Hilary Matfess, "After Liberation: Women and the Politics of Expectations in Rebel-to-Party Transitions" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Apr 5, 2026

Hilary Matfess, assistant professor studying gender and post-conflict politics, explores how wartime gains for women often erode after rebellions transition to parties. She discusses case studies from Ethiopia, Namibia, El Salvador, and Nepal. Topics include party- and individual-level choices to continue or moderate wartime roles, the fate of women’s wings, and implications for DDR and postwar policy.

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ANECDOTE

How A Chance Meeting Sparked The Project

Hilary Matfess traced the book's origin to a chance meeting in Addis Ababa where a feminist introduced her to her mother, a TPLF veteran, sparking interviews with many former female fighters.
Those interviews revealed a tonal shift from proud wartime stories to frustration with postwar political marginalization, which launched the research focus.

INSIGHT

Two Level Continuity And Moderation Framework

Matfess frames postwar change as decisions at two levels: party-level moderation or continuity and individual ex-combatant choices about which wartime gains to keep.
This two-level continuity/moderation framework explains divergent outcomes for women's rights and representation after war.

INSIGHT

Wartime Inclusion Does Not Guarantee Postwar Gains

Cross-national data showed a surprising pattern: parties that incorporated many women during war weren't necessarily the ones championing gender equality postwar.
The Rwandan Patriotic Front was tepid during wartime yet later produced high female parliamentary representation, contradicting simple expectations.

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War offers opportunities for women to liberate their communities and build a better life for themselves. When women join rebel groups, they often take on new roles, cultivate new social networks, and develop new skills. These rebel women often gain the respect of rebel leaders, their comrades-in-arms, and the communities they're fighting for. When the guns are silenced, however, women have struggled to maintain the progress and prestige that they gained during war. Hilary Matfess investigates the gendered legacies of conflict and considers why it is so difficult for female veterans to defend the gains they made during war.

After Liberation: Women and the Politics of Expectations in Rebel-to-Party Transitions (Stanford UP, 2026) by Dr. Hilary Matfess explores how both individual female veterans and former-rebel political parties balance the incentives to continue their wartime activities or moderate them to succeed in the postwar period. The particular balance struck—by party elites and by female veterans—shapes women's rights and representation after war. Drawing on cross-national statistics and in-depth qualitative case studies of rebel groups—from Ethiopia, Namibia, El Salvador, and Nepal—Dr. Matfess advances a theory to explain the postwar legacies of women's participation in rebellion at both the individual and the organizational levels. This book helps us understand why women that were once lauded as the backbone of the revolution are so frequently relegated to the backburner after war.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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