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.

This book 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 post-war 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—Matfess advances a theory to explain the post-war 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.