In Afghanistan, a student attends Afghanistan’s first all-female Officer Candidate School course at Kabul Police Academy. Though a 2011 poll sponsored by the UN Development Programme found that 53 percent of Afghans are in favor of having female police officers in their communities, women make up less than 1 percent of the national police force. (Photo: NATO Training Military-Afghanistan/Flickr Commons) 
Women attend the Open Day Workshop on the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security in Malha, North Darfur, organized by UNAMID Gender Unit on 26 September 2012. Photo: Sojoud Elgarrai, UNAMID and courtesy of flickr 
Rim Turkmani, Syrian peace activist who went to Montreux hoping to attend the Geneva II talks to raise awareness of the vital role of civil society and women in the peace process but like the rest of civil society was prevented from attending. Photo: Maria Christina Travaglio, Les Studios Casagrande and courtesy of flickr. 
Women sit together outside their dormitory at the Heal Africa Transit Center for survivors of sexual violence © Aubrey Graham/IRIN www.irinnews.org 
In the Solomon Islands, a female-led police service march down the main street of Honiara, the capital city, on International Women’s Day in 2010. Since 2013, the service has been headed by its first female police commissioner, Juanita Matanga, who oversees more than 1,000 officers in the previously war-torn country. (Photo: Australian Civil-Military Centre/Flickr Commons)
Athena Consortium provides specialised technical, advisory and management services related to mediation support, process design and inclusive peace processes; gender equality and women’s participation in public life; eliminating sexual and gender-based violence; the rights of survivors of violence and trauma; armed violence prevention and reduction; and effective project management and design. Services are provided on a consultancy or secondment basis.
Our name, Athena, evokes the importance of women's agency and wisdom in matters of peace, armed conflict and war.
Athena deploys professional specialists and multi-disciplinary practitioners, carefully selected to assure quality and depth of expertise. A central value and identifying feature of Athena is that all our work premises a gender-inclusive approach.
An endorsement for Athena from Louise Arbour, UN SRSG on International Migration, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Former President CEO and President of International Crisis Group: "Peace processes need people to support them who understand about those processes, as well as still too often neglected gender issues: Athena is rare in offering both."