The United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda aims to increase the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in peacemaking, conflict prevention, and peacebuilding efforts. Using the international relations literature on conflict, this paper critiques the WPS agenda’s key assumptions and identifies a new opportunity for WPS efforts. It proposes a more nuanced articulation of the WPS agenda’s goals so that it is more inclusive of the complexity of women’s experiences and more focused on achieving gender equality in peace processes regardless of outcome. It also recommends that the international community should focus on gender equality efforts during peacetime. This may be accomplished through including gender reforms in peace agreements, increasing international development efforts, and expanding data collection to improve the body of research available to policymakers. These recommendations will help the WPS agenda achieve the goals of realizing gender equality and creating lasting peace.