Karin Aggestam, Department of Political Science, Lund University
Daniel Naurin, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg

The overarching aim of the project has been to study the impact and development of gender equality in international negotiations. It is assumed that an increasing gender equality in international relations will affect processes and outcomes in political contexts, which traditionally have been male dominated. In this project, we have examined the representation of women and men as mediators and negotiators in two distinct international contexts: peace negotiations and intergovernmental negotiations in the European Union (EU). The main focus has been to map gender representation among negotiators and mediators in these two empirical domains; to identify similarities and differences in styles of negotiation between women and men; and to analyse how gender norms and stereotypes affect dynamics and processes of international negotiations. The project has conducted extensive data collection, mostly interviews, which have been analysed with qualitative and quantitative methods, including survey experiment.

In the area of peace negotiations, two larger empirical studies have been made. The first one has mapped and analysed 36 cases of female mediators who have intervened in international conflicts in the last two decades. The results from the mapping shows that the number of female mediators has doubled since 2000, which is the same year as the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1325. Moreover, the study shows that there is an overrepresentation of Nordic, American, and African female mediators in international conflicts. The results have been published in the book Gendering Diplomacy and International Negotiations (Palgrave, 2018), which is one of our most important research outputs from the project so far. The book contains several contributions by international scholars. Their studies show how gender representation has shifted over time, but also highlighting the progress made in recent decades. Other chapters have studied how gender dynamics are played out in different negotiation contexts and explain why women negotiators and mediators continue to confront gender hierarchies, masculine norms and an overwhelmingly homosocial negotiation environment.

The second study of peace negotiations is based on an interview survey of 55 global peacemakers. Here the aim has been to investigate how gender norms and structures enable and restrain women's representation and power in peace negotiations. The study has generated several policy-relevant results, which highlight the significance of (1) process design (2) intersectionality (3) peace-gender-dilemma (gender equality as a restraining factor in peace negotiations), and (4) division of labour between male and female negotiators. The study has gained interest among practitioners and the results have been disseminated and presented at several leading international policy-institutes as well as the Nordic women mediation networks in Copenhagen and at UN-delegations in New York.

The multilateral negotiations in the Council of the European Union—the most important decision-making institution in the EU system—have been studied by means of two larger telephone surveys. In total, 476 negotiators from all 28 EU member states have been interviewed at two points in time, 2015 and 2018. The respondents represent their states in several different policy areas that are being handled by the EU. Our results indicate that the share of women active in the negotiations that prepare the ministers' meetings has increased significantly. During a period of 15 years, from 2003 to 2018, the share of women has almost doubled, from 20 to 39 percent, in the committees and working groups that have been investigated in the project. However, we also find a gendered pattern of representation between different policy areas similar to what is common in national parliaments: Women are significantly less well represented in committees and working groups that deal with foreign and security policy and economic policy, compared to for example environmental policy.

Several of our findings indicate the prominence of gender stereotype perceptions and norms in international negotiations. For example, we conducted a survey experiment with EU-negotiators, which will be published in the journal International Organization, where we found that stereotypical ideas about feminine and masculine negotiation styles may influence the willingness of state representatives to agree to a compromise in the negotiations. In the experiment we let the respondents react to a situation where they were approached by another state representative whose negotiation style was stereotypically feminine (emotional, vulnerable). The results of the study indicated that male respondents from EU countries with traditionally strong gender roles (in particular South and East Europe) where acting differently compared to female respondents (from all countries) and male respondents from countries with weaker gender roles. The male respondents from countries with stronger gender roles were more willing to agree to a compromise when they encountered stereotypically feminine behavior, which we refer to as a "chivalry reaction". The study indicates that international negotiators at the elite level are not immune to social gender norms and that these norms may affect the outcome of the negotiations—sometimes in unexpected ways.

The project has generated several new research questions. For example, we have come to study the question of how to explain the diffusion of norms of gender equality in peace diplomacy and foreign policy in a number of journal articles. An edited special issue on this theme is under review at the journal Foreign Policy Analysis. Another question that has come to the fore is the gender balance in international courts, and the effects of a more equal representation of the sexes in these types of increasingly powerful institutions. We are presently involved in the work on an edited special issue of the Journal of Social Philosophy on this theme, with the working title Gender on the International Bench.

The project has had a strong international focus, both in the content of our research and in the research cooperation that we have engaged in. The project has cooperated with researchers at, for example, the Gender, Peace, Security (GPS) Centre, Monash University, the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) and the European University Institute in Florence (EUI). The project has been presented and discussed at several international conferences, lectures and invited talks in the USA, Australia and Europe. This includes, for example, the Carnegie Council, United Nations, the International Studies Association (ISA) and the American Political Science Association Annual Conference (APSA). The results of the project have been published with international publishers and journals. Some additional articles and reports are work in progress. We have also strived to reach a broader audience through lectures, symposiums and reports, including workshops and panels in Sweden (e.g. Almedalen 2015), the Nordic conference on mediation at the Danish foreign ministry (2018), and a workshop at the United Nations in New York (2018). A report for the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies is under contract and will be presented in 2019.