Chapter 1 introduces the argument, summarises the findings, and describes the conceptual framework applied throughout the book to analyse UN mediation as a gendered-colonial institution. It begins by noting the slow progress of the WPS Agenda in UN mediation, which the scholarly literature has not adequately addressed. It also stakes out the significance of WPS in UN mediation for the realisation of women's right to political participation, the advancement of gender equality in post-conflict contexts, and the diffusion of international approaches to gender-sensitive mediation from the UN to other organisations. The next section discusses how UN mediation can be analysed as an institution and identifies the key concepts and techniques used in parsing its gendered institutional logics. It also argues for using decolonial concepts of gender in studying the UN. Next, the chapter describes the interpretive research design and considers the ethical and practical implications of this approach. Last, the chapter concludes with an overview of each chapter.

Chapter 2 provides background on the WPS Agenda and UN mediation. It first discusses the politics of the WPS Agenda in the UN by focusing on three main dynamics: how UN actors articulate what the WPS Agenda is, how the UN's mediation architecture has adopted the Agenda, and how actors within the UN resist the Agenda, both passively and actively. It then provides an overview of the UN's mediation role and how it is institutionalised. The chapter illustrates the different forms UN mediation can take by describing three processes that come up throughout the book: the Great Lakes of Africa (which deals with the national and regional dimensions of the conflict in the DR Congo), Syria, and Yemen. This chapter is especially useful for readers who may not be familiar with the WPS Agenda in the UN system and/or UN mediation.

Chapter 5 explores the logic of UN mediation as an ‘art’, which emphasises the fluid, contingent nature of mediation and prioritises relationships with negotiating parties. This chapter examines two core practices: emotional labour and discretion. The first section describes how UN mediators engage in emotional regulation to facilitate negotiations. The creation of emotional ties relies upon empathy and bonding in informal settings, which creates masculinised spaces that women have trouble accessing. In this case, the practice of empathy can be exclusionary. The second section examines how discretion – the choices mediators make about how to implement their mandates – is a key practice in UN mediation. How a mediator exercises their discretion is tied to their sense of political judgement. As such, using discretion unwisely can affect others' perceptions of a UN mediator's judgement. As WPS, especially the participation of local women, is often framed as showing partiality to one party over others, mediators are reluctant to use their discretion to advance the WPS Agenda. Instead, it is framed as a risk to the mediator's reputation for good political judgement and impartiality.

Chapter 6 analyses narrative representations of local women, who feature throughout UN mediation texts as ‘the women’. This subject position is multifaceted and articulated differently according to different logics of UN mediation. Especially within the logic of UN mediation as a science, ‘the women’ are expected to play a legitimating, information-providing role to support the UN. This is an extractive, rather than an empowering, relationship. UN narratives position ‘the women’s’ labour as central to mediation effectiveness, but they also question their abilities and authenticity as representatives of their communities. Capacity-building training is one method that the UN, and particularly gender advisors, use to discipline women into appropriate forms of participation. The logic of UN mediation as an art has less use for 'the women' in its narratives and instead questions whether they are 'political enough' to be appropriate representatives in negotiations. In turn, local women resist and navigate the subject position of ‘the women’ through strategic essentialism, critique, or opting out.

Sleep and epilepsy have bidirectional relationships, and various endocrine interactions. Besides the commonly observed increase in seizure frequency in association with sleep loss or with sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea, seizures themselves may lead to sleep fragmentation. Furthermore, nocturnal seizures may be associated with more severe and longer lasting respiratory consequences, as well as higher risk of sudden death. It is common for sleep to change during pregnancy in relation to endocrine changes and these changes may in turn affect seizure frequency. Overall, estrogens may have excitatory effects and may increase the consolidation of wakefulness and decrease REM sleep duration. Progesterone tends to have a sedative effect and the decrease in level may lead to more complaints of insomnia pre-menstrual and after menopause. Common sleep disorders are discussed. Obstructive sleep apnea becomes much more common after menopause, and sometimes may be seen in the third trimester of pregnancy as a result of weight gain. Restless legs syndrome is more common in pregnancy. Overall, insomnia is more common in women. Consideration should be given to comorbid primary sleep disorders whenever symptoms of insomnia or hypersomnolence are reported by patients with epilepsy.

Chapter 4 examines how the logic of UN mediation as a science produces and disseminates technical knowledge. It focuses on the practices of conflict analysis and the circulation of ‘best practices’ in implementing the WPS Agenda in Syria and Yemen. The beginning sections argue that conflict analysis produces instrumental knowledge about conflict by fixing actors and issues in a schema that is legible to interveners. It emerges from colonial schemes of knowledge production that diagnose the local sphere as lacking in capacity. As such, ‘gender-sensitive conflict analysis’ – a common tool for implementing the WPS Agenda in UN mediation – is subject to many of the same problems. The remainder of the chapter analyses the UN's institutional learning practices, arguing that its ‘best practice’ case studies of WPS in mediation depoliticise knowledge about gender, position the UN as the protagonist of women’s participation by erasing its own resistance to WPS, and diminish local women’s agency. Crucially, these best practice cases also elide ‘participation’ with ‘consultation’, undermining the WPS Agenda’s call for the meaningful participation of local women in UN mediation.

Enzyme-inducing antiepileptic drugs (EI-ASMs) such as phenytoin, carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine, and phenobarbital may decrease contraceptive efficacy. When considering contraception for women with epilepsy (WWE), the intrauterine device (IUD) is a first line choice. It is important to keep in mind that hormonal contraception with estrogenic components induces the metabolism of lamotriginePreconception counseling should be started early and revisited frequently for WWE of childbearing age. Pre-partum optimization of ASMs ideally should be done 9−12 months before a planned pregnancy. The majority of WWE are likely to have a safe pregnancy and a healthy newborn.

Chapter 8 draws together the major themes of the analysis and prompts further thinking on decolonial feminist modes of conflict resolution. This chapter concludes that the UN’s attempt to stay relevant through developing mediation expertise is counterproductive, and contends that it should instead adopt a solidaristic approach that foregrounds politics and aims to produce ‘knowledge encounters’ between different worlds. The bulk of the chapter discusses some principles for decolonial feminist approaches to mediation, which include encounters across different ontologies of peace, decolonising expertise, solidarity, and establishing relations of care and accountability.

Chapter 3 explores narrative struggles over defining UN mediation. It examines the discursive production of UN mediation as an institution, from its beginning as a series of ad hoc diplomatic engagements, to its institutionalisation in the 2000s. The chapter shows how we can observe over time the increasingly dominant construction of conflict as a technical rather than political challenge. The chapter traces these struggles by contrasting two key documents on the UN’s role in peace and security that appeared in 1992: UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali’s 'Agenda for Peace' and the UN Office of Legal Affairs' 'Handbook on the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes between States'. The differences between these documents illustrate the development of competing logics of UN mediation: that of mediation as an art, and that which sees it as a science. The chapter compares and contrasts the narrative features of these institutional logics, and discusses how they rely upon gendered-colonial assumptions about the nature of politics, violence, and agency that shape the incorporation of the WPS Agenda.

Chapter 7 explores how the logic of UN mediation as an art produces masculinities, particularly the subjects of ‘the mediator’, ‘conflict parties’, and ‘youths’. The first part examines the narrative representations of ‘the mediator’ as a political man who should show good judgement, have excellent interpersonal skills, and be spatially mobile. ‘The mediator’ has to be empathetic and good at listening – feminised traits that operate as capital for male mediators, but less so for women. In addition, the selection process for mediators draws from the masculinised professions of diplomacy and politics and the informal, male-dominated networks of diplomats at the UN. This chapter presents descriptive findings on the gender and career backgrounds of senior UN mediators. The second part of the chapter examines representations of local men. ‘Local men’ – often equivalent to the ‘conflict parties’ – function as the constitutive outside of ‘the mediator’. ‘Conflict parties’ are represented as emotional, traditional, and irrational, recalling colonial constructions of the ‘other’. Meanwhile, male ‘youths’ appear not as political agents, but as vectors of senseless violence. Thus, a colonial hierarchy of masculinities exists in which local men are subordinate to the mediator.

For many years, the reality about the role of women in American and southern history remained the absence of scholarship about women and the absence of women in the profession. The journey of women into the world of professional historians involved overcoming many stereotypes and prejudices. A few women emerged as professional historians who made major contributions into new areas of scholarship as early as the post-World War II years, but the ratio of women to men only began to increase in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Economist Claudia Goldin identified a “quiet revolution” of women entering the history profession between 1950 and 1970, which then exploded as women rushed into the profession in force during the 1970s. The influx of talented women opened new fields of study (women, family, social history topics, etc.). This chapter examines the influence of women who shaped new areas of study while also offering new perspectives on longstanding questions of broad scholarly interest.

This chapter explores the idea of gendered social performance through the texts of Plutarch and Sima Qian. Chandra Giroux investigates two categories of social performance in particular: friendship and authority, and death and grief. Both categories are approached from the perspective of each author’s own social performance in these scenarios as well as how they represent the social performance of women in them. Through an investigation of Plutarch’s and Sima Qian’s self-representations of their own social performances, she argues that both authors attempt to establish themselves as exemplary figures, ones that focus on the idea of the maintenance of harmony. In this way, Plutarch’s and Sima Qian’s actions are meant as a mirror for their readers’ own lives. In comparison, the chapter analyzes the examples of Timokleia and Timoxena in Plutarch’s corpus, as well as that of Nie Ying in Sima Qian’s work, to explore the authors’ notions of the ideal female reaction to friendship and authority, as well as that of death and grief. In this analysis, Giroux finds that both authors’ representations of women are based in the gender expectations of their respective societies. It is thus the differences between their cultures’ approaches to gender relations that dictate how Plutarch and Sima Qian understood the ideal female reaction to death, grief, friendship, and authority.