Swanee Hunt says that women worldwide have taken courageous and extraordinary steps to end violent conflict, and she should know. The former US ambassador to Austria helped forge peace in nearby Bosnia in 1994. She hosted negotiations among sparring factions, stocked shelves at the demolished Sarajevo-based National Library, and even replanted trees in the decimated countryside. Because of her work, Hunt was named the "Woman of Peace" by the Rome-based Together for Peace Foundation. On February 14, Hunt, who now teaches at Harvard and serves as director of the Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program, will lecture on the crucial, but unnoticed, role that women have played in troubled spots around the globe. The Phoenix caught up with Hunt at Harvard’s Women Waging Peace, a project devoted to recognizing women’s contributions as "peace builders."

Q: Give us a preview of your February 14 lecture.

A: I’ll talk about the unusual role women play as peace builders. Women have been working as parliament members, grassroots organizers, investigative journalists, and mothers to encourage people in violent situations to rethink conflict. They’ve been doing it for centuries. The Aristophanes play Lysistrata describes how women in ancient Greece threatened to withhold sex from their husbands if they didn’t stop fighting.

Q: How have women historically been overlooked in matters of foreign policy?

A: Foreign policy is a club. Men have made the decisions and have invited those who look and think like them. It’s natural. In 1994, I hosted negotiations around the Bosnian conflict. Sixty people were sent to Vienna from different factions. Out of them, zero were women — even though Yugoslavia had a higher percentage of women PhDs than any European country. This isn’t about whether there are competent women. It’s about who’s inviting people to the table.

Q: What unique qualities do women bring to war-torn situations?

A: Women tend to be relational. They build connections, tell stories. They play this role in their communities. They also tend to be outside power structures. So they develop innovative ways in which to see a situation. Their second-class citizenship can work in their favor. We have a Palestinian woman who heard some Israeli soldiers shooting at an intersection. She ran up to them, stuck her hand in their faces, and said, "Stop. Let these children cross." Now if she’d been a Palestinian man running up to these soldiers, she wouldn’t be around to tell the story.

Q: Is there a group of women that stand out as exceptional peace builders?

A: I’m fond of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, which protested the fact that no women were invited to the peace talks. They were told only the heads of political parties could be invited, all of whom were men. So these women started their own party. They won a place at the talks and a place in Parliament. When they walked into a parliamentary meeting, men started mooing like cows. Insults were hurled. So the women wrote down the insults and who said what for the press. They’re extraordinary people.

Q: Give me another example.

A: Colombia is among the most dangerous countries in the world. The paramilitary groups are responsible for 300 massacres. Maria Christina Caballero, a reporter, got on a horse and went into the jungle. She found the paramilitaries’ leader and did a four-hour interview with him about why he organized all this killing. He described seeing his father murdered as a boy and vowing revenge. Now, four decades later, he doesn’t know how to get out of that cycle. Maria then found the guerrillas’ leader. She wrote both interviews and pointed out how the men asked the same things. Did she stop the war? No. But she created space for people to think differently about it.

Q: What lessons can be learned from these women?

A: I can’t imagine a person whose world was smaller than Helen Keller’s. Yet she said, "Avoiding danger is no safer than outright exposure." She couldn’t see or hear; she lived on the edge of danger every day. But she reached out. We’ve got to reach out, too. That’s the basic principle we can learn.

Hunt will speak about women waging peace on Thursday, February 14, at 4 p.m., in the main campus building of Simmons College, 300 the Fenway. Her lecture is free and open to the public.