The process of building political agency among farian women in the FARC-EP: between guerrilla warfare and reintegration

• Grant number: 25/11323-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2025
• End date: August 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Marilia Carolina Barbosa de Souza Pimenta
• Grantee: Laura Tullio Amaral
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project seeks to investigate the construction and negotiation of the political agency and identity of farian women - the name applied to those Colombian women who participated in the armed conflict as combatants - from their insertion in the FARC-EP, both in the context of the guerrilla and in the process of building an insurgent peace, to the moment of socio-political reincorporation in the post-Colombian agreement. The research uses the Feminist Theory of International Relations with the studies of Jean Bethke Elshtain (1987), Judith Ann Tickener (1992), Cythia Enloe (2000 and 2019), Maria Lugones (2008), Darcy Leigh and Cynthia Weber (2018) to examine the tensions between gender, militarization, reproduction of patriarchal structures and the emergence of an insurgent feminism in the context of Colombia, challenging the logic that, historically, women have been marginalized in security and defense studies, and have often been represented as victims or secondary agents. The research therefore analyzes the challenges faced by farian women inside and outside the guerrilla, the strategies used to consolidate their participation in the political arena and the impacts of reintegration on their socio-political agency, based on a critical feminist literature review, documentary analysis of the 2016 Peace Agreement and official materials from the former guerrilla groups. By examining the contradictions between militarization and female emancipation, the study seeks to broaden the debate on gender, insurgency and pacification in Latin America through the lens of the consolidation of female agency in the territory, with the aim of deepening the understanding of the complex trajectory of women's agency within Latin American politics. (AU)