Objective/context:

More than twenty years after the adoption of the Security Council Resolution 1325, which highlights the importance of women’s participation in peacebuilding, they continue to be excluded systematically from the negotiating table. This article examines how women manage access points to negotiations in intractable contexts and fragile peace processes that have not resulted in a peace agreement and how this affects their ability to articulate demands and influence such processes.

Methodology:

The case of the UN peace process for Syria is examined. Data used for the analysis comes from sixteen semi-structured interviews conducted between January 2019 and August 2022.

Conclusions:

The results demonstrate how the combination of bottom-up women-led activism processes with top-down institutional efforts facilitates breaking the boundaries operating at different levels (macro, meso, and micro) to masculinize peace negotiations and hinder women’s access. Although the fragility of the process compromises their participation, Syrian women circumvent these obstacles through strategies and attitudes of resilience that allow them to value their actions in the future.

Originality:

The article reviews the literature on women’s participation and contributes to situating it in the increasingly common framework of fragile negotiations and contexts of intractability through a barely explored case with unique data drawn from interviews with the political actors involved.