Does exposure to civil war lead to changes in gender roles, more specifically to women's participation in the labour market and in intra-household decision-making? Conflict creates an increasing demand for female participation outside the home, and as a result disrupts traditional gender hierarchies. As such, civil war may create “war-induced female empowerment” and cause a shift towards more gender-equal roles. What happens to these changes once wars end and men return, however? This question has been studied in the context of Europe and the U.S. post-WWII, but has rarely been adopted to the context of civil wars in developing countries. The present study sets out to explore the causal relationship between civil war and gender roles by leveraging the arbitrary Burkina Faso – Côte d'Ivoire border, remnant of West Africa's colonial past, as setting for a quasi-experiment. Comparing the participation levels of women living close to the border pre- and post-conflict, I find that Ivoirian women's likelihood to participate in the labour market or in family planning decisions is reduced by 33 percentage points and 7 percentage points post-civil war. Thus, in contrast to recent studies highlighting the opportunities conflict opened up for women, my results imply that the situation for women became even more disadvantageous after the First Ivoirian Civil War.