African women and peace education: Field experiences

Abstract

This chapter gives a critical examination of the role women play in promoting peace education using a gendered practitioner's perspective. Informed by the theory of change, the chapter utilizes bottom-based approaches to how women act as agents of change in promoting peace education in society. The chapter underscores how women are instrumental in using localized peace experiences to shape through socialization the behavior of children as responsible and active citizens in later life. The chapter conceptualizes peace education as a gendered process which is complex, dynamic, nonlinear, and interactive. The gendered nature of peace education allows women to amplify their voices while at the same time challenge the dominant perspectives aimed at totalizing and universalizing discourses and practices of peace education in society. Thus, by focusing on the gendered nature of peace education and amplifying the role of women as peace educators, the chapter seeks to engender new thinking into the theoretical and practical conceptualizations of peace and peace education within an African context.