This study explores the drivers of participation and the roles women play within their communities in participating both formally and informally in community-based security groups. It seeks to understand how women are involved in community-based security groups by investigating and illustrating, among other things, their motivations and roles, the context, and the dynamics that underpin their participation in both the supply side and demand side of security provision. Based on extensive field research and an original dataset of interviews with a wide range of informal security actors, this research report offers two key findings to inform the work of policymakers and practitioners interested in security provision and peacebuilding.

First, while women continue to engage directly and indirectly with community-based armed and informal security groups with a wide range of motivations, their overall place in the landscape of these groups is in flux, and those who participate bear social costs for doing so. Second, women’s influence in shaping the trajectory of community-based armed and security proving groups extends not just to their roles as suppliers of security (or insecurity, in the case of some groups), but as demanders of security. These complex dynamics point to the fact that women’s roles as participants, organizers, and mobilizers/legitimizers in CBAGs in ostensibly post-conflict settings like Côte d’Ivoire are no less complex than in overt conflict settings.