front was far from alone in relying on political motherhood. The still-active Association of War Affected Women (AWAW) launched in 2000, established by women with the Parents of Servicemen in Action, which had been founded by Visaka Dharmadasa in 1998. Dharmadasa’s son, a member of the Sri Lankan military, had been killed in battle but Dharmadasa had no closure as his body was never recovered; he was missing in action. Upon learning that mothers whose children fought for the LTTE experienced the same problem, Dharmadasa had the idea for the AWAW (WILPF, 2010). The AWAW demanded both the government and LTTE adhere to the code of conduct in warfare as laid out in the Geneva Conventions and leveraged shared maternal experiences to bridge the ethnic divide between Sinhalese and Tamil members (Samuel, 2006). In 2000, crossing into LTTE territory, Dharmadasa led a group of women who represented themselves as mothers to speak with LTTE leaders about accepting a ceasefire and agreeing to participate in the 2002 peace talks, an incredible accomplishment (Foreign & Commonwealth Office, 2019; Holt-Ivry, 2018).

Towards the end of the civil war and into the post-war era, the AWAW has partnered with international NGOs such as the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) to provide grassroots women with training to run for office based on 1325 principles (Green, 2008). In an interview with Dharmadasa, she explained that the post-war work of AWAW is concentrated on reconciliation, which has been made difficult by a strong opposition, in part through women’s political participation (October 2017, Skype). We have elsewhere applauded the AWAW’s intersectional approach to recruiting potential women candidates for office, which includes women from all regions of the country, as well as across ideological, ethnic and religious lines (K. C. & Whetstone, 2022). Although Dharmadasa today works as well on the international stage (GPPAC, 2021; WILPF, 2010), her work is grounded in grassroots women’s organising and she maintains a strong belief in the WPS agenda, which she has witnessed as improving women’s political participation in Sri Lanka since she began her peace work in 1998 (October 2017, Skype).

Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared

The post-war work of some grassroots women echoes the agitation and resistance of the now-defunct Mothers’ Front and ongoing efforts of later maternal groups such as AWAW. A prominent group of grassroots women known as the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared lead the charge for justice for the widespread enforced disappearances that took place in the final stages of the civil war. Many of these activists are war widows, women who lost their husbands during the war (Koens & Gunawardana, 2020). War widows and women heads of households––categories that often overlap––face dire economic challenges, as women struggle to eke a living (Singh, 2017). Working with other groups under the Association for Relatives of Enforced Disappearances, North and East, the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared have been organising since 2017 to demand justice for the disappeared. Given Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s antiminority government (Rathore & Arora, 2020), activists have turned to the international community to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government to work towards justice for the disappeared and murdered (Jegatheeswaran, 2021). In the 2019 presidential election, which saw a man who had carried out disappearances and murders of Tamils at the behest of Gotabaya Rajapaksa publicly reveal this information, Gotabaya nevertheless won the presidency. Tamil parties boycotted this election and one mother of the disappeared, S. Sukanthini stated:

Whoever becomes president, we do not believe justice would be provided to us by the Sri Lankan state. That’s why we demand an international mechanism. (quoted in The Ongoing Search for Sri Lanka’s Disappeared, 2020)

These women mobilising through motherhood continue their efforts for justice and peace, following in the footsteps of the Mothers’ Front and AWAW, and in the process defining gender norms that challenge the assumption that mothers are passive. The next section overviews our findings from both Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Findings: Nepali and Sri Lankan Grassroots Women as Global Gender Norms Actors

The findings from our examination of 1325 and WPS actions by grassroots women in Nepal and Sri Lanka support our argument that grassroots Global South women are global gender norms builders. Yet embedded saviourism perpetuates a far-reaching framing of Global South women as lacking in agency. Unsurprisingly, grassroots women’s efforts are routinely ignored by many WPS actors. At the international level, 1325 actors promoting the WPS agenda often operate on a top-down basis wherein actors at the local level are conceived as requiring the adoption of the gender norms embedded in 1325 (Basini & Ryan, 2016; Hudson, 2017; Lynch, 2019). Basu (2016) has pointed out the error in this logic that ignores Global South women’s contribution to the formation of 1325 and the WPS agenda, meaning that Global South actors’ gender norms are already embedded in the WPS regime.

The mistaken assumption by many Global North actors that Global South actors lack agency and understanding further ignores how localisation takes shape through complex processes that transform outsider norms into local norms by linking new ideas to already existing norms. This process creates norms that are not simply foreign or local but entirely new, even as they are hybrid (Acharya, 2004). WPS-related efforts in Nepal and Sri Lanka show that many local women respond to the values embedded in the WPS agenda, whether they have heard of 1325 or not. Nepali and Sri Lankan women’s embrace of WPS principles negates any argument that localisation must be done by Global North actors who arrive with ‘outside’ solutions to be bestowed upon the Global South.

In our cases, we find two related threads. In Nepal, grassroots women, such as women ex-combatants, Dalit women, Indigenous women, war widows and others, are treated as passive receivers who are weak women, lacking agency and rendered as if they have no knowledge. In fact, these women contribute every day to reshaping gender norms. For example, grassroots women are active in the Dalit women’s movement (Kharl & Suji, 2019), the Tharu (Indigenous) women’s and political movement (Tharu, 2015) and the Janjati and Adibasi women’s movement (Tamang, 2017; Toffin, 2009). Women’s engagements in these movements show that they are active agents of change. Although there has been discussion about the implementation of Nepal’s NAP as necessitating a bottom-up and intersectional approach, the lack of action in this direction points to this talk as strictly rhetorical. In some cases, even WPS actors in Nepal are unaware of many grassroots women’s issues. The exclusion of grassroots women’s issues in Nepal’s post-war reconstruction shows how grassroots women’s voices are discounted, even as grassroots women are a part of gender norms making.

In Sri Lanka, with mostly grassroots membership, the Mothers’ Front, the AWAW and Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared disrupt the notion that mothers are, or should be, passive. Instead, grassroots women’s agitation, unrelenting demands and/or steady nonviolent efforts over the decades trouble the notion that mobilising through motherhood––which has been questioned at the international level––is not inherently conservative or passive, or a danger to women’s long-term political participation (Enloe, 2014, pp. 121–122, 285; Gentry & Sjoberg, 2015; Shepherd, 2010). We suggest that motherhood is not only a strategic choice that results in expedient political outcomes, but that mobilising through motherhood challenges pervasive gender norms that presume mothers are inherently weak, passive and/or socially conservative. Furthermore, many women across diverse societies receive respect for their status as mothers indicating that motherhood can provide a place to advocate for women’s respect and political inclusion (Mhajne & Whetstone, 2020). The innovative gender norms that grassroots Sri Lankan women have constructed around motherhood provide models for other women globally, particularly in politically challenging environments. By troubling the notion of mothers as nonpolitical or docile, Sri Lankan grassroots women defined relevant and progressive global gender norms.

Implications: Supporting grassroots Global South women with opportunities and funding

The construction and dissemination of global gender norms flow through structures of power and resistance (Cislaghi & Heise, 2020; Medie & Kang, 2018; Wilchins, 2019). For example, digitally, WPS activity is dominated by CSOs in the United States and UK (the ‘core’) and the level of network interconnectedness is densest among CSOs located in the Global North while CSOs in Global South countries (the ‘periphery’) are typically isolated from similar organisations, particularly those in the Global South (Hamilton et al., 2021). One aim of this article is to highlight the preponderance of Global North actors’ influence on WPS activities. However, we have also drawn attention to the dominance of some elite Global South women in WPS implementation. We have stressed that grassroots women’s participation in WPS work allows for transformational possibilities, moving WPS policies from reinforcing the status quo to progressive change, by overviewing how grassroots women in Nepal and Sri Lanka have created and shaped gender norms.

Our related findings from Nepal and Sri Lanka point to four significant implications that suggest the need to provide more space, funding and other resources to grassroots Global South women who have already contributed to global gender norms but are currently hindered by unfavourable power structures. For instance, 1325 and WPS stress addressing women’s ex-combatants’ needs in post-war settings as part of peace work (K. C. & Whetstone, 2022). However, the narrative of women ex-combatants overviewed in the Nepal case points to the exclusion of their needs in Nepal’s WPS NAP and shows how its implementation has been top-down, therein reproducing hierarchy, maintaining the status quo and failing to break the oppressive structures that work against many women in Nepal.

The first implication from our findings is that women’s peace work––a form of political participation––has not been deposited in either Nepal or Sri Lanka through 1325 and the WPS agenda, with examples preceding the adoption of 1325 by UN Security Council in 2000. Sri Lanka’s Mothers’ Front and AWAW’s peace activism began prior to the adoption of 1325, with the Mothers’ Front dating back to 1984, an entire decade before advocacy pushing for 1325 took off in the late 1990s, contesting the notion that outside norms promote women’s peace work (Basu, 2016). However, Dharmadasa (October 2017, Skype) stresses that 1325 and the WPS agenda has extended women’s peace activism and political participation in Sri Lanka. We acknowledge the role that 1325 has played, which brings us to our second implication. The ready adoption of 1325 and the WPS agenda by local actors in Nepal and Sri Lanka speaks directly to the work already being performed locally, meaning that although there may be new gender norms launched through 1325 and WPS activities, none were ‘deposited.’ Instead, gender norms are co-constructed through an international–local synthesis, sometimes immediately taking root since underlying support for these norms already exists among some local actors (Acharya, 2004).

A third implication of our findings is that local grassroots actors’ lack of using WPS policies when it might make sense suggests a strong possibility that the internal North–South divide within the Global South identified by Narayanaswamy (2016) is in play. For example, a finding from Nepal shows that a woman ex-combatant transfers her lived experiences and knowledge of women’s rights and gender equality to her daughter to challenge normal gender boundaries. How this could be used in official processes is unknown because ex-combatants have not been widely included in Nepal’s WPS NAP development and implementation.

In Sri Lanka, the most significant peace efforts to ensure justice for the families of the disappeared is currently being done by the umbrella organisation the Association for Relatives of Enforced Disappearances, North and East, which includes the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared. However, the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared do not rely upon 1325 in their organising (Jegatheeswaran, 2021). Further research needs to be done to understand why 1325 has not appealed to the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared. Regardless, ongoing efforts by the Tamil Mothers of the Disappeared speak to how grassroots women engage in peace work with or without the WPS agenda. We call attention to the problem of ‘NGO women’ who typically come from privileged sectors of the Global South, often based in the capital or other major cities, who tend to dominate NGO networks. Given their positionality, such women are predisposed to representing their own interests, which too often comes at the expense of ignoring grassroots women’s interests and needs and is also linked to the lack of grassroots women’s participation in NGOs (Narayanaswamy, 2014, 2016). This may explain why grassroots women engaged in community organising are left out of WPS networks, including funding access, even as they contribute to the WPS agenda (Koens & Gunawardana, 2020; K. C. & Whetstone, 2022).

Our fourth implication speaks to how all too often, some privileged women look down upon less well-off women, presuming them to be backward and unaware of what is best for them (Narayanaswamy, 2016). The mainstream privileged feminist work in Nepal has been called out for its saviour behaviour and is under scrutiny for this reason. Simply having a woman’s face is not feminism, nor inherently a feminist praxis (Das, 2022). This was also apparent in Sri Lanka’s SMF where the president, Dr. Saravanamuttu, disapproved of grassroots members’ desire for vengeance against those whom the rank and file held responsible for harming their children. Dr. Saravanamuttu insisted that rather than revenge, justice through the courts for wrongs committed by the state was the best route (de Mel, 2001). Although this approach fits rule of law thinking, there is reason to suggest that at least some of the criticism against the SMF’s use of religious cursing was linked to cursings’ perceived lack of feminine respectability. Angry SMF members appeared to be violent mothers, and because cursing is ‘folkish,’ it was deemed déclassé by privileged NGO women (de Alwis, 2004; de Mel, 2001). There is a justifiable reason why women whose children were murdered or disappeared by the state would be angry. The criticism of the SMF for its desire for revenge may have much to do with grassroots members coming from mainly economically disadvantaged sectors deemed ‘backward’ by elite members of civil society (de Alwis, 2004).

Together, both threads of our argument––around the mistaken presumption by some WPS actors that the Global South requires depositing gender norms constructed by the Global North in the Global South, as well as the assumption by some that marginalised Global South women are backward and require training to learn ‘better’ gender norms––suggest the need for a fundamental re-evaluation of gender norms making. Scholars and practitioners must toss out the notion that there are no local global gender norms. The very construction of 1325 and the WPS agenda points to this (Basu, 2016). Falsehoods that regard the Global South as backward have been perpetuated by WPS discourses, an arena that remains steeped in colonialism and racism (Haastrup & Hagen, 2020; Martín de Almagro, 2018; Pashar, 2019). This results in a saviourist mindset by some actors. Such paternalism by the Global North takes a tremendous toll on the amplification of gender norms construction by grassroots women in the Global South. However, the problem exists within the Global South as well. Roy (2018, p. 290) points to the problems of ‘NGO women’ who treat grassroots women as ‘infantilised’ agentless actors in need of saving. Not only have Global South actors constructed global gender norms embedded in 1325 and the WPS agenda (Basu, 2016) but marginalised Global South women too are making strides in constructing gender norms that fit with WPS principles (Koens & Gunawardana, 2020; Luna & Whetstone, 2022).

Although we emphasise the importance of grassroots women’s inclusion in WPS activities, we are not suggesting that there is no room for international actors in WPS activities. The Sri Lankan peace activist Visaka Dharmadasa, who founded the AWAW, is an international actor who exemplifies a decolonial epistemology appropriate for all international WPS actors. In coming from the grassroots and staying connected with the grassroots, Dharmadasa provides a model of a peace activist who sees connections among problems impacting Sri Lanka, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, etc. that can be addressed through 1325 and the WPS agenda while still valuing local knowledge (Interview, October 2017, Skype). Dharmadasa is involved in WPS work globally through participation in transnational WPS networks such as the international NGO ICAN’s Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership, and by sharing her experiences on global platforms such as the podcast She Talks Peace (Abramian, 2020; Rasul & Zaman, 2021). However, Dharmadasa works in Sri Lanka to ground WPS ideas in local practice. For example, taking the principles of UNSCR 1325, the AWAW has trained over 1,500 Sri Lankan women in the skills necessary to run for political office and serve as effective politicians and has developed a program called the Smart 75, made up of a diverse group of 75 women preparing for political office. The women were selected following intersectional representation across provinces and ethnic communities, resulting in a diverse and inclusive group of Sri Lankans who are better prepared to run for office (Peace Insight 2016; Interview, October 2017, Skype; Luna & Whetstone, 2022). We further commend ICAN, which funds many of the AWAW’s projects, for handing decision-making to the local level. Dharmadasa stresses that most of AWAW’s projects are decided and carried out at the local level (Abramian, 2020).

Dharmadasa maintains that motherhood and coming to peacebuilding opportunities without an agenda are two practices that can be helpful in multiple contexts. First, Dharmadasa suggests that motherhood plays a pivotal role in promoting peace and mobilising women into peace activism and can help bridge divides in armed conflicts as mothers appear more trustworthy in comparison to other wartime actors (Interview, October 2017, Skype). Second, Dharmadasa emphasises the need to have no set objectives when engaging in negotiations with armed factions as a way of opening routes to peace (Rasul & Zaman, 2021). These recommendations from Dharmadasa’s experiences speak to practices that will be of use in a range of conflicts to promote peace by finding means of overcoming boundaries and opening possibilities among intransigent actors. Dharmadasa and six mothers successfully negotiated a ceasefire among the LTTE and Sri Lankan government in 2000 that paved the way for the 2002 peace talks (Foreign & Commonwealth Office, 2019; Holt-Ivry, 2018). Dharmadasa’s awareness of shared connections globally with attention to the local and most importantly, the respect Dharmadasa has for grassroots women, better ensures decolonial means of WPS implementation. Dharmadasa exemplifies the connection and respect women have for one another and how this produces an energy that pushes peacebuilding forward:

The energy [to keep organizing], I get it from the women…the energy we [women] get from each other, the energy we get from the village, the women who speaks and tell[s] [her story]…that keeps us going…Our sisterhood, that’s exactly the livewire behind us. (Rasul & Zaman, 2021)

To sum up, our cases show that women are fighting to dismantle hierarchical and oppressive structures. In Nepal, women ex-combatants, Dalit women, Indigenous women, war widows and others have challenged and constructed gender norms––through participating in the Maoist war, including in various feminist movements (Kharl & Suji, 2019; Tamang, 2009, 2017). Although there has been progress on paper regarding women’s rights, LGBTQ+ people’s rights, Dalits rights, the gatekeeping by privileged women working in NGOs and the systematic bureaucratisation of gender norms prevent the full translation of women’s rights through the WPS agenda on the ground in Nepal. In Sri Lanka, some grassroots women have troubled the notion that mothers are, or should be, passive, nonviolent or socially conservative. As we and others have pointed out (Basini & Ryan, 2016; Koens & Gunawardana, 2020; K. C. & Whetstone, 2021, 2022), many grassroots actors in the Global South are doing work that supports 1325, without even necessarily knowing of the WPS agenda. Supporting ongoing local efforts that uphold 1325 principles and the WPS agenda and ensuring the inclusion of a diverse set of women actors would contribute further to global gender norms building.

Conclusion

This article has argued that saviour politics is not limited to interactions between Global North–South actors but also exists within the Global South between elite women and non-elite women. Our study concludes that grassroots women (ex-combatants, war widows, activists and peacebuilders) in Nepal and Sri Lanka contribute to global gender norms construction through participation in armed conflict, peacebuilding, the Dalit women’s movement and other feminist movements. Yet Global South grassroots women’s hard work is too often invisible in both local and international arenas. Moreover, grassroots women’s issues are inadvertently censored and often absent from mainstream political and development discourse given the gatekeeping by some elite Global South women who assume that they know best for all local women.

Some privileged women in the Global South have generated what can be constructed as a privileged Global South Women’s, Peace and Security agenda that ignores, co-opts and/or homogenises underprivileged Global South women’s voices within official WPS activities, or completely sidelines grassroots Global South women’s needs and interests. We propose a more productive approach to WPS activities that entails the inclusion of a diverse and representative participation of women in conversation with one another to foster connections and solidarity among elite and non-elite women to ensure that no women’s issues are left behind in 1325 and WPS implementation. This requires that more grassroots women be given opportunities and funding to develop and lead their own priorities and interests.