Building peace requires gender equality
The Asterism Initiative builds solidarity at the intersection of women's rights, conflict transformation, and geopolitical change.
The Asterism Initiative works at the intersection of women's rights, conflict transformation, and geopolitical change. The core of the work is threefold: rigorous analysis of who holds influence in a changing peace and security decision-making landscape; deliberate solidarity infrastructure for women peacebuilders to share information and develop strategy across regions and contexts; and policy and strategy work that translates the above intelligence into discussions with decision-makers through publications, private briefings, and advisory relationships.
Asterism provides connective tissue: it exists to support networks, strengthen connections, and translate field intelligence into policy that serves the people doing the work.
The Initiative
The Asterism Initiative is organized across three interconnected areas of work. Each is grounded in the work of women peacebuilders and designed to serve their strategic interests, not substitute for their voices.
Strategic Intelligence
The Asterism Initiative produces rigorous, usable analysis of the changing peace and security landscape, keeping these insights current and translating them into practical strategic guidance.
Solidarity Infrastructure
Women peacebuilders from local to global contexts consistently identify the same need: genuine connection with peers to share information and strategies. The Asterism Initiative supports national and international solidarity, working to ensure these spaces are reliable in the long term.
Policy and Strategy
The gap between women, peace and security commitments and implementation is growing wider, not shrinking. The Asterism Initiative works to ensure stakeholders adapt their approaches to the current, evolving reality.
About the Asterism Initiative
The Asterism Initiative takes its name from the star patterns that exist outside official constellation systems: recognized and navigated by those who know the sky, but absent from formal maps. The work of women peacebuilders operates in a similar space: real, consequential, and largely invisible to institutional frameworks. Asterism is founded on the premise that building sustainable peace requires an approach built on relationships, field intelligence, and a clear understanding of how influence actually flows in conflict contexts.
Sarah Taylor, founder of the Asterism Initiative, brings over twenty years of senior experience on Women, Peace and Security, including as Executive Coordinator of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, WPS Advocate at Human Rights Watch, founder of the WPS program at the International Peace Institute, Director at Inclusive Peace, and WPS specialist at UN Women. She founded Asterism in direct response to the priorities identified by women peacebuilders and women-led organizations: work grounded in the realities of the current moment, that takes a political, women’s rights based approach to peace and security.
The Initiative was developed and is supported by Asterism Advising.
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