Strategic Allocation of Development Projects in Post-Conflict Regions: A Gender Perspective for Colombia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Methodologically, the study is well designed, has an interesting and representative sample spectrum and has been of interest to the reader and the scientific community. My main recommendations after reading would be to include a final section on practical applications and limitations of the study.

Likewise, I request the authors to remove and replace the term "gender" from the title. sex is referred to as biologically defined, while gender is a social construct. This is a scientific and biomedical related journal, not a journal of philosophy, letters and general culture related to the social sciences, so please change it. 

Author Response

Thank you for this positive evaluation of our work! The article now includes a section on practical applications, which we frame as policy implications, and a discussion of limitations both found at the final page of the main text (4. Discussion and Conclusions). For easy identification, these parts appear as tracked changes in the revised manuscript. Regarding your second point: Our article was submitted to a special issue of Sustainability titled “The Gender Dimension in Sustainability Policies and Their Evaluation”. Our article addresses the gender dimension of allocating sustainable development projects within post-conflict zones of Colombia and directly speaks to the topic of this special issue of Sustainability. We hope this explains why we would prefer to retain “gender” in the title of our article.

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very interesting article with relevant data for the topic and for the scientific community. The study is of sufficient depth to be published without major changes. The article was submitted to the SI "The Gender Dimension in Sustainability Policies and Their Evaluation", however I think there should be a better alignment with the theme of sustainability, or at least an explanation that allows better framing the theme within the scope of the Journal. Nevertheless, in general I found a good article with theoretical foundations and respective empirical validity.

Author Response

Thank you for this positive evaluation of our work! Our work deals with the larger topic of “sustainable development” – specifically the gender dimension of allocating development projects within post-conflict zones of Colombia. In line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #5, our research revolves around the notion that development efforts in post-conflict regions will only be sustainable if they pay special attention to gender dimensions. As such, this article explores determinants of “sustainable development” within the larger framework of “social sustainability of human beings”, a core area of interest of Sustainability as outlined in the Aims & Scope of the journal. In response to your comment, we now more thoroughly embed our study within the broader framework of “sustainable development” with reference to SDG #5 in the introduction section when discussing the gender dimension of this research (lines 116-125).