Peace and Empowerment in Historical and Modern Women’s Cooperatives: A Comparative Case Study
Date
2024
Authors
Wesson, Lucy
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Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
As cooperatives, both the Women’s Cooperative Guild and the Nyamirambo Women’s Center share commonalities in their dedication to promoting women’s rights, fostering economic empowerment, and advancing positive peace. Despite operating in distinct historical and cultural contexts, the organizations exemplify the transformative potential of women-led cooperatives in challenging traditional gender norms and addressing socio-economic disparities in conflict environments.
As such, NWC and the Guild are best understood together as peacebuilding organizations that utilize the tenets of cooperation to directly account for the needs and aspirations of women. Within these organizations, women engage in peace processes, build community, and gain a degree of economic independence, resulting in greater empowerment. This empowerment enables cooperative members to occupy dual cultural expectations as domestic workers and participants in the formal labor force during and after conflict. Although they promote women’s empowerment, cooperatives operate under the pressures of nation-building and longstanding patriarchal structures in conflict environments. These organizations thus exist within the dichotomy of patriarchal social and cultural expectations while simultaneously promoting women’s agency and equity through the cooperative model.
Description
Keywords
Women, Peacebuilding, Cooperation, Patriarchy, Empowerment