HANDBOOK ON CSDP
5.1. GENDER AND WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY IN THE CSDP
European Union/EUPOL Afghanistan
by Taina Järvinen
Societies with a high level of gender equality tend to be more stable than those with a wide gender gap.
Women, men, girls and boys experience and are affected by armed conflicts differently. Violence, displacement, disruption of support services, economic insecurity and the unravelling of social structures and judicial and security institutions are some of the long-term consequences that people in post-conflict settings have to endure, and each has a gender dimension. International interventions, in the form of crisis management missions or post-conflict reconstruction programmes, need to be implemented in a gender-sensitive manner, so as to ensure that the measures in question are non-discriminatory and do not exacerbate existing inequalities but benefit both men and women.
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DEFINITION OF GENDER Gender refers to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female and the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations between women and those between men. These attributes, opportunities and relationships are socially constructed and are learned through socialisation processes. They are contextand time-specific, and changeable.
(European Institute for Gender Equality, EIGE).