Women in Cyprus

In this section you can find articles by (but not exclusively) Hands Across the Divide's members, regarding the condition of women in Cyprus.

 
 
 

Cross-ethnic contacts in protracted conflicts at the unofficial level a prerequisite for successful conflict resolution

By Maria Hadjipavlou

In the latest UN Secretary General’s Plan for a “Comprehensive Settlement of the Cyprus Problem,” (2003) one of the committees he suggested to be set up is the Reconciliation Commission with the primary task to promote understanding and a dispassionate dialogue between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots regarding the past by addressing historical perspectives, experiences and memories. This paper will reinforce this need and show that this reconciliation process has begun in the last twenty years, and more intensely in the last decade. Conflict resolution theories that address international conflicts from the micro level as well as the macro level broadens the space for citizens contribution to the reconciliation and peacebuilding process, a factor which the mainstream international relations perspective does not do. The paper will present and analyze these citizens efforts giving selected examples from cross-ethnic meetings, workshops and encounters. What the process used and the products which were jointly created and their implications for policy making will also be discussed. The obstacles encountered and the role of third parties will also be addressed.    Read all.

 

Cypriot Women's Initiative and Interventions for Peace and Gender Equality

By Maria Hadjipavlou

Men and women are assigned different roles and responsibilities regarding decisions to engage in armed conflict. Women are also absent when peace is to be decided. The impact on men and women also differs. Women have lower representation in political parties, elite groups, in parliaments, in the executive, judicial institutions, business organisations, or at the negotiating table, not due to lack of interest on the part of women but due to the structural violence in place, situational constraints or religious/traditionalist beliefs.    Read all.

 

 

Drawing Lines and Marking Otherness: Women, Gender and the 'Cyprus Problem'

By Cynthia Cockburn

In the disciplines of history, international relations and peace studies, in anthropology and sociology, many research hours have been spent in trying to achieve a fuller understanding of the colonial and ethno-national conflict of Cyprus. Placed in the balance against the weight of this scholarship, much of it ‘insider research’ by perceptive people living in or brought up in Cyprus (just a few of whom are listed in the select bibliography attached), the study I am going to discuss in this paper is slight. But it is I think original, in attempting something not done till now: using a gender optic, women’s perceptions and a feminist standpoint, to reveal more about conflict and partition in Cyprus.   Read all.
 
 
 

Gender, Conflict and Peace

By Maria Hadjipavlou

Conflicts and wars are gendered, feminist theory teaches us.. This means men and women have different roles and responsibilities during international or ethnonational conflicts. Conflicts and wars use and maintain the ideological construction of gender in the definitions of masculinity and femininity. It means that men go to war to defend national/state values, territories, and borders and protect and defend their own“ women and children’. Women are seen in the role of ‚the protected and the defended’ which results in women’s role of “surviving the violence” and “patching and mending the war-torn societies”, according to Cockburn, instead of equal participation in contributing to the democratic development and creating human security for all.    Read all.

 

 

Imagining a post-Solution Cyprus: the Gender Dimension.

By Hands Across the Divide.

The Annan Plan for a future Cyprus uses the words ’a new state of affairs’. A careful reading of the Plan shows that what is intended for Cyprus is a transformed relationship between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, one which is: equal, respectful, communicative and non-violent. In this paper we put forward a thought never expressed by the entirely male teams of politicians negotiating peace: may we not at this self-same moment, when change is in the air for ethnic relations, call for ‘a new state of affairs’ in gender relations? Could we not expect that relations between women and men in the future might also differ from the past, using these very same terms? Have we not a right to expect that our relations as women and men are every bit as equal, respectful, communicative and non-violent as relations between Turkish and Greek Cypriots (hopefully) will be?    Read all.
 
 

No Permission to Cross: Cypriot women's dialogue across the divide.

By Maria Hadjipavlou.

Abstract    Much scholarly attention has been given to the study of the gendered aspect of ethno-national conflicts trying to understand the experiences of men and women in a conflict situation and to what extent these shape different types of intervention for peacemaking and peace-building. Are women’s experiences of conflict different from men’s? Do women have a different voice than the mainstream dominant discourses produced by patriarchal systems? Do women in conflict societies respond to militarism and the violation of human rights differently from men? Are women’s needs for identity and peace different depending on which ethnic–religious group they belong to? Are their needs different from those of men? This article will try to answer the above questions focusing on a feminist understanding of conflict in Cyprus.   Read all.

 

 

Peace Movements in Cyprus

By Pembe Mentesh

Today, Nicosia in Cyprus remains the world’s last divided capital city. In the last year, its barricades and
checkpoints have provided the backdrop for the island’s largest mobilisation of civilians on each side of the
divide, since partition occurred in 1974. The peace movements in Cyprus are striving for a united,
democratic Cyprus in the lead up to accession to the European Union. Their role is to challenge the existing
power politics paradigm, revive collective identity, and demonstrate the need for peaceful co-existence if
Cyprus as a whole, is to become a legitimate member of the international community.   Read all.

 

The Visibility and Civil Participation of Women in Cyprus.

By Magda Zenon.

Cyprus is a divided island in conflict. And as is common in such societies, women’s issues and voices are usually silenced as the national issue takes precedence over all other questions.

Everything in Cypriot society is viewed within the narrow focus of “the national problem”, and all-important issues in daily life, including health, education, women’s development and gender discrimination, do not get the attention they deserve or are marginalized. This identification with the national problem and with specific ethnicity in a patriarchal society such as Cyprus deprives women of other choices in relation to their self-definition as individuals or as a part of a gender group. It is thus not surprising that gender inequality has never been addressed as a social and political issue. The conflict is viewed as genderless, implying men’s and women’s experiences of the conflict are the same, or if they are seen as different, only the official male discourses are heard.   Read all.

 

 

UNSCR 1325 in Cyprus

By Magda Zenon and Maria Hadjipavlou

Since 1974 Cyprus has been a divided island, with the south (the Greek Cypriot side) being under effective control of the government of the Republic of Cyprus, and the north (the Turkish Cypriot side) controlled by a Turkish Cypriot Administration and the presence of the Turkish army. Since
March 2008 peace negotiations for a comprehensive settlement have been held between the leaders of the two main communities in Cyprus under the auspices of the special representative of the United Nations in Cyprus. The first phase of the negotiations ended in early August 2009.
The second phase, which has been labelled ‘a give–and-take’ process, began in early September. During the early months of the first phase, working groups and committees of experts were set up by the two leaders to facilitate work in the various sections of the negotiations, such as governance, property, security, the EU, and cultural heritage. What is evident from the composition of these working groups is the negligible presence of women.   Read all.

 

What Vision can Women Bring to the Peace Process?

By Cynthia Cockburn

I'm very happy to be here in Cyprus after a break of four or five years. The time that I was closely involved with you all, when I was doing research here, was between 2001 and 2003. I'd arrived at a time when the partition was total, when the line was something that, although I myself could cross whenever I wanted, on foot, carrying a British passport, very very few Cypriot people either of North or South could, or would choose, to do so.  Read all.


Women of Cyprus at the Crossroads between Traditionalism, Modernity and Post modernity

By Maria Hadjipavlou.

Human experience is gendered and this understanding is central to the radical implications of feminist theory, which emerges from and responds to the lives of women. The recognition of the impact of gender and an insistence on the importance of the female experience have provided the vital common ground for feminist research and thought. Listening to women’s voices, studying women’s writings, and learning from women’s experiences have been crucial to the feminist reconstruction of our understanding of the world. Women’s personal narratives are, among other things, stories of how women negotiate their “exceptional” gender status both in their daily lives and over the course of a lifetime (Cao et al., 1984; Personal Narratives Group, 1989: 4-5).  Read all.
 

The World of New Parents

By Pembe Mentesh

Surveys can reveal a lot about a specific topic, and provide significant insight into the way society thinks and feels. What was unexpected from this particular survey was the wonderful anecdotes and stories that Cypriot women shared about their birthing experience and the early months following the birth of their baby.

Whilst the survey did not receive enough responses to qualify as a statistically representative research, it did reveal some trends and practices which are worthy of further research, investigation and follow-up action.

This article presents some of the main findings and shares some of the real experiences and comments that came out of the survey. It also highlights differences between the birthing experiences of Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot women.  Read all.

 
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