Women can play a greater role in peace building, EF panelists say
"If you have an idea for business, ask women for feedback on your business model, never men. Men have a fundamental flaw: deep in our DNA, we have a gene that makes us want to kill things". This is a quote from Guy Kawasaki, a specialist in start-ups who built his way through Apple, Google and many other well-known companies. 
 
Rebuilding peace after a conflict is a process very much similar to building a start-up and turning it into a large company – started with basically nothing; it often has a destiny of a lonely flower in the desert. It sees no rain of support, and many stones are thrown at it. What this process needs the most is enthusiasm that could fuel it. 
 
But where would this enthusiasm come from? Emma Ben Yedder, civil society leader in Tunisia and participants of the Eurasia Foundation Bill Maynes Fellowship, says women are the ones who bring enthusiasm and generosity to societies. Speaking at the Eurasia Foundation "Women for Change. Voices from the Middle East and Eurasia" event December 4 in Washington, DC, she said, women fuel all the constructive, positive processes in their societies, yet today they still need to fight for things that are obvious.  
 
Another Bill Maynes Fellow, Burcu Becermen from Turkey, an active participant of the Turkey-Armenia rapprochement process, says women are the moving power of post-conflict reconciliation. "They grieved over the deaths of their sons and husbands, they saw devastation, and they have had enough, so they are seeking peace like nobody else", she said, adding "I have seen women from Armenia and Azerbaijan, who suffered in the conflict, meet in Bosnia for Nagorno-Karabakh reconciliation discussions, and it was heartbreaking and powerful". 
But, Becermen says, the problem is, not so many women have a voice in political decisions, even if they are present in political processes, those aren't usually key positions. The more women are involved in these processes, the more likely there will be progress towards peace, she said. 
 
Gayane Mirzoyan from Armenia, one more Bill Maynes fellow, founder of TagInfo and an active journalist agreed that women are underrepresented in the region's politics. She said that, for example, in Armenia only 10% of the parliamentarians are women. 
 
Mirzoyan says the role of media in peace building is quite important too, and adds that many senior journalists in Armenia are women. She says that journalists should make sure their coverage of conflict-related issues is accurate and balanced as well as doesn't involve hatred. 
Speaking at the "Women for Change" panel Eurasia Foundation's MENA Director Maryam Abolfazli said that one more reason why women are great at peace building is because they are so much better than men at micro people-to-people interactions. 
 
But, no matter how much women could do, to actually move from hypothetical discussions to practice, women need to be represented more at all levels of the society, Becermen concluded. 

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