Femmes en mouvement(s): empowerment et organisations de femmes dans le conflit et le postconflit au Guatemala

Would women have something to “gain” from war? Although a war imposes heavy burdens on women, it also offers the potential for social transformation and often contributes to the redefinition of their traditional roles and to the reconfiguration of existing gender relations within society. Revisiting firstly the notions of gender and of empowerment in light of contemporary situations of conflict and postconflict, Gonin leads us into the daily life of these Guatemalan “women in movement” for several decades of internal conflict. To illustrate the adjustments of different social categories of women to the situation of rupture and transformation provoked by the conflict, the author analyzes three cases of female-led organizations to evaluate the processes of empowerment at work in the representations and practices of women by disaggregating them at the personal, collective, and relational levels. This approach allows a nuanced, complex, and dynamic perspective of empowerment of Guatemalan women in this particular context of conflict. [translated from foreword]