SWANEE HUNT, left, a lecturer at the Kennedy School, served as moderator of a panel yesterday that included BONG-SCUK SOHN, right, the first woman to serve on South Korea’s National Election Commission.

Women can act as a bridge between warring parties in the world’s worst conflicts, a panel of women peace builders told an almost all-female crowd at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) last night.

The female ability to be neutral and to naturally attract people towards dialogue rather than aggression acts as a catalyst in conflict resolution, said the peace advocates from Sierra Leone, Guatemala, Iraq and South Korea.

The panel, moderated by KSG lecturer Swanee Hunt, was the concluding event of two days of seminars and workshops on the topic of women and peace, coordinated by the KSG’s Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP). WAPP’s stated mission is to incorporate gender perspectives into the public policy education that the school provides its students.

Joseph S. Nye Jr., dean of the KSG, pointed out that men have a tendency to use coercion in order to achieve control—a phenomenon Nye deems “hard power”—while women generally exude influence through consensus building—or “soft power.”Last night’s panelists used their personal experiences to illustrate what they perceive as a unique feminine ability for bringing about peace.

Luz Mendez, an active participant in the Guatemalan Peace Agreement process, spoke of the role of women in her country.

“Together with all city societies [women] asked for a creation of a table for a dialogue,” she said, highlighting the women’s ability to spark change through discussion.

Zainab Hawa Bangara from Sierra Leone, a former member of the U.N. Development Project Sierra Leone Task Force who has been an active fighter for decentralization of government and against poverty in her country, spoke of the particular power women had in mediation of conflict in Sierra Leone.

“We gave [the National Provisional Ruling Council—composed mostly of men] a hand of support,” she said. “We literally tell them how to run their offices.”

But women will only have limited ability to exercise this influence until they obtain political power through government positions, the panelists said.

Bangara’s South Korean counterpart, Bong-Scuk Sohn focused more on the problems women face when they attempt to run for public office.

“You have to have big money for [the] election or the support of 30 [men] behind you,” she said.

She pointed out the importance of lobbying in politics—in saunas and on the golf course, traditionally male domains.

To counteract this, she says, she has been convincing more women to run for office and training them to raise money and attract voters. She said her goal is to increase the number of women in the South Korean Parliament in the next election, from a mere 10 percent (23 out of 273) to at least 40 percent (70-79).

But she said she will have to fight even harder to combat the constraints of her predominantly patriarchal society.

“It’s very difficult for us [to get women to run for office] because of our culture and the totalitarian regime,” she said.