I started this book with the question of what the gendered dynamics of current reparation and reintegration laws and policies on the ground are, and whether they effectively transform structural gender inequality, thus enabling communities to move forward. I have analysed this question through a gendered lens, looking at the impacts of conflict on men and particularly women, and how these impacts are addressed in the post-conflict situation to transform gender inequality and establish a more gender-equal peace. I wanted to understand why the increasingly popular gender lens in transitional justice (TJ) and other post-conflict reconstruction mechanisms often does so little to actually transform gender inequality and tends to have such disappointing results in preventing gendered violence in the postconflict situation. Therefore, rather than looking at sexual violence, often considered as the gendered harm produced by conflict which has become a hype in post-conflict reconstruction efforts in and beyond Colombia (Hilhorst and Douma 2018), I looked instead at the everyday gendered experiences in the conflict and post-conflict context, which enable an analysis of the deeper structures of gender inequality. In doing this, I have followed a long tradition in feminist research which looks at everyday experiences of oppression and inequality, since ‘the personal is political’ (Fonow and Cook 1991). Gender justice is a commonly used but rather vague concept which is understood differently by different actors. Through an intense and long-term process of engaging with women in Colombia, I have tried to identify what it looks like for them. They commonly expressed it in two words: salir adelante, or moving forward, which consists of gaining economic independence of their husbands through education and income generation, and becoming more active participants in their communities’ public sphere, breaking out of their often suffocating household roles.

I have examined how two crucial peacebuilding and reconciliation mechanisms, reparations and reintegration, fare at promoting this vision. Although reparations address the situation of conflict survivors and reintegration that of former combatants, which can produce tensions between these groups, the two mechanisms share the goals of turning both survivors and ex-combatants into equal citizens and restoring trust in the state and society.