This project examines United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, which in part seeks to correct the near-universal absence of women from peace negotiations. Two theoretical rationales for increasing the participation of women have been furthered: the first on the basis equal rights and the second on a functionalist justification that frames women as agents of peace and stability whose inherent qualities of nonviolence and conciliation make them particularly well suited to the peacemaking arena. Advocates have increasingly employed the latter perspective in recent years, which this project will examine in two primary ways. First, using Q Methodology, it explores this gendered rationale by conducting a survey of experienced peace mediators and negotiators and employing factor analysis in search of patterns of commonality and consensus amongst their responses. Three peacemaking perspectives are revealed, which in part expose the limitations of the essentialist narrative and highlight the importance of identifying critical actors who seek to ensure the gender mainstreaming of peace agreements. Secondly, this project seeks to reveal how and why peace agreements adopt gender provisions. To do so, it first builds upon a pre-existing framework for identifying the peace processes that have produced agreements with the highest levels of engendered security and then examines a number of hypothesized causal factors. It concludes that important conditions include participation by the United Nations and the presence of mediators who serve as critical gender actors. Ultimately, while the results serve as a critique of the functionalist aspects of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, they also offer new insights into which peace processes constitute successes from 1325s normative perspective and how success might be replicated in future peace negotiations.