Gender and Security

Objectives
The objective of the study is to gain a deeper understanding of the issues, constraints, and concerns experienced by women in African militaries. The study represents a deliberate decision
to feature African women’s opinions and points of view. The study moves away from mainstream analysis and is narrative and descriptive. This study presumes the reader will analyze and interpret the participant’s opinions.

This study explores the growing presence of emotional terminology within Israeli popular discourses on national security, as reflected in the daily talk of Israelis living on the border with the Gaza Strip. It is based on ethnography conducted in 2016-18 as part of a multi-site, multidisciplinary study on articulations of security in frontier communities. Findings reveal that the grassroots discourse of national security is saturated with emotional language, and that this, in turn, is interlaced with relationships terminology. Residents report high levels of insecurity (fear, trauma, and constant disquiet), alongside pride in their families' and communities' strong care and solidarity, which they perceive as a great source of resilience. Parenthetically, the state and the military, too, are made concrete through relational emotions. We argue that the language of emotional-relationality frames national security and resilience as mental dispositions, and that this subsequently renders the robust power apparatuses that maintain their semi-transparency. The analysis dwells on the political implications of the phenomenon. We note an association between residents' preoccupations with the conflict's emotional effects on their lives and their consistent avoidance from criticising the state's policies regarding its management or potential transformation. This transposition of the political with the emotional, we argue, offers a distinct insight into Israelis' familiar tendency to avoid criticising Israel's aggressions against the Palestinians: the embeddedness of national security in emotional relationships implicitly constructs political criticism as betrayal of intimate relations.

This course is at the intersection between international relations, peace studies, security studies, human rights and gender studies. It will first seek to explore the mainstream theories on security, the feminist perspectives on security, as well as feminist theorizing about international politics. We will then examine the gender dimensions of violence in the private and public spheres, both in wartime and “peacetime,” and both by state and non-state agents. We will also analyze the ways in which a conflict is gendered in each of its phases, and what the implications are in terms of security and the building of peace. We will address specific issues such as gender-based crimes, the militarization of women, national identities, and gender in conflict zones. We will also examine the international context and the evolution of peacebuilding policies since the mid-1990s. In this respect, we will analyze the United Nations responses to the violation of women’s human rights (Resolution 1325), as well as the violations of women’s human rights by the UN themselves. Finally, we will explore the feminist approaches to peacebuilding (including the origins of the “ethics of care”), the emergence and the meaning of women’s peace movements worldwide, as well as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transsexual and Transgendered peace activism.

This publication provides an insight into the opportunities and challenges experienced in the early stages of deliberation and implementation of UNSCR 1325 by governments in mid-income transition countries, a number of which also suffer from unresolved statehood issues and the heritage of conflict. This publication is based on empirical research on implementation of UNSCR 1325 in cases where action plans have been adopted (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia), in cases where they are currently being finalised (Kosovo) and in cases where the UNSCR 1325 agenda has been implemented without an action plan (Albania). While recognising that women CSOs were working on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda long before the adoption of NAPs, we have largely focused on the period since 2008, when some of the region’s governments began implementing the WPS agenda by developing AP/NAPs or adopting specific policies aimed at improving gender equality in security governance.

The United Nations (UN) has proposed multiple strategies for addressing deficits in the implementation of its women, peace and security (WPS) resolutions. National Action Plans (NAPs) have gained huge traction and popularity, yet there has been little critical assessment of how they have advanced the WPS agenda overall. This paper assesses a number of key trends: first, the purchase that NAPs have attempted to gain at macro-structural levels within the UN’s political arena; second, the procedural modalities that have come to determine how the WPS resolutions are translated into NAPs at meso-levels across Member States; and third, the kinds of substantive focus found at micro-levels within adopted NAPs. The peripheral activities on WPS by related UN and civil society entities are also explored. It emerges that, while many practical gains have been made, NAPs-WPS remain insecure in their political positioning and are not yet fully realising their potential to deliver on women’s rights.

On the 14 April 2014, an Islamic militant group called Boko Haram abducted 276 Christian schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria and subsequently threatened to " sell them on the market " and force them into marriages with militants, to the shock and outrage of the international community. Just a few months later, on 3 August 2014 Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) launched an attack on Yazidi communities in Iraq and abducted an estimated 7,000 women and children from the ethnic minority and has systematically sold them to its militants as 'slaves' for sexual exploitation. As well as being within a similar time period, both groups used almost identical religious justifications for the sexual violence against women and claimed them as 'spoils of war'.

This dissertation will analyse the accuracy of the 'spoils of war' narrative to these particular cases, and finds that the fundamentalist language in fact masks patriarchal norms as well as the instrumental aims that publicised systematic sexual violence achieves for the groups.

The paper breaks these down into strategic objectives, namely the role of sexual violence in ethnic or religious cleansing of a territory and economic or social incentives such as financial income or women as a reward for fighter loyalty and supply of forced labour.

Finally wider political functions of the sexual violence are also identified such as a means to terror for infamy and legitimacy.

The paper also touches on whether this is a unique norm to Islamic fundamentalist groups, or if it is a reflection of militant groups in general by drawing on case studies such as the Afghan Taliban and Lord's Resistance Army. Analysis concludes that the 'spoils of war' narrative is inappropriate for examining the complexity of the various incentives and a multiple theoretical approach is useful to understand both the context and the motivations which has led to such widespread sexual violence against specific groups of women in the territories that Boko Haram and ISIS control.

This article looks at the status of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security more than a decade after its adoption. It surveys both the successes and failures of UN efforts to integrate gender mainstreaming into peacekeeping operations.

This piece looks to backwards and forwards to what feminist work in security was, is, and could be, pairing a historical sociology with a forward-looking view of the future(s) of the field. It begins with thinking about feminist studies of security before FSS as a foundation for the discussion, then traces different claims to core identities of FSS. It then looks at divergent strands of FSS, as well as omissions and critiques. Rather than looking to reconcile those different accounts, it asks what can be taken from them to engage potential futures for FSS, and its contribution to feminisms and/or studies of security.

Jacqui True’s new book, Violence Against Women: What Everyone Needs to Know, details the key impediments to ending violence towards women globally, notably the impact of patriarchal structures and how it shapes masculinities and femininities. True’s book is ambitious, providing a comprehensive account of the issue. Although still a problem worldwide, violence against women is increasingly gaining attention in the international area. This has, in particular, been demonstrated by the astounding success of the #MeToo movement to raise awareness towards women’s sexual harassment, now an issue widely diffused through social media. With the topic increasingly gaining international attention, it is paramount to foster greater discussion on the cultural, societal, political, legal, and structural causes contributing to violence against women, making this a timely book

Wie ordnen Sicherheitsdiskurse Geschlecht und Raum? Bettina Fredrich analysiert die Schweizer Sicherheits- und Friedenspolitik anhand kritischer Ansätze aus Geographie und Politikwissenschaften. Ziel der Untersuchung ist es darzustellen, wie gängige Verständnisse von nationaler und internationaler Unsicherheit spezifische Geschlechterrollen und Raumverständnisse avancieren, um so die entsprechenden Konzeptionen hinterfragen zu können.

The United States has opened all combat roles in the military to women through a groundbreaking decision made by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter in December 2015.  The historical move by the Pentagon has garnered controversial reactions among men and women speculating if women are capable or “good enough” to serve on the frontlines in the toughest combat positions.  The transition to a more gender-neutral military by lifting the combat ban was made after lengthy research and recommendations from all levels in the Army, Navy, Air Force and US Special Operations Command.  Those in support of the inclusion of women such as Defense Secretary Carter and President Obama have emphasized that as long as women meet the required high standards of service positions, they will be fully integrated in to all aspects of the Armed Forces.  However, a variety of issues remain surrounding the gendered-masculine standards to which women will be measured against and further, how equipped a male-dominated military is to actually meet the needs of women who are soldiers.

Editors: Aiko Holvikivi and Daniel de Torres

This manual is tailored to the needs of Georgia, but represents a knowledge product to be shared with the other countries for future work within the security sector.

The manual draws on the DCAF Gender and Security Sector Reform Training Resource
Package (DCAF, 2009), a companion to the Gender and Security Sector Reform Toolkit (DCAF, OSCE/ODIHR and UN-INSTRAW, 2008). The training exercises in this manual, with the exception of the exercise on “SGBV Victims’ access to security and justice services” (Module 6, developed by Daniel de Torres and Aiko Holvikivi), are all either directly taken or adapted from the DCAF Gender and Security Sector Reform Training Resource Package. These exercises were developed
by Agneta M. Johanssen, and edited by Megan Bastick and Kristin Valasek.

Societal violence against women breeds national insecurity through pervasive discrimination and abuse. This dissertation examined the manifestations and effects of societal violence against women; hypothesized that security practitioners who are educated in gendered security can positively affect this problem of practice; and evaluated the knowledge, motivation, and organizational (KMO) factors that impede the organization of study’s faculty from teaching a gendered perspective in security studies. The organization of study is a U.S. regional center that seeks to advance security cooperation through executive education. An explanatory sequential mixed methods research design was used in this project. Data collection included document analysis and faculty survey, focus group interviews, and observations of teaching. Research question one asked, What KMO influences bear on the faculty’s ability to teach a gendered perspective in security studies? Ten themes emerged that impede the faculty from teaching gendered security. Findings contend that the faculty lack knowledge and motivation to teach gendered security, and the organization lacks cultural models and settings to institutionalize the teaching of the topic. The New World Kirkpatrick Model is the program implementation and evaluation framework for this study. Recommendations and plans are informed by research findings and answer the second research question: What recommended solutions will close the KMO gaps that affect the faculty’s ability to teach a gendered perspective in security studies? Ten actions are presented as a recurring training program to achieve the goal of the faculty teaching a gendered security perspective.

los artículos en este problema y demuestra de qué manera promueven una agenda emergente sobre la seguridad humana: integrando la WPS en las iniciativas de seguridad dirigidas por la ONU, como la responsabilidad de proteger (Responsibility to protect, R2P), y los desafíos de la implementación de la agenda sobre WPS en diversos contextos locales y nacionales. Concluimos sosteniendo que, para afrontar futuros retos, la agenda sobre WPS debe ampliarse para incluir áreas que no pertenecen a las concepciones tradicionales de la seguridad y adoptar toda la jurisdicción de las amenazas a la seguridad en evolución, particularmente los obstáculos estructurales que evitan el empoderamiento de las mujeres de manera global.

У статті розглянуто, як останнім часом в Україні посилювався тиск релігійних організацій на органи законодавчої і виконавчої влади та реалізовувались інформаційні кампанії і проекти антигендерного та антиукраїнського спрямування. Аналізується як у регіонах російського інформаційного впливу релігійний фундаменталізм має шанси перерости у релігійний екстремізм. Показано, що відсутність якісної гендерної аналітики значно ускладнює прогнозування соціальних процесів.
Також показано, як релігійний фундаменталізм маніпулює питаннями безпеки жінок на користь релігійних інтересів. Продемонстровано, що гендерні аспекти безпеки не достатньо розроблені та перебувають в Україні під значним релігійним впливом. Зауважується, що тиск прорелігійних антигендерних рухів на органи влади в Україні може призвести до негативних наслідків, а вибудова державної політики, яка базується на релігійних уявленнях про світ, може становити загрозу внутрішній безпеці країни. Зроблено висновок, що в умовах конфліктів релігійний екстремізм не визнає верховенства людських прав і проголошує примат релігійних звичаїв над людськими правами жінок. Доведено, що зважаючи на безпосередній конфлікт з Росією, поширення в Україні релігійного фундаменталізму і зростання структурного гендерного насильства, будуть актуальними та потребують негайної розробки гендерні і біополітичні аспекти безпеки. Зроблено висновок, що задля прогресивного демократичного розвитку України, а також безпечних умов життєдіяльності і добробуту її громадянок, служби безпеки повинні звертатися до напрацювань гендерної аналітики. Доведено, що задля захисту своїх інтересів релігійні лідери можуть ініціювати на рівні державної політики відхід від гарантованого міжнародними угодами дотримання принципів гендерної рівності у всіх сферах життя. У цьому зв’язку для України важливими є виконання Резолюції Ради Безпеки Організації Об'єднаних Націй 1325 «Жінки, мир, безпека» та «сестринських резолюції», Рекомендацій Комітету ООН зі становища жінок для країн, які ратифікували Конвенцію щодо ліквідації всіх форм дискримінації жінок, інших документів ООН. Важливими також є європейські зобов'язання країни у сфері гендерної рівності. Зокрема, потребує ратифікації Конвенція Ради Європи про запобігання насильству стосовно жінок і домашньому насильству та боротьби з цими явищами (Стамбульська конвенція).
It has been shown that in recent years in Ukraine the pressure of religious organizations on the legislative and executive authorities has increased and information campaigns and projects of anti-gender and anti-Ukrainian trends have been implemented. The author analyzed how in the regions staying under Russian informational pressure the religious fundamentalism shows the potential of development develop into religious extremism. It has been demonstrated that in Ukraine the gender aspects of security are not well-developed and are heavily influenced by religion. It has been shown that the lack of high-quality gender analytics significantly complicates the forecasting of social processes.
The article deals with the question how religious fundamentalism manipulates women's security issues in favor of religious interests. It is noted that the pressure of pro-religious anti-gender movements on the authorities in Ukraine can lead to negative consequences, and that the establishment of a state policy based on religious perceptions of the world can threaten the country's internal security. It was concluded that in times of conflict, religious extremism does not recognize the rule of human rights and proclaims the primacy of religious customs over women's human rights. It is proved that, considering direct conflict with Russia, the spread of religious fundamentalism in Ukraine and the spread of structural gender violence will be relevant and require the immediate development of gender and bio-political aspects of security. It was concluded that for the progressive democratic development of Ukraine, as well as safe living conditions and the well-being of its citizens, the security services should turn to gender analytics. It has been proven that, in order to protect their interests, religious leaders can initiate a departure from state-guaranteed compliance with international agreements on gender equality in all spheres of life. In this regard, Ukraine's implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution No. 1325 on Women, Peace, Security and the similar resolutions as well as Recommendations of the UN Committee on the Status of Women for Countries that have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, other UN instruments is important for Ukraine. Also important are the country's European commitments in the field of gender equality. In particular, the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) needs to be ratified.

This article examines how women getting by in Kampala, take up registers of gender and sexuality in a contemporary hybrid democratic-authoritarian state with compulsory heterosexuality. Sections 145-146 of Uganda's fourth Constitution (1995-present) include language dating to the British colonial administration of the Uganda Protectorate (1950), which criminalizes "carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature." This has been regularly used by the Uganda Police Force, since the contemporary politicization of homosexuality in the early 2000s, to justify the harassment, incarceration, and torture of those who are identified as "homosexual." In addition to the economic precarity most Ugandans already face, transgender women seeking social services are often instructed by Non Governmental Organization (NGO) social workers that "security begins with you" and are encouraged to manage the way they performatively index their gender and sexuality. Drawing from interviews and participant observations in Kampala, Uganda from volunteer work at the NGO, Sexual Minorities Uganda (2015-2016), I find that transgender women use various registers of gender and sexuality that do not fully conform with the norms for performativity inside the queer community and must reconcile their insecurity through privatized social services, security, and market activities that determine the insecurity of their daily life.

Este artigo examina como as mulheres que moram em Kampala, adotam registros de gênero e sexualidade, em um Estado híbrido contemporâneo, democrático-autoritário, onde a heterossexualidade é obrigatória. As seções 145–146 da quarta Constituição de Uganda (1995–presente) incluem linguagem que data da época colonial britânica, a administração do Protetorado de Uganda (1950), que criminaliza “o conhecimento carnal de qualquer pessoa contra a ordem da natureza.” Isto tem sido regularmente utilizado pela Polícia de Uganda, desde a politização contemporânea da homossexualidade no início dos anos 2000, para justi!car o assédio, o encarceramento e a tortura daqueles que são identi!cados como “homossexuais.” Além da precariedade econômica que a maioria dos ugandenses já enfrentam, as mulheres transgêneros que procuram serviços sociais são freqüentemente instruídas pelos trabalhadores sociais de Organizações Não Governamentais (ONG) que “a segurança começa com você” e são incentivados a gerenciar a forma como elas indexam performativamente seu gênero e sexualidade. Extraído de entrevistas e observações dos participantes em Kampala, Uganda, do trabalho voluntário na ONG Sexual Minorias Uganda (2015–2016), descrevo como as mulheres transgêneros usam vários registros de gênero e sexualidade que não estam em conformidade com as normas de performatividade dentro do comunidade queer e devem reconciliar sua insegurança através de serviços sociais privatizados, segurança e atividades de mercado que determinam a insegurança de sua vida diária.

Este artículo examina cómo las mujeres que se desenvuelven en Kampala adoptan registros de género y sexualidad en un estado híbrido democrático-autoritario contemporáneo que impone una heterosexualidad obligatoria. Los artículos 145-146 de la cuarta Constitución de Uganda (1995–actualidad) incluyen un lenguaje que data de la administración colonial británica del Protectorado de Uganda (1950), el cual penaliza el “conocimiento carnal de cualquier persona contra el orden de la naturaleza.” Esto ha sido utilizado regularmente por la Policía de Uganda desde la politización contemporánea de la homosexualidad a principios de la década de 2000, con el !n de justi!car el acoso, el encarcelamiento y la tortura de quienes son identi!cados como “homosexuales.” Además de la precariedad económica, a la que ya se enfrentan la mayoría de los ugandeses, a las mujeres transexuales que buscan servicios sociales se les indica por parte de las Organizaciones No Gubernamentales (ONG) que “la seguridad empieza por ti,” y se les anima a administrar el modo en el que performan su género y su sexualidad. A partir de entrevistas y observaciones de participantes en Kampala, Uganda, durante trabajo voluntario en la ONG “Minorías Sexuales de Uganda” (2015–2016), descubro que las mujeres transgénero utilizan varios registros de género y sexualidad que no se ajustan totalmente a las normas de performatividad dentro de la comunidad queer, y que deben conciliar su inseguridad a través de servicios sociales privatizados, la seguridad y las actividades del mercado que determinan la inseguridad de su vida cotidiana.

Immense beyond imagination, the untamed rainforests of western New Guinea  represent a biodiversity hotspot, home to several unique species of flora and fauna. The territory’s astonishing beauty and diversity is underpinned by a stunning array of natural resources. The island is also home to many indigenous communities practicing hundreds of local languages and traditions and depending on their natural environment for maintaining their traditional livelihoods, identity and culture.  The territory’s much-contested decolonization process in the 1950-60s led to widespread discontent among indigenous Papuans and gave rise to persistent dissent from Indonesian rule, routinely met with disproportionately violent action by Indonesian security forces. Adding to these longstanding colonial ills and grievances, indigenous Papuan communities also struggle to grapple with inequitable allocation of land and resources, extreme pollution and environmental degradation caused by the mining and palm oil sectors. In the meantime, climate-exacerbated weather events have become more frequent in the region creating new tensions by putting an additional strain on natural resources and thus leading to an increased level of insecurity and inequality. In particular, these challenges have a disproportionate and profound impact on indigenous Papuan women, whose native lands are deeply embedded in their cultural and ethnic identity, and who are dependent on access to land to carry out their prescribed roles. Displacement also puts women at further risk of violence. Adding to sexual violence and displacement experienced by indigenous Papuan women, the loss of traditional lands and resources has been identified as having a singularly negative impact on women as it impedes their empowerment and makes them vulnerable to continued violence. The Papuan experience thus serves as a timely illustration to exemplify how environmental factors, such as resource extraction and climate change, not only amplify vulnerabilities and exacerbate pre-existing inequalities stemming from colonial times, they also give rise to gendered consequences flowing from large-scale degradation and loss of the natural environment.

The literature on the security implications of climate change, and in particular on potential climate-conflict linkages, is burgeoning. Up until now, gender considerations have only played a marginal role in this research area. This is despite growing awareness of intersections between protecting women’s rights, building peace and security, and addressing environmental changes. This article advances the claim that adopting a gender perspective is integral for understanding the conflict implications of climate change. We substantiate this claim via three main points. First, gender is an essential, yet insufficiently considered intervening variable between climate change and conflict. Gender roles and identities as well as gendered power structures are important in facilitating or preventing climate-related conflicts. Second, climate change does affect armed conflicts and social unrest, but a gender perspective alters and expands the notion of what conflict can look like, and whose security is at stake. Such a perspective supports research inquiries that are grounded in everyday risks and that document alternative experiences of insecurity. Third, gender-differentiated vulnerabilities to both climate change and conflict stem from inequities within local power structures and socio-cultural norms and practices, including those related to social reproductive labor. Recognition of these power dynamics is key to understanding and promoting resilience to conflict and climate change. The overall lessons drawn for these three arguments is that gender concerns need to move center stage in future research and policy on climate change and conflicts.

Security issues imbricate a wide range of fears and agendas in cities of the global North and South. Everyday life experiences in informal settlements reflect, however, not only residents' urgent need for enhanced security but that the state is unable (and often unwilling) to provide it. Because approaches are dominated overwhelmingly by a focus on young men, our article foregrounds the unseen yet important aspect of security provision: the everyday security apparatus that is constituted by women. The principle argument is that women in Mathare, one of Nairobi's oldest informal settlements, provide security through a variety of practices that highlight the taken for granted and invisibilised emotional, reproductive and socioeconomic gendered labours of women. Informed by an ethnographic study, this article contextualises this women-led security provision, which is overwhelmingly invisible since it does not include the most taken for granted security functions, for example patrolling formations, equipment and the threat of violence. We begin by detailing the major security challenges as expressed by women in Mathare, before discussing the range of actions they engage in to enhance safety for all and the major constraints to doing so. Leading from immediate security challenges, our research identifies the everyday security efforts women engage in for community protection, and demonstrates the interrelated social-spatial issues constraining woman's efforts for safety, which policy security interventions should take into consideration. We suggest that perhaps it is prevailing notions of 'security' that are too narrow, which, as a result, fail to see women's contributions. The woman noise-maker has come, now we have no peace! (Police officer, from an Eastlands Police Station)

Taking Robert Kagan's imagery of US-Mars and Europe-Venus as a point of departure, this article probes into how the naturalised reproduction of Europe in the text of the European Security Strategy (ESS) discursively occurs through intermeshing gendered and racialised discourses. The article therefore offers a narrative that has been largely silenced in conversations about the EU as a global security actor. By paying attention to embedded 'sticky' gendered and racialised signs in the text of the ESS, the article argues that the delineations drawn to secure Europe in the text of the ESS also engender 'Europe' as multiply masculine by dividing the world into sharp spatio-temporal distinctions. Echoing Europe's colonial past, the ESS represents its 'Others' as both feminised and subordinate. In this sense, the article argues that the European project of security-development as written in the ESS is both civilising (normative) and violently exclusionary — in contradistinction to many contemporary depictions of Europe as a normative power and a harbour of tolerance. The gendered and colonial grammar of these spatial and temporal distinctions work to naturalise a certain (re)production of 'Europe', yet haunt the secure Europe and the better world promised in the strategy.

Feminist teori, uluslararası ilişkilerin rasyonalist kuramlarının dayandığı pek çok kavrama eleştirel yaklaşmaktadır. Feministlerin en fazla sorguladıkları kavramlardan biri ‘güvenlik’tir. Feminist yaklaşım; “kimin güvenliği”, “kim tarafından sağlanan güvenlik”, “nasıl bir güvenlik”, “hangi araçlarla güvenlik” gibi sorulara diğer teorilerden farklı yanıtlar vermektedir. Feminist teorisyenler, ‘Kadınlar nerede’ sorusunu hatırlatarak, pederşahi düzenlerin eril söylemlerini ve eril-temelli politikalarını mercek altına alarak, eşit bir dünya düzeninin mümkün olabileceğini ve ancak o zaman kalıcı barışa ulaşma yolunda ciddi atımlar atılabileceğini vurguladılar. Kadınların yaşadıkları şiddetin, eşitsizliklerin ve ötekileştirmenin açığa çıkartılmasının, küresel siyaseti anlamak için gerekli olduğunu feminist teorisyenler farklı vaka çalışmalarıyla başarılı bir şekilde ortaya koymaktadır.

Research concerned with language and meanings is often thought to be less useful and less policy-relevant than research utilising instrumental approaches. This article explores how a deeper understanding of the variety of meanings about ‘gender security’ in relation to Security Council Resolution 1325 can be useful to practitioners. An analysis of three initiatives related to SCR 1325 in Serbia demonstrates that different post-conflict personal-political imaginations leadtoverydifferentinterpretationsof‘gendersecurity’,shapingthesubsequentpolicydesigned to implement SCR 1325. Investigating how (potentially conflicting) ‘gender security’ policy is made is useful to practitioners as it enables us to go some way towards creating a policy that would be meaningful and significant to all stakeholders.

This article aims to rehabilitate women campaigners against nuclear weapons as a focus of study and interlocutor for feminist International Relations scholars. Highlighting the recent tendency in gender and security studies to ignore or stereotype these campaigners, I first show how their critical re-investigation has been facilitated by recent systematizations of poststructuralist-influenced feminist methodology. In this light, I then revisit the discourses circulating in women’s antinuclear activism in the 1980s before deconstructing in more detail the post-Cold War writings of Helen Caldicott and Angie Zelter. I argue that multiple, differently gendered constructions of the antinuclear campaigner were in play during the Cold War and have since been reconfigured in ways that reflect and reproduce the shift to a post-Cold War context and differences between the United States and UK. In such ways, then, women antinuclear campaigners continue to develop diverse oppositional subject positions in their efforts to challenge nuclear hegemony, in a discursive struggle worthy of attention from gender and security scholars as part of a broader, critical re-engagement with the gendered dimensions of nuclear politics.

In its early years, the field of gender and security studies was characterised by sustained engagement with large-scale women's anti-nuclear protests occurring in the US and UK during the Cold War. 1 Acknowledged as a formative influence by those feminist scholars-who marked out important pathways‖ within International Relations (IR) in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Sylvester 2001: 18)-with Cynthia Enloe, for example, writing that Greenham Common women's peace camp in Berkshire inspired her entry into feminist IR and her distinctive mode of academic scholarship (Enloe 2004: 174)-the protests were also celebrated for challenging the certainties of the IR discipline. As Christine Sylvester put it (1992: 167),-women, who supposedly have no agency of their own in international relations‖ were speaking and acting in ways that offered alternative understandings of both gender identity and security to the militarised malestream (see also Enloe 1989: 77-79;

Authors: Aiko Holvikivi and Kristin Valasek

This chapter provides a summary of general trends, good practices and the key challenges facing security sector institutions (SSIs) in West African countries. The introduction includes an overview of SSIs in 14  countries at the levels of gender mainstreaming, service delivery, personnel and oversight. This is followed by a comparative regional analysis structured by institution and indicator, covering national governance, police services, armed forces and gendarmerie, justice
systems and penal services. Finally, this chapter presents recommendations to SSIs and security sector oversight bodies on steps still needed to comprehensively address gender issues.

Full report available at: http://www.dcaf.ch/Publications/The-Security-Sector-and-Gender-in-West-Africa-A-survey-of-police-defence-justice-and-penal-services-in-ECOWAS-states

The literature on the security implications of climate change, and in particular on potential climate-conflict linkages, is burgeoning. Up until now, gender considerations have only played a marginal role in this research area. This is despite growing awareness of intersections between protecting women’s rights, building peace and security, and addressing environmental changes. This article advances the claim that adopting a gender perspective is integral for understanding the conflict implications of climate change. We substantiate this claim via three main points. First, gender is an essential, yet insufficiently considered intervening variable between climate change and conflict. Gender roles and identities as well as gendered power structures are important in facilitating or preventing climate-related conflicts. Second, climate change does affect armed conflicts and social unrest, but a gender perspective alters and expands the notion of what conflict can look like, and whose se...

This paper enquires into the connections between gender and discourses of the nuclear weapons state. Specifically, we develop an analysis of the ways in which gender operates in the White Paper published by the UK Government in 2006 on its plans to renew Trident nuclear weapons (given the go-ahead by the Westminster Parliament in March 2007). We argue that the White Paper mobilises masculinecoded language and symbols in several ways: firstly, in its mobilisation of technostrategic rationality and axioms; secondly, in its assumptions about security; and, thirdly, in its assumptions about the state as actor. Taken together, these function to construct a masculinised identity for the British nuclear state as a 'responsible steward'. However, this identity is one that is not yet securely fixed and that, indeed, contains serious internal tensions that opponents of Trident (and of the nuclear state more generally), should be able to exploit.

Feminist scholarship on the Middle East has often critiqued binaristic framings of gender rights which draw on Western-centric tropes of cosmopolitan modernity versus local backwardness. What I argue, through examining visual mediations of Covid-19 on Iranian social media, is that gender is reconfigured in this context as part of a nationalism that is both modernising and conservative. I particularly focus on how montage—a modernist visual genre—is utilised in the production of an Iranian national security imaginary which combines a rhetoric of modern, mixed-gender medical care with haunting resonances of male martyrdom and sacrifice during the Iran–Iraq war. While much has been written recently about Covid and national security, what is less discussed is how particularistic narratives of crisis can produce innovative reconfigurations of gender and modernity. Yet while Benjamin envisaged montage as a weapon in the destruction of aura, here, I argue, the deployment of aura supports the state’s “capture” of haunting affects as it seeks to re-shape national memory. What this suggests is that crisis permits a conditional shifting of gender roles, but this move is legitimated through the invocation of a redemptive history, wherein the nation re-emerges triumphant out of disaster.

The US Department of Defense is lifting its ban on women in direct ground-combat positions, as recently announced by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. The armed services are thus preparing to open the remaining jobs still offlimits to the female workforce. In this context, gender scholars working on military and security issues can expect to be confronted with the question – usually posed by journalists – whether this is a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing in terms of feminist and pacifist commitments. This article aims to provide a more comprehensive perspective on the interrelations between the military and gender; one that more accurately reflects the state of gender scholarship on the military and feminist IR. These fields have moved beyond the strict dualism between radical anti-militarist positions which oppose women’s military participation out of pacifist reasons, and ‘integrationist’ positions which unambiguously favour it, sometimes with patriotic overtones.

This paper takes a feminist postmodern look at the intersection of race, class and gender in Canadian politics by researching the multiple levels of identity available to contemporary Canadian Aboriginals, and the implication of these for the success of a policy of self-government based on identification with a collectivity called 'Aboriginal'. Series of multiple regression analysis for all related variables and path diagrams is employed to show the causal relationship between socioeconomic/ demographic conditions and ethnic identity. The paper recommends a firmer focus on the foundational socio-economic dynamics that shape and mediate Aboriginal identity to avoid marginalization of non-identical concerns.

Thinking on war, violence and security has always been associated with concepts of femininity and masculinity. Similarly, wars and political transformations also change the notions of the roles of women and men in society. This article shows how the links between gender identities and threat construction, understanding of aggression, or social sensitivity to different types of victims of violence can be studied academically. It introduces feminist security studies, embeds it in the research of international relations and security, and encourages its development in the Czech academic environment. The article introduces key concepts and methods of studying gender in (international) security, identifies key themes in feminist security research, and explains various approaches and types of questions that can be investigated in this area.

The European Union’s commitment to mainstreaming gender in the context of peacekeeping and conflict management is expressed through a number documents and policy initiatives. However, current research highlights how EU policies and practices fall short of a commitment to take gender seriously. This paper seeks to complement these studies by examining the ways in which WPS is articulated in the planning stages of EU CSDP missions and translated into policy practices in the field. In tracking WPS as it shifts and expands into the complex institutional and operational contexts of EU peacekeeping and crisis management, we focus on two moments – the pre-deployment planning phase of operations and the post-deployment implementation phase. Our research confirms the tensions and gaps between feminist debates on gender, peace and security; the translation of feminist insights into the policy language of EU security and conflict management, and WPS as practice in the planning of CSDP operations.