Women's Learning for Community Peacebuilding

Peace and Conflict Studies Volume 32 Number 1 Article 4 June 2025 Women's Learning for Community Peacebuilding Robin Neustater St. Francis Xavier University, Follow this and additional works at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/pcs Part of the Adult and Continuing Education Commons, Peace and Conflict Studies Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons This Article has supplementary content. View the full record on NSUWorks here: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/pcs/vol32/iss1/4 Recommended Citation Neustater, Robin (2025) "Women's Learning for Community Peacebuilding," Peace and Conflict Studies: Vol. 32: No. 1, Article 4. Available at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/pcs/vol32/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Peace & Conflict Studies at NSUWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Peace and Conflict Studies by an authorized editor of NSUWorks. For more information, please contact . Women's Learning for Community Peacebuilding Abstract Around the world, every day, women work on building peace in their communities. Through various roles, paid and unpaid, women’s community care work is significant to the lives of individuals, families, communities, and the women themselves. Understandings of peace are varied, and often nuanced to the context and experience of who is defining peace. How women define peace will inform how they think about peacebuilding. Women engage in learning about peace and for their peacebuilding work, through nonformal and formal programs, and through experience and role models. Their learning to do peace is vital to getting things done. This article highlights key findings of an oral history study on women’s peace leadership learning which interviewed nine graduates of the Coady Institute based in Antigonish Canada. Their narratives highlight the importance of experiential, nonformal and formal learning, and having role models to support their ongoing learning to be peacemakers. Keywords Keywords: women, community peacebuilding, nonformal learning, experiential learning, storytelling Author Bio(s) Dr. Robin Neustaeter is an Assistant Professor of Adult Education at St. Francis Xavier University. Her teaching and scholarship examine adult learning theory and practice with particular attention to learning for social change, in particular women's peacebuilding. This article is available in Peace and Conflict Studies: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/pcs/vol32/iss1/4 Globally, women engage in a multiplicity of agentic roles advocating to end violence and poverty, address food insecurity and health inequity, and for peace and social justice in their communities, to name a few of the concerns addressed by women (Anderlini, 2007; Boulding, 1995; Cook-Huffman & Snyder, 2017; Neustaeter, 2015, 2020; Porter, 2013). Their involvement comes from an experienced or perceived need and the desire to do something about it (Dominelli, 2019; Cook-Huffman & Snyder, 2017; Neustaeter, 2015, 2016). Women have a long tradition of merging learning and leading community change (Clover, Butterwick, & Collins, 2016; Daniels, 2003; English & Irving, 2015; Stromquist, 2015); however, this adult education scholarship rarely explicitly focuses on peacebuilding. Women’s peacebuilding is a significant and under-examined learning site (Neustaeter, 2016). Recognizing and understanding the learning that happens for and through peacebuilding can support efforts to design and implement peace education programs for women that are responsive to their experiences and effective for their learning (Neustaeter, 2016, 2020). This study grew out of a curiosity stemming from my earlier doctoral study on women’s community peacebuilding in rural Manitoba, Canada (Neustaeter, 2016). Admittedly, while serene images of open sky vistas and rolling fields may conjure ideas of ‘peace and quiet’, the Canadian prairies do not immediately evoke images of peacebuilding. By applying a feminist concept of peace as the absence of direct, structural, and cultural violence, and the presence of social justice and caring, we can understand peace as dynamic and more than “not war”, as well as understanding that peacebuilding is more than stopping war or achieving the peace agreement (Boulding, 2000; Galtung, 1969, 1990; Vellacott, 2000). In response to violence and injustice, people dream, organize, strategize, and engage in activities to reduce violence and build peace to create the communities they wish to live in. Peacebuilding is a complex multi-dimensional project that can happen on many levels, including but not inclusive to international, regional, national, organizational, and group levels. The study described here focuses on women’s work to build peace at the local community level. I come to this research as a cis-gendered, heterosexual, rural woman settler of European descent who has lived and worked mostly in Canada. I have taught in different countries and in academic and community programs. Women’s community involvement has been a constant force in every community I have visited or worked, from Singapore to Sweden, Pakistan to Germany, and Jamaica to Croatia. Looking closely at my own experience, I see that the women in my family, past and present, have been or were community-involved, mostly through their churches, community clubs, or children’s schools. Through my observations as a volunteer addressing local needs and issues, I note women working in paid and unpaid work to address violence and injustice and build peace. In 2018, when I started working at the International Centre for Women’s Leadership at Coady Institute (the Coady) in Antigonish, Canada, I reflected on the questions informing my earlier doctoral study, including: how do women learn to build peace in their communities? This time, my questions could be answered by women graduates of the women’s leadership programs of the Coady from other countries. Founded in 1959, Coady Institute is “an adult education organization with the mission to work with community development practitioners around the world to create positive social change in their communities” (den Heyer, Smith, & Irving, 2017, pg. 1). The institute grew out of the Antigonish Movement which combined community engagement, non-formal adult education and economic development through consumer, producer, and housing cooperatives and credit unions to address the harsh socio-economic conditions in Nova Scotia, Canada, in the early 1900s (Dodoro & Pluto, 2012). The work and success stories of the Antigonish Movement spread, and soon people were coming from the USA, England, South Africa, and other countries to see what was happening. Currently, there are over 10,000 Coady graduates from 154 counties (Coady Institute, 2024). The institute focuses on four thematic areas: Asset-Based Community Development; Building Resilient Communities; Participation, Accountability and Governance; and Strengthening Local Economies. Its work has three main constituencies: Indige (...truncated)