Risky Business: What Happens to Gender Equality and Women's Rights in Post-Conflict Societies? Insights from NGO's in El Salvador

Using the case of El Salvador, this paper explores how women's organizational skills developed in civil war translate into work in NGOs in the post-conflict struggle for rights. The paper briefly describes the gender stratification methodology used in the analysis and then presents the situation in El Salvador before, during, and after the war. After discussing how Salvadoran women, despite quite limited economic power, became a well-organized force that was strategically indispensable to the rebels during the war, the paper examines factors that contributed to the success of Las Madres Demandantes (LMD), an NGO focused on the single issue of getting child support payments to women. The experience of other NGOs in El Salvador is reviewed with respect to the factors that contributed to the success of LMD. In conclusion, a few lessons from the issues faced by the post-conflict women's NGOs in El Salvador are presented.