Gender provisions have the overarching goal of enhancing gender equality, however few peace agreements include strong gender provisions. The presence of strong gender provisions in ceasefire agreements has crucial implications in the immediate and post-conflict phase in improving women’s situation. I use structured, focused comparison in this study to explore when and how strong gender provisions on violence against women are adopted. I focus on conflicts with a high prevalence of sexual violence and contexts where women mobilize in the conflict to advocate for women’s rights. I demonstrate the relationship between international involvement and strong gender provisions. I argue that in civil wars with a high level of international involvement in support of peace, ceasefire agreements are more likely to include strong gender provisions on violence against women. This is possible through the mechanism of international actors serving as brokers for the women’s movement that is already mobilized to access and influence the peace process. This mechanism is particularly crucial for autocratic countries where women’s mobilization is not sufficient to lead to strong gender provisions. However, the findings are applicable to countries with other regime types.

Are peace agreements more likely to include gender provisions if women participate in the peace negotiations? The international community, national governments and civil societies around the world have assumed that women’s inclusion in peace negotiations result in higher quality peace agreements, where women’s interests are better taken into consideration. To date, there is a lack of empirical underpinning of the assumption. This study uses a twofold research design, combining statistical and qualitative methods to examine the interrelation between women’s descriptive and substantive representation in peace negotiations in the post-Cold War era. First, the statistical analysis suggests that peace agreements are more likely to include at least one gender provision referring to women’s rights and security if women participate in the negotiation. At the same time, the agreements are not more likely to address a higher number of different areas for increased rights and security measures for women. Second, the qualitative analysis examining the mechanisms shows that there is no guarantee that women will push for gender provisions, but that their particular experiences and interests in conflict, and the expectations from others give them strong reasons to do so. Important factors for women to successfully push for gender provisions have to do both with their individual will and personal ability, and external factors relating to the presence of traditional gender norms and the power balance between men and women in the country of conflict.