“that’s beyond you”

These graphics have been developed as part of a research project examining the experiences of women working as peace mediators. Since 2000 the Women Peace and Security Agenda has promoted a greater role for women in the field of peace and security. Yet women’s participation remains persistently low. This project looks at one specific category of women in peace and security- women mediators. It aims to understand the experience of women who work as peace mediators, to explore the skills they bring to the job, and highlight the barriers that they have faced in undertaking their roles.

The graphics present the findings of a series of interviews with women who acted as peace mediators in Northern Ireland in the period 1994-2004. This was a narrative research project in which women’s testimonies were recorded as a way of exploring and understanding their experiences of working as mediators and their agency in those processes. These are the experiences of the women in their own words. While the quotes are taken from data from Northern Ireland, they speak to universal experiences of women when they participate in the field of peace and security.

They are intended to provide a resource for academics, policy makers and practitioners engaging with the promotion of women in mediation; presented not only as the findings of the research project on women’s experiences, but also as a means of stimulating debate about the reasons why women experience these barriers and what can be done to address them.

This was funded by the ESRC IAA at Durham University and developed by Roots & Wings design and kurve data visualisation studio in Newcastle, UK. They are made freely available online to be used in research and training where they will be useful for advancing thinking and advocacy in relation to women in mediation or peacebuilding. They should be cited as:

Turner, C (2019) ‘That’s Beyond You: Barriers to Women Accessing High Level Mediation Roles’. Durham University.