Internal displacement and post-conflict gender attitudes: evidence from northwestern Pakistan

Abstract

Despite the common understanding that armed civil conflict increases women’s vulnerability, scholarly debate suggests that women’s status in society improves after violence ends. This study sheds light on post-conflict institutional transformation using popular attitudes toward gender roles and relations. By focusing on the significantly overlooked displacement of nearly 5 million civilians in the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, this study presents powerful new survey data painstakingly gathered to assess the effects of this social upheaval on people’s attitudes regarding gender equality. The results suggest that individuals who experience displacement express greater support for gender equality in the conflict’s aftermath than if they do not experience it. Wartime displacement not only disrupts civilian activity but also exposes people to an external society. By interacting with out-groups, the displaced learn and benefit from ideas about gender roles and relations that contrast with long-standing patriarchal norms. Although gender norms are often persistent in a cultural setting, the empirical evidence suggests that being an internally displaced person is an acute event for civilians to amend their prior views on gender roles and relations.