The conflict and post-conflict experience leads to an increased awareness of the different conditions of States, including weak, fragile, failed and/or hybrid States, and an increasing focus on State-building processes. State-building is understood as "purposeful action to develop the capacity, institutions and legitimacy of the state in relation to an effective political process for negotiating the mutual demands between state and societal groups". Such processes reveal the complex and critical roles and relations of State and non-State actors in the renegotiation of the balance of power, the allocation of resources and entitlements, and the formation of the identity of whole nations. Contestations over national identity are heightened during times of political change and present new vulnerabilities for those women whose values, roles and behaviours do not fit the power elite's idealized imagery of womanhood. Where identity politics are predominant, women's movements defending universal standards of gender equality risk marginalization and stigmatization, especially when such standards are characterized as unwanted external influence and a source of threat.