Although there is a growing body of feminist discourse establishing that war and peace are gendered activities, and consequently women's experiences, responses and needs are different, this is often overlooked by national and international policy-makers. Studies making visible the centrality of women's agency in peace building and the need to have women participate at the peace table are ignored by the dominant conflict, peace and security discourses. This paper maps the complex and variegated picture of civilian and militarised women's agency in moments of violent social transformation and the peculiarities of their languages of resistance and empowerment.