ABSTRACT

In East Asia, as in the rest of the world, peace and conflict display clear gendered patterns. These patterns contribute both to a better understanding of peace and conflict per se, but gender is also of importance for grasping the causes and consequences of armed conflict. This chapter illustrates numerous ways in which a gender perspective contributes to the knowledge of issues of peace and conflict in East Asia. A common distinction between sex and gender is that while sex refers to “the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women,” gender refers to “the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women” (WHO, 2016). This means that gender changes across time and space, as expectations on men and women differ, as do the roles and behaviors considered appropriate for the different sexes. Applying a gender perspective to studies of armed conflict implies taking into account the biological sex of participants and victims, but also the societal norms and hierarchies that put men and women in different situations in relation to conflict in the first place (Bjarnegård et al., 2015).