ARE WOMEN BEST SUITED TO BE MEDIATORS?

Over the decades I’ve conducted scores of training programs for volunteer mediators and about 80% or more of the participants have been women.

With the recent publication of my book “How to Survive a Mediation,” I compiled a list of Community Mediation Centers throughout America. For those I could identify in the role of Executive Director, 90% or more were women.

Historically women have been leaders in peace building. Since the mid-nineteenth century, women have been forming peace groups. Jane Addams convened a meeting of women’s peace groups in 1915. Critics included Theodore Roosevelt, who called the International Congress of Women a “shrieking sisterhood of pacifists.” Nonetheless, the concepts developed at the congress preceded what was to become the League of Nations.

Currently, a goal launched by the United Nations is to esstablish full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding by 2030. As recently as 2022, women represented only 16% of negotiators in active peace processes led or co-led by the United Nations. Of the eighteen peace agreements concluded that year, only one had a woman signatory.

Irene Santiago, one of the first woman negotiators for the Philippine government, identified a historical barrier to women’s participation in peace negotiations. When the negotiations focus only on ending war, women are less likely to be included, but when negotiations are both on ending war and building peace, women have had a seat at the table. And research has shown women’s participation increases the probability of a peace agreement lasting at least two years by 20% and lasting 15 years by 35%.

With such results, it’s unfortunate men don’t participate as much in local community mediation programs and equally unfortunate women aren’t included to take part in more international peace negotiations.

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Fred Jandt is the author of “How to Survive a Mediation,” available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever books are sold.