Gender Dynamics During the Colombian Armed Conflict

Abstract:This article investigates gender dynamics during the Colombian armed conflict, where the ongoing peace process has had a unique focus on gender equality. Using a lens of militarized masculinity and original expert interviews with Colombian stakeholders in peacebuilding and human rights, the study analyzes how gender norms have been upheld and sanctioned in the context of conflict. Gender essentialisms have been reinforced by armed actors, with women’s and LGBT people’s bodies as central channels for reproducing traditional sociobiological roles. Expressions not conforming to the heterocisnormative gender order have been sanctioned with violence. While men have been disproportionally affected by combat violence, women and sexual and gender minorities have been more vulnerable to sexual violence and forced displacement. This militarization of gender norms in Colombia has constructed women’s and queer bodies as battlefields of war, severely undermining their safety, dignity, and autonomy.


Introduction
Past scholarship has revealed a complex relationship between gender and conflict.Some have argued that conflict polarizes gender relations: prewar ideals become militarized or patriarchal norms become exacerbated (Enloe 2000).Others have described the progressive effects of conflict on gender structures as "post-traumatic growth."Then again, the breaking down of gender hierarchies often links to violent backlashes (Rajasingham-Senanayake 2004; Sengupta and Calo 2016).In many settings, these processes occur simultaneously (Berry 2017).
Gender is relevant to understanding a social structure and hierarchy that shapes individual identities and lives, the distribution of material and cultural resources, activities of production and reproduction-and the various experiences from living in a conflict zone (Cohn 2012).An immense scholarship on gender and conflict has sought to understand the relationship of the military (institution), militarism (ideology), and militarization (material processes) with masculinity and patriarchal gender orders across multiple levels of analysis (individual identity, social/symbolic relations, and structure).In the Colombian context, scholars have analyzed gender dynamics during conflict in terms of, inter alia: women's disproportional experiences of displacement and sexual violence (Kreft 2020;Meertens 2001aMeertens , 2001b;;Meertens and Segura-Escobar 1996;Osorio Pe ´rez 2008;Wirtz et al. 2014), gender-based violence against women in the context of war (Kreft 2020;Laverty and de Vos 2022;Svallfors 2023), the male (Baird 2012;Browne et al. 2019;Theidon 2009) and female (Herrera and Porch 2008;San ın and Carranza Franco 2017) gender roles within and in relation to armed groups, and women's mobilization in response to violence (Kreft 2019).
To this literature, the present study adds an investigation into the gendered consequences of war, by looking at how gender norms have been upheld and sanctioned in the context of the Colombian armed conflict.I argue that only when transgressions of norms are sanctioned can the unwritten rules that prescribe roles associated with gender be unveiled (Cislaghi andHeise 2018, 2019).The material under study consists of expert interviews with representatives of governmental, civil society, and international organizations working in the field of gender, peace, and conflict in Colombia.These experts have unique access to specialized knowledge about gender dynamics during conflict in Colombia, which I analyze from the concepts of hegemonic masculinity coined by Raewyn Connell and militarization drawing on the work of Cynthia Enloe.This study aims to answer the following research questions: In what way have gender norms been shaped by conflict?What are the differential gender norms that are enforced and how?How does that differentially impact women and sexual and gender minorities (SGM)? 1  The study does not address the military as an institution or militarism as an ideology (cf.Herrera and Porch 2008;Howell 2018;San ın and Carranza Franco 2017), nor gender and peacebuilding (cf.Koopman 2020;Gonza ´lez Villamizar and Bueno-Hansen 2022).The Colombian conflict has gone on for more than half a century, and despite an ongoing peace process, attacks from armed groups continue to challenge citizen security.Hence, this study does not make any claims about the state of pre-or postwar gender relations (cf.Meger and Sachseder 2020).
Instead, the focus here is on the gender dynamics at play during the Colombian conflict.The analysis centers on social norms at the collective or structural level, i.e. of groups and communities, as an external code of conduct.In contrast, an analysis at the individual level would be useful to explore personal beliefs, perceptions of what norms are at play, and psychological mechanisms in the reproduction of norms (Cislaghi andHeise 2018, 2019).The investigation is limited to consequences of war for women and SGMnot because these are a monolithic group or because men cannot also be sanctioned for gender role transgressions, but because these groups are generally subordinated in a patriarchal gender regime where a militarized masculinity is more highly rewarded (Connell 2002).Even if some of the literature on gender and conflict has bearing on the impact of war on SGM-identified individuals, much has explicitly focused on cisgender 2 heterosexual women and is therefore not automatically transferable to SGM experiences.Heteronormativity and cisnormativity have gained less attention in conflict research, despite the connections between prejudice, anti-SGM ideology, and violence against SGM individuals (Daigle and Myrttinen 2018;Go ´mez 2013;Loken and Hagen 2022;Margalit 2019; for some notable exceptions, see Baca and D ıaz Villamil 2021;Colombia Diversa 2020;Gonza ´lez Villamizar and Bueno-Hansen 2022;Serrano-Amaya 2018;Tschantret 2018).This article thus contributes to theorizing by extending past scholarship on gender and war to also analyze the impact of conflict on SGM people, not only heterocis women.
The social upheavals that often follow conflict make it a strategic case of understanding gender norms, because the mechanisms and dynamics become more visible than in stable settings.Colombia is a particularly interesting case study because the ongoing peace and reconciliation process to end the very long-standing conflict has had a unique focus on gender.The results contribute to knowledge about the importance of contextual factors for individual lives and the intersections of war and gender dynamics.It adds to fundamental academic discussions about how dimensions of power such as militarization and patriarchy intersect, the relationship between agency and structure, and how different parts of society such as civilians and military organizations relate to one another.
As Colombia moves toward the postwar phase, the findings can be used to inform transitional justice processes with the goal of a gender-just peace.In Colombia and beyond, the results can inform policymakers wishing to promote the Sustainable Development Goals #3 (Healthy Lives and Well-being), #5 (Gender Equality), and #16 (Peaceful and Inclusive Societies).

Conceptualizing Gender Norms During Conflict
Social norms can be defined as the social and cultural unwritten rules that influence behavior by prescribing what is expected, allowed, or sanctioned (Cislaghi andHeise 2018, 2019).Gender norms, specifically, are defined by the "widely accepted social rules about roles, traits, behaviors, status and power associated with masculinity and femininity in a given culture" (Ka ˚gesten et al. 2016, 4).In this way, gender dynamics are a way of symbolically ordering power relations between different categories of people, based on ideas of how certain groups are associated with certain biological characteristics.Those ideas both shape and are shaped by war (Cohn 2012).
The concept of militarized masculinity has been widely used to understand gender dynamics in violent conflict, but its definition and usage vary substantially in the literature.For this study, I primarily draw on Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity and how Enloe has used the term militarization.As an exhaustive discussion of the range of meanings with which scholars have filled these concepts fall outside the scope of this article, the rest of this section defines how these central concepts are understood and used in the present analysis.
Connell's theory about hegemonic masculinity is based on the notion that while gender norms vary across space and time, there are always certain gender roles that are rewarded and valued higher than others.In many contexts, the hegemonic masculinity role is defined by societal dominance and power, which explains why in most societies men tend to maintain dominant roles over women and SGM (Connell 2002).
Since its inception in the early 1990s, Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity has been criticized (e.g.Chisholm and Tidy 2017;Demetriou 2001), revised (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005;Messerschmidt 2019), and incorporated into feminist international relations scholarship focused on militarized gender norms in contexts of armed conflict (Connell 2000).
Within this literature, Enloe's (2000) definition of the concept of militarization describes how things are infused by or depend on militaristic ideas, ideals, norms, or cultures or the military as an institution.In her own words, militarization is "a step-by-step process by which a person or a thing gradually comes to be controlled by the military or comes to depend for its well-being on militaristic ideals" (Enloe 2000, 3).The key point is that many things that are not related to militaries can be militarized.For example, a militarized man might be a man who wishes to emulate military ideals but is not participating in an armed group; it does not necessarily make him a military man.
Drawing on these concepts, I use the term militarized masculinity to describe how the soldier archetype is rewarded for its bravery, violent behavior, and powerfulness in settings of conflict.It is a gender role that is socialized through violent rites of passage, rewarding heroism, bravery, and discipline, closely related to the machismo ideal of what constitutes a "real man," by "stressing domination of women, competition between men, aggressive display, predatory sexuality and a double standard" (Connell 2002, 31).
As a social structure, all categories of individuals are constituted by and constitutive of the gender order in any given society.As discussed by Connell as well as de Beauvoir (2011), femininity is always constructed in parallel with masculinity.Thus, pervasive militarization not only affects masculinity but also has attendant effects on the socially acceptable or valued forms of femininity.Women's designated role in a militarized gender regime is often an emphasized femininity, in Colombia and Latin America represented by the Virgin Mary as conceptualized by the term marianismo, constructed alongside militarized masculinity in a complementary and subordinate relationship.The ideal woman is constructed as pious, emotional, virtuous, pure, passive, spiritual, vulnerable, compliant, kind, instinctive, and morally superior to men.
Pariah femininity, conversely, may entail enjoying sex outside of marriage, being physically tough or aggressive, or not adhering to the heterosexual norm and other aspects of the feminine ideal (Connell 2002;Schippers 2007).
A militarized gender regime demands different sacrifices and offers different rewards.It designates men a role of politics, arms, and glory, and women a role of family, mourning, and birthing (Cockburn and Zarkov 2002).The militarization of "gender roles not only prescribe[s] male violence as a means of establishing domination [. ..] but also legitimate[s] the subordination of women" (Melander 2005, 698).
Yet, these gender roles are not necessarily distinct from "peacetime" patriarchal gender orders.An unequal gender regime cannot be attributed only to militarization, because of the intricate relationship between militarization and patriarchy.Gender regimes in conflict contexts are thus not necessarily separate from or "worse than" gender regimes in so-called times of peace (Boesten 2012;Gray 2019).For instance, the militarization of gender ideals has been discussed also in relation to both nation-building, post-conflict, and gangrelated violence in El Salvador (Hume 2004), Mexico (Gamlin and Hawkes 2018), and Peru (Boesten 2012).Moreover, the machismo/marianismo duality are not the only available gender roles and not all live up to them nor strive to in Colombia.
Nevertheless, all must relate to these hegemonic ideals of masculinity and femininity in some way.A militarized gender order generally puts pressure on men to defend and protect women in times of war.So a man who does not participate in armed struggle may be deemed nonmasculine and become at risk of sanctions and stigma (Enloe 2002, 23-24).In other words, the narrow gender roles prescribed by militarized gender ideals may leave little room for individuals to express their gender and sexual identities in nontraditional ways, and by extension to live their lives the way that they want to and reach full personhood.
The militarization of gender dynamics is also not an inevitable consequence of conflict.As previously mentioned, war may also bring progressive transformations to the gender order.Such transformations may include gains in women's political representation (Anderson and Swiss 2014;Hughes and Tripp 2015;Webster, Chen, and Beardsley 2019), political mobilization (Cadena-Camargo et al. 2019;Kreft 2019;Meertens 2001a;Osorio Pe ´rez 2008), increased labor force participation (Cockburn 2007;Meertens 2001a), and reproductive agency (Jok 1999;Svallfors 2022).Moreover, heterocis boys and men may adopt coping strategies to avoid a designated role of violence (Browne et al. 2019).
Yet, the breaking of gender hierarchies often link to violent backlashes that reinforce patriarchal structures (Rajasingham-Senanayake 2004; Sengupta and Calo 2016) and thus produce vulnerabilities for women and SGM.In many settings of war, both progressions and regressions may occur at the same time (Alexander and Apell 2016;Berry 2017;Blumberg 2001).

Gender and Conflict in Colombia
The Colombian armed conflict is historically rooted in the unequal division of land and political influence, two key components of understanding vulnerability and violence in Colombia today.
It started in the mid-1960s, when left-wing guerillas inspired by the Cuban revolution sought to overthrow the state by the means of arms as a response to elitist, clientelist, and exclusionary bipartisan politics.The conflict has grown ever more complex over the decades, with the surge of powerful drug cartels and right-wing auto-defense groups, and armed actors creating local parastates in rural areas effectively replacing the functions of government.The cemented impunity for violence has further driven militarization, as a means of protection when the state has lacked the capacity to protect its citizens.Kidnappings, extortion, and drugs have constituted an insurgent taxation system, a driver of the privatization of violence, and a constant threat against civilians.Violence has been a driver of external and internal displacement, especially in areas of confrontation (so-called "sandwich areas") between guerrillas and paramilitaries (Franco et al. 2006;Jansson 2008).The displaced have most often lost land, resources, and social networks, threatening the survival of the communal identity of indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations.Most Colombians have lost friends or family to the armed conflict, which has brutally destroyed the everyday life of whole communities confined by armed actors (Cockburn 2007, 207;Franco et al. 2006).
In her seminal work on masculinity norms among ex-combatants in Colombia, Theidon (2009) discusses how security in Colombia is gendered.Joining a state or nonstate armed group has been the only way for many Colombian men to gain meaningful employment, with violent capital as their only marketable skill in a country with soaring unemployment rates where men are expected to provide for their families.Sustained by decades of armed conflict, a cultural and political economy of militarized masculinity has enabled upward social mobility and has provided a means of becoming respectable in the eyes of family and desirable in the eyes of potential partners.In this social context of pervasive violence and limited life choices "that fuses weapons, masculinity, and power, grabbing a gun is not necessarily an aberration" (Theidon 2009, 16-17).But in return, being "a good man" demands bodily and emotional indoctrination in the making of a soldier, as well as fulfilling a narrow role of aggressive heteronormativity that devalues characteristics considered feminine.
Men's militarized roles bring a sense of security to households and local communities, but also a domestication of violence that places women partnering with powerful gran hombres at risk of intimate partner violence (Theidon 2009;Svallfors 2023).Among civilian women, a relationship with a militarized man offers protection and provision; in the words of a male former soldier, because "[s]ociety has filled women's heads with the idea that they're the weaker sex" (Theidon 2009, 28).In other words, women also participate in facilitating militarized masculinity ideals that put themselves at risk of harm.Women are often dependent on their partner's income, thus making it very difficult to leave abusive relationships (Svallfors 2023).
Unlike most conflicts, the Colombian case is relatively unique in its high representation of female recruits in the guerrillas: almost one-third of the recruits in the largest guerrilla group FARC were women.Nevertheless, their breaking free of traditional macho culture pervading the Colombian countryside came at a cost of strict reproductive control (Herrera and Porch 2008).Female guerrilla members have been trained the same way as men, to remove feminine expressions and make them "just one more combatant."But upon returning to civilian life, female ex-combatants often face a large stigma due to their nonstereotypical gender performances, emphasizing again how the militarized gender order offers different rewards (or punishments) to men and to women (Theidon 2009).Women in or around the guerrillas have reported forced contraception, abortions, and adoptions because childrearing did not fit into the military lifestyle (Schmidt 2021;Svallfors 2021).Some women and men were granted permission to have relationships and some pregnancies were allowed to come to term, but many newborns were given away to relatives or allies of the guerrillas.Otherwise, their guerrillera mothers risked facing persecution by the guerrilla's informal judicial system (Svallfors 2021).
Alongside FARC's family planning regulation, both left-wing guerrillas such as FARC, right-wing paramilitary groups, and the national security forces have perpetrated homophobic and misogynistic violence selectively to persecute SGM and police gender norms (Colombia Diversa 2020; Go ´mez 2013; Serrano-Amaya 2018), which I will come back to in the analysis.
At the time of writing, there is an ongoing peace and reconciliation process in Colombia that has exceptionally focused on gender.During the peace treaty negotiations between the Colombian government and FARC in Havana, women were uniquely involved as representatives of government, guerrilla, and victims' organizations.Women's and SGM rights groups formed an important part in shaping the peace process.A formal subcommission was created to address the gendered consequences of war.About a quarter of the stipulations in the final peace accords have explicitly stated the need to consider gendered aspects of security and inclusion.Gender stipulations included, among other things, condemning sexual violence as a war crime without the possibility of amnesty after the ceasefire, guaranteeing women's right to land ownership, and integrating a gender perspective into the mandate of the Truth Commission (Salvesen and Nylander 2017).
Despite the support of the international community and civil society, including gender as a focal point for the peace accords did not pass unchallenged.Connected to a worldwide backlash against gender equality, reactionary voices pejoratively dubbed it "gender ideology" to argue that the whole peace process would lead to a collapse in moral values and a surge in gender-confused children.This propaganda campaign largely explains why the "No" campaign won in the peace accord referendum in 2016 with 50.2 percent of the votes, although voter turnout only reached 37.4 percent.
To satisfy the demands of public opinion, in the revised version of the peace accords ultimately ratified by the Colombian Congress in 2017, the gender-inclusive language was toned down, especially to avoid any references to LGBT rights.While women's rights were still unprecedently acknowledged by the final peace accords, inclusiveness of LGBT rights and experiences was not achieved to the same extent (Go ´mez and Montealegre 2021; Mazo 2019).

Research Design
The gendered approach to peace-making has been spearheaded by Colombian civil society actors, which is why their perspectives on gender dynamics in conflict are particularly relevant to this study.
The material used in this study consists of fifteen original expert interviews with stakeholders from civil society organizations, governmental institutions, and international development cooperation organizations in Colombia.These organizations provide many important frontline services for women and SGM individuals.For example, they provide accompaniment services after victimization to sexual violence, provide sexual and reproductive health services such as contraception, STI tests and psychosocial support, and monitor the peace process from a gender perspective.These organizations are also part of a feminist epistemic community concerned with supporting gender justice in and beyond conflict.
Experts hold a unique position between citizens and the state, which makes them important observers of how gender norms are shaped by violent conflict at a broader level.Because of their privileged access to specialized knowledge, expert interviews are thus often used to gain a comprehensive understanding of gender dynamics in conflict (e.g.Berry 2017;Kreft 2019;Skjelsbaek 2006).
The purposeful sample selection was based on word-of-mouth recommendations and chain referrals in Colombia and Sweden, the specializations of the stakeholders, and their willingness to participate.The respondents were sampled in the capacity of their professional roles, responsibilities, and functions in their workplaces.They held roles such as executive directors, communication officers, coordinators, human rights defenders, gender and/or peace consultants, experts, and advocates, researchers, and analysts.Many of them were lawyers, psychologists, or social workers by training.The respondents can be thought of as a panel with several decades of cumulative, situated knowledge of gender and conflict (Bogner, Littig, and Menz 2009).Data collection was limited to Colombia's capital Bogota ´where the conflict has been less active.This possibly lost some important perspectives from other parts of the country, but given the nationwide scopes of the sampled organizations, it likely did not substantially limit the material.
The interviews were semi-structured, including questions about the impact of violence on the organizations' work, provision of healthcare, and human rights.The interviews in English and/or Spanish were conducted from November 2019 to February 2020 (two of which were via video call), lasting between thirty minutes and two hours.
While collecting the material, I had a sense of reciprocity and collaboration from the stakeholders, who often requested to read my work or recommended other related literature (Berner-Rodoreda et al. 2018;Lather 1988).By adopting a role as a co-expert with similar specialist competence and normative background, I held a position in the middle of the insider/outsider continuum (Acker 2001).This positionality reduced the power differentials between researcher and respondent (Bogner and Menz 2009).
The analysis was based on an abductive approach, combining discovery and verification to make an innovative inference by looking at the consequences of conflict for gender dynamics.In other words, the analysis was shaped both by the empirical material and past scholarship (Tavory and Timmermans 2014).Thematic analysis was used to sort through and examine the data in three steps.First, I familiarized myself with the data by taking notes during data collection and transcription of the full interviews in the original language.Second, the material was coded inductively with shorthand labels to describe and condense its content.Codes were developed prototheoretically either from key domains of the interview guide or in vivo from the transcripts.Next, codes were either combined into broader themes or discarded.Throughout the analysis, the quality and accuracy of the codes and themes were checked in relation to the transcriptions while also exploring the range and relationship of the codes to one another and to theory.Third, representative quotes were edited for grammar and presented to illustrate the themes based on the key concepts and previous research.I moved iteratively between the three steps to produce and reproduce coding schemes, select relevant quotes from the material, and analyze the material assisted by theory and prior research (Ayres 2012).
Names or descriptions of participants and organizations were not disclosed to avoid social desirability bias and safeguard respondent privacy, even if many said anonymity was not necessary.Some respondents identified themselves as victims of conflict, without elaborating upon or being inquired about those experiences.The Truth Commission and other forums in Colombia, in which several of the sampled organizations take part, offer important spaces for personal experiences of conflict.The material was thus limited to participants' professional knowledge.

Analysis
The four themes presented in this analysis are based on my interpretation of the sorted material using the concept of militarized masculinity.First, the theme, "militarization of gender deals," discusses the differential gender norms that have been enforced in the context of conflict, and how, by focusing on sanctions and punishment of perceived norm transgressions.The second theme, "gendered impacts of war," describes the differential impact of conflict on women and SGM.Finally, "nuances in gender dynamics" problematizes the notion of vulnerability as equal to disempowerment, and "keys to success" identifies the ways through which the stakeholders believed that gender equality could be improved in Colombia.The quotations presented below have been edited for grammar and translated from Spanish by the author in relevant cases.

Militarization of Gender Ideals
Women's and LGBT people's vulnerability is, in both peace and war, often situated in body and relationships.Within and beyond conflict, Colombia has one of the highest levels of femicide in the world (Alvazzi del Frate 2011) and a high prevalence of intimate partner violence against women that has been linked to war (Svallfors 2023).Similarly, violence against SGM individuals takes place within and outside the realm of war (Colombia Diversa 2020; Go ´mez 2013).One government representative, focused on the peace process from a gender perspective, identified the links between militarization and patriarchy while describing the impact of conflict on women's and SGM's lives: Colombian society and much of Latin America are very patriarchal.If you ask me, the first way women and LGBT people have been affected by war is in their autonomy.Their organizations.Their leaderships.And of course, sexual violence.Because it affected mostly women and LGBT people as a way of punishment, as a war strategy.(Participant 5) Sexual violence was identified as a sanction as well as a military strategy.The stakeholder reports indicate that due to the patriarchal gender order in Colombia, women and LGBT people were purposefully attacked in their social and body rights.These dynamics reiterate how gender norms are often deeply entrenched in attitudes to sexuality, body, honor, and shame (Cislaghi andHeise 2018, 2019).
A reproductive rights activist described wartime violence against women as an exacerbation of gender norms related to bodies and dignity: Armed conflict exacerbates violence against women.And it exacerbates fundamentalisms that are based on women's bodies.It turns them into a weapon for the perpetrators to end and structure communities and families, the dignity of towns.(Participant 4) The stakeholder reports pointed toward how individual experiences of war have been shaped by gender inequality centered on gendered sociobiological roles.In the machismo/marianismo duality, there is little or no room for alternative gender expressions, thus creating dangers for those who breach the traditional gender norms in a context of widespread violence.As narrated by a coordinator of a feminist peace organization, We were exposed to really straight gender roles and things you have to do as women.That is why being a leader as a woman was so punished by the armed actors.They try to make it so that women remain to do things like women, so lesbians were violated, women leaders, women who don't fit into the gender role.(Participant 3) Gendered social norms influence behavior by prescribing what is expected, allowed, or sanctioned (Ka ˚gesten et al. 2016).According to the interviewees, sexual violence has functioned as a hate crime against women and SGM in Colombia, since it has carried the meaning of punishing gender norm transgressions.This may be interpreted as an enforcement of gender essentialisms by armed actors, with women's and SGM bodies as central channels for reproducing traditional sociobiological roles.A representative from an LGBT rights organization described the collective and symbolic connotations of violence against SGM, a selective targeting based on bodily and gender expressions: Sexual violence has an impact on other people too, not only the direct victim but also on other people in the community.They are very aware that this violence is not just individual, it's collective.What is punished with the violence is what they represent, what the perpetrator thinks about that specific representation of the body, of the gender expression.(Participant 15) As reported by the interviews, behavior and expressions not conforming to the heterocisnormative gender order have been sanctioned with violent oppression, including but not limited to threats and acts of physical and sexual violence, kidnappings and forced disappearances, and attacks against family members.Sexual violence also has an "afterlife" affecting the community beyond the victim themselves.As described by one stakeholder, sexual violence communicates a very effective message of what is not desirable in a specific context.This indeed suggests that gender norms are highly militarized in Colombia, due to the severe sanctions facing perceived transgressions of gender norms (Connell 2000).
The same LGBT rights advocate continued to describe how sexual violence against SGM perpetrated by armed actors has been filled with gendered symbolic meaning, based on the notions that women are subordinated in the gender hegemony: I have testimonies of LGBT victims that told me that when they were being raped, the perpetrator would tell them: "If you want to be a woman, then suffer like one," telling them that this is the kind of violence that women are supposed to experience.(Participant 15) The stakeholder reports showed that in Colombia, as in many other armed disputes, the widespread use of sexual violence has often symbolized an attack on current and future family formations as well as men's incapability to fulfill hegemonic masculinity ideals as protectors of the family.It has not only reasserted gender hierarchies but also represented an attack on women's and LGBT people's bodies and sexual autonomy.That way, sexual violence symbolizes power, morality, and the relationship between masculinity and femininity; an expressive and expropriating cruelty directed toward the eyes of the public.It is thus not simply a matter of collateral damage, but deeply embedded in repertoires of domination (Bergoffen 2014;Segato 2016;Serrano-Amaya 2018).

Gendered Impacts of War
This section describes the differential impact of conflict on women and SGM, to further illustrate the ways through which the effects of conflict are gendered, based on rigid and strictly enforced gender norms implemented by armed groups.
The stakeholders unanimously reported that the impacts of war differ between genders.Given gender differences in social roles, heterocis men have been more directly exposed to war, as the main perpetrators, witnesses, and victims of violence.Women's and SGM individuals' exposure has been more indirect, since these groups have been disproportionally vulnerable to conflict in terms of sexual violence and forced displacement.As aptly described by a coordinator of a feminist grassroots network: The armed conflict affected women and men in different manners.Undoubtedly, men were the majority of the dead and women were left alone or displaced.Not only because of the death of their spouses, but also because of the risk of sexual violence from armed actors against their daughters and themselves.(Participant 8) According to the interviewees, armed groups used LGBT people as servants, as messengers or for performing care-related work including cooking, cleaning, or healthcare.The stakeholders believe SGM individuals were used this way because of their inherent vulnerability; no one will miss them when they are gone.When these individuals were no longer useful, they were cast out or murdered.All armed groups have also purposefully targeted HIV-positive individuals with deadly violence, which is why many have gone to other cities or neighboring countries for treatment.
The conflict-related violence and discrimination facing LGBT people in Colombia have severe repercussions on their social, mental, and physical health.The interviewees described that many LGBT people faced with displacement have been forced into sex work for survival.The victim-blaming and stigma following sexual violence severely limit their ability to freely express their gender identity and sexual orientation, causing many SGM individuals to revert to more traditional expressions.According to an LGBT rights advocate, the guilt and stigma facing LGBT people represent a retraumatization following victimization: Sexual violence also affects their view of themselves, because they don't feel comfortable with their bodies, because they have this guilt that is fed by the society that tells them: "Why are you so gay?Why are you so feminine?If you weren't so feminine maybe this wouldn't happen to you." (Participant 15) The selective targeting of SGM individuals by armed groups has been referred to as prejudice-based violence or political homophobia in previous research on violence against LGBT people in Colombia (Baca and D ıaz Villamil 2021;Colombia Diversa 2020;Go ´mez 2013;Serrano-Amaya 2018).
In addition, the interviewees describe that this targeting of SGM has led to a notable sense of distrust for many individuals.Since being open about one's gender and sexual identity creates risks of severe violence, many LGBT people hide their identity.They fear building new relationships because it may create gossip; better not trust anyone.By extension, this leads to many SGM individuals living in isolation and fear.
Women's and SGM individuals' more indirect exposure to conflict opens them up to a different kind of vulnerability in comparison to heterocis menamong other reasons mentioned by the stakeholders, because of overrepresentation in internal displacement, care responsibilities, and less access to capital, social goods, and legal protection.While men have been the main victims of battle events and homicides, displacement and widespread sexual violence that was until very recently not an item on the security agendas of states have seriously compromised women's and SGM's safety.Women have also been indirectly affected by a loss of income because men have traditionally been the main breadwinners.Economic hardship as well as acts and threats of sexual and nonsexual violence have been two primary drivers of rural-to-urban displacement.These findings suggest that the consequences of war are indeed gendered in Colombia because of the differential impact on women and SGM, as also discussed in previous research (Meertens 2001a(Meertens , 2001b;;Meertens and Segura-Escobar 1996;Osorio Pe ´rez 2008;Serrano-Amaya 2018;Wirtz et al. 2014).

Nuances in Gender Dynamics
My analysis has so far focused on women's and LGBT individuals' vulnerability to conflict.The concept "vulnerability" routinely implies a lack of agency and creates a gendered victim-agent dichotomy between (female/ SGM) vulnerable/disempowered entities and their (heterocis male) "nonvulnerable"/empowered Other (Cohn 2014;Enloe 2000).Even though gender essentialisms and militarization seem to be intricately connected, some women may be positively affected by war, when it disrupts and challenges old structures and provides new spaces of agency.The stakeholders described how conflict has also opened new spaces for women's agency as heads of households, breadwinners, and political leaders.The same developments for LGBT people were not mentioned, however.
A women's rights advocate described the division of labor within conflict between men as armed actors and women as rebuilders of the community: While the men took up arms for different reasons, those of us who rebuilt towns, those of us who were there weaving the social fabric after, for example, a massacre or an armed group planted a bomb or all these horrible things-were the women.(Participant 12) But the breaking of traditional gender roles has often been stigmatized or attacked, representing a backlash to development (Meertens and Segura-Escobar 1996;Rajasingham-Senanayake 2004;Sengupta and Calo 2016) or what is perceived as pariah femininity (Connell 2002;Schippers 2007).A gender and conflict expert from a nongovernmental organization pointed out that sexual violence functions as a particular threat against women as social leaders: There is a very, very difficult situation for women leaders.There is a particular threat to them that is different from what it is to men and that is because these threats are generated with sexual violence against her or her relatives.(Participant 7) While there have been gains in women's representation as social leaders, those leaders are often met with threats of sexual violence.Female leaders often have a more difficult situation because they cannot as easily flee from an area where an armed group threatens them or their family members because they are the primary caregivers of children, and leaving would breach the social responsibility coming with this role.
In other words, both progressive and regressive shifts in women's rights have taken place in the Colombian armed conflict, as in other settings such as Rwanda and Bosnia (Berry 2017).These examples serve to illustrate how war is not uniformly detrimental to gender equality-but may also disrupt rigid gender structures in a way that opens new opportunities for progress.

Keys to Success
The stakeholders clearly identified ways through which they believed that gender equality could be improved in Colombia.Above all, since women's and SGM people's self-determination has been directly targeted by conflict, their agency is one of the central keys to improving their lives.This final theme summarizes the keys to success identified by the stakeholders, which may be used to inform context-relevant policy interventions.
While the experts described women and SGM as particularly and uniquely vulnerable groups to the hazards of war-such as displacement and sexual violence-it is obvious that they did not consider them as passive victims in need of saving.Rather, the most important step in conflict reparations is to strengthen self-efficacy on both the individual and political levels.Economic empowerment was mentioned as crucial, so that those affected by war feel that they can contribute and be valued.Traditionally, women's labor market contributions have not been recognized in Colombia, and many women and LGBT people have met challenges in finding decent and stable jobs.
The responsibility of the state to strengthen human rights and a minimum level of social welfare was discussed, among others by a social worker involved with accompaniment services for victimized women: To ensure that the issue of rights in general-human rights-are guaranteed by the state.I would say that an important point is that so many issues are related to education, health and work.They are essential to guarantee life and dignity because they are the minimum that we need.(Participant 10) Keys to success identified by the stakeholders include recognition of women's and SGM people's full and equal citizenship, the right to dignity and sustenance, a life free from violence, and reparations in the form of armed actors acknowledging the crimes they have committed.According to the experts, these aspects are well captured in the four mechanisms of truth, justice, reparation, and nonrepetition permeating the Colombian peace strategy.One stakeholder described how the victim-blaming in the Colombian society emphasizes the need for these post-conflict repairs: There is a discourse in Colombia: "If you're a victim it's because you have some sort of relationship with the armed groups or because you did something wrong."That's not true!Sometimes I was doing nothing wrong, and the conflict just affected me so hard.So the most important need, besides the recognition and the acknowledgment of their humanity, is to place the guilt in the right place.They need the country to know that they weren't guilty of anything.(Participant 5) Understanding gendered vulnerability is a matter of recognizing the situated social and institutional circumstances that individuals face in a given context (First, First, and Houston 2017;N ı Aolain 2011).The stakeholder reports emphasize that vulnerability does not equate to passiveness or helplessness, but that individuals and households are differently affected by harmful experiences-such as armed conflict-because of structural, institutional, and situational conditions or root causes that intersect with one another.Thus, acknowledging the complexity of conflict and the intricate balance between vulnerability and agency is necessary for a comprehensive understanding of war-affected women's and SGM people's needs.

Implications
This study explored gender dynamics in the Colombian armed conflict.The analysis showed that while men have been disproportionally affected by combat violence, women and SGM have been more vulnerable to sexual violence and forced displacement.Gender essentialisms have been reinforced by armed actors, with women's and LGBT bodies as central channels for reproducing traditional sociobiological roles.Expressions not conforming to the heterocisnormative gender order have been sanctioned with violence.Even if there have also been progressions in women's empowerment, transgressions against traditional gender norms have been sanctioned with violence and ostracism.In the Colombian context, thus, women's and SGM bodies have been constructed as battlefields of war, which has severely undermined women's and LGBT individuals' safety, dignity, and autonomy.In conclusion, gender norms are highly militarized in Colombia, since these have become infused by and dependent on the dynamics of war.
The sexualized and gendered aspects may not be the primary forces driving conflict, but nevertheless add to the devastating impacts on people living in war zones.Gender and sexual policies imposed by armed groups have been instrumental to their governance over territories and populations.Consequently, gendered violence and oppression are not collateral damage from conflict, but are at the core of the war system (Serrano-Amaya 2018).
What does this study change about how we understand the context of gender and conflict more broadly?The study showed how sanctions and punishments are used to enforce a patriarchal gender order during conflict, as well as the differential impacts of conflict on people who are subordinated in the heterosexist gender order.While the topics of gendered consequences of the Colombian conflict have been discussed in past research (Laverty and de Vos 2022;Meertens 2001b;Theidon 2009), this article contributes empirically and theoretically to the literature by showing how gender dynamics play out during war with grave consequences for those who do not conform to the narrow roles prescribed by a militarized gender regime.The study adds to existing scholarships on gender relations and violence in Latin America (Boesten 2012;Gamlin and Hawkes 2018;Hume 2004).
According to the stakeholder reports, sexual violence can be seen as an instrument used in the context of conflict to enforce gender norms, which causes serious harm to women's and SGM's lives and well-being due to the militarized gender regime.The targeting of sexual violence against women in their sociobiological roles carries ontological implications since "biology" is often equated with "natural" and "permanent."It leads to policy responses that use protection instead of transformation as tools for change and gives little reason to focus on external factors that created or exacerbated the vulnerability: structural issues such as lack of power, economic resources, or property rights, and situational issues such as being displaced from one's land because an armed group wanted control of its natural resources (Cohn 2014).It also obscures conflict experiences for SGM by focusing primarily on heterocis women's experiences, despite the many ways through which LGBT people are detrimentally affected by conflict (Colombia Diversa 2020;Go ´mez 2013;Serrano-Amaya 2018).
This article contributes to theorizing gender and security by extending past scholarship to also investigate the impact of conflict on SGM people, a group that has gone largely unnoticed in the literature on the impacts of conflict (Daigle and Myrttinen 2018;Loken and Hagen 2022).The analysis showed powerful sanctions against women and LGBT individuals in the context of conflict, which illuminates the ways in which the unwritten rules that prescribe gender roles are shaped by war.This collective or structural level approach displayed an external code of conduct prescribing very narrow gender roles with large implications for the lives of war-affected people.
The analysis did not focus on heterocis men's experiences, although men are sometimes also sanctioned for not fulfilling militarized masculinity norms (Enloe 2002, 23-24).Heterocis boys and men may also adapt coping strategies to avoid a designated role of violence (Browne et al. 2019).Future research would benefit from analyzing how boys and men navigate militarized masculinity norms in contexts of armed conflict and other crises, following up on Theidon's (2009) ethnographic work on masculinity norms among excombatants in post-peace-accord Colombia.
Each story of conflict is unique to its society and embedded in a particular history and culture.Nevertheless, contexts of crisis bear similar burdens that pose enormous challenges to the human condition: separation, anxiety, constraints, reprioritizations, and death.In those cases, it might not matter if the crisis stemmed from a natural, criminal, or political source.The experiences of people living in a place with recurrent natural crises may be similarly exposed to dangers and perils as those living in a place with protracted violence.The transferability of this study should thus not be limited to settings of conflict, but might also be extrapolated or contrasted to nature-made, criminal, economic and health crises including, but not limited to, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war on drugs in Mexico.
Governments and international development cooperation bear the primary responsibility for secondary prevention: to help ease the burdens and ameliorate the losses for those affected by conflict and crises.A human security perspective is necessary to build resilience toward and repair the damages of war.Those initiatives need to consider that not everyone in a context of war is affected in the same way.Women and SGM individuals may be particularly vulnerable to the impact of conflict and in need of solutions that are tailored to those vulnerabilities.The reconstruction phase after a crisis, such as Colombia's current peace process, is a crucial moment in time for successful secondary prevention.
National and international entities also carry a great responsibility of primary prevention: making sure violence does not occur in the first place.In part, it requires making security a public-not a private-good, and reconstructing society without compromising on transitional justice or human rights.Peace-building efforts at local, national, and international levels are crucial to protecting the health and lives of people living in war zones.Academic research can make a significant contribution to those efforts by empirically addressing the human consequences of conflict and crises to promote the construction of more peaceful, equitable societies.This article has offered one piece to that puzzle.