What happens when women reject the peace that is being built? Drawing on feminist ethnographic research in Kosovo, this article examines how feminist activists and peacebuilders challenge dominant understandings of post-conflict peace. Participants frequently describe a disconnect between the peace envisioned by political elites and the peace sought by many women whose concerns centre on gender-based violence, exclusion, everyday insecurity, and structural inequalities. I conceptualise this dominant post-conflict order as masculinist peace: a peace shaped by male-dominated political processes, state-centric security priorities, and the marginalisation of alternative experiences and needs. Against this backdrop, feminist activism emerges not as opposition to peace itself but as a challenge to the terms on which peace has been defined and implemented. Through protests, mobilisation, and demands for political inclusion, women contest the exclusions reproduced by masculinist peace and advance alternative visions grounded in everyday security, gender justice, and social transformation. By shifting attention from women’s inclusions in peace processes to the kinds of peace being produced, this article contributes to feminist debates on peacebuilding, security, and political resistance in post-conflict societies.
