Femininity/ies

Beyond Masculinity: Gender, Conflict and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Northern Uganda

Citation:

Esuruku, Robert Senath. 2011. "Beyond Masculinity: Gender, Conflict and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Northern Uganda." Journal of Science & Sustainable Development 4: 25-40.

Author: Robert Senath Esuruku

Abstract:

Masculinity and femininity debates of armed conflict in Africa have always regarded men as fighters and women as passive victims of war. The exclusion of women from the armed forces in most traditional societies originated from the assumption that women are a weaker sex and therefore cannot manage military life. Nevertheless, women in Uganda have voluntarily joined the armed forces, while some of them have been abducted and forcefully recruited into the rebel forces. Notwithstanding the central role women have played in the armed conflict in Northern Uganda, they have been side-lined in the processes of peace negotiation and post conflict reconstruction of the region. This paper looks at how masculinity is manipulated in conflict and the role women have played in the conflict, peace process and post conflict reconstruction in Northern Uganda. 

Keywords: Gender, post-conflict reconstruction, transitional justice

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Peace Processes, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2011

Crossing the Gender Boundaries or Challenging Masculinities? Female Combatants in the Kenya Defense Forces' (KDF) War Against Al-Shabaab Militants

Citation:

Ombati, Mokua. 2015. "Crossing Gender Boundaries or Challenging Masculinities? Female Combatants in the Kenya Defence Forces’ (KDF) War against Al-Shabaab Militants." Masculinities and Social Change 4 (2): 163-85.

Author: Mokua Ombati

Abstract:

Few institutions have historically presented more defined gender boundaries than the military. This study examines gender and war through the lens of military combat roles. Military combat roles have traditionally relied on and manipulated ideas about masculinity and femininity. Women arrive in the army with different types of capital and bring with them a shared cultural ‘tool kit’ (womanhood). Following the military’s labour allocation process, they are assigned combat roles, which is at variance to their gendered character. Assignment in non-traditional feminine roles means crossing gender boundaries. Ethnographic studies of the Kenya Defence Forces operations in Somalia reveal the different gendered characteristics of the military roles as reflected in the women’s soldiery experiences. The encounter with military power and authority challenges the women soldiers to redefine their feminine capital, to interpret the military reality via a gendered lens and, therefore, to critically (re)examine the patriarchal order. Grounded on the twin theoretical frameworks of socio-cultural capitals and cultural scripts, and structured on a gender framing of women’s military roles, the study illustrates the complex and contradictory realities of women in the army. The study unpacks the relationship between masculinity and femininity, and, war and the military. It underpins the value of the female soldier as a figurative illustration of the complex interrelations between the gendered politics of masculinity and femininity. It considers what the acts, practices and performances constitutive of female soldiering reveal about particular modes of governance, regulation and politics that arise from the sacrifices of soldiers in combatant.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya, Somalia

Year: 2015

Ex-Combatants, Gender, and Peace in Northern Ireland: Women, Political Protest and the Prison Experience

Citation:

Wahidin, Azrini. 2016. Ex-Combatants, Gender and Peace in Northern Ireland: Women, Political Protest and the Prison Experience. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Author: Azrini Wahidin

Annotation:

Summary:
This book explores the contours of women's involvement in the Irish Republican Army, political protest and the prison experience in Northern Ireland. Through the voices of female and male combatants, it demonstrates that women remained marginal in the examination of imprisonment during the Conflict and in the negotiated peace process. However, the book shows that women performed a number of roles in war and peace that placed constructions of femininity in dissent. Azrini Wahidin argues that the role of the female combatant is not given but ambiguous. She indicates that a tension exists between different conceptualisations of societal security, where female combatants both fought against societal insecurity posed by the state and contributed to internal societal dissonance within their ethno-national groups. This book tackles the lacunae that has created a disturbing silence and an absence of a comprehensive understanding of women combatants, which includes knowledge of their motivations, roles and experiences. It will be of particular interest to scholars of criminology, politics and peace studies.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Male Combatants, Conflict, Gender, Femininity/ies, Peace and Security, Peace Processes, Security Regions: Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2016

UNSC Resolution 1325 National Action Plans in Liberia and Sierra Leone: An Analysis of Gendered Power Relations in Hybrid Peacebuilding

Citation:

Ryan, Caitlin, and Helen Basini. 2017. "UNSC Resolution 1325 National Action Plans in Liberia and Sierra Leone: An Analysis of Gendered Power Relations in Hybrid Peacebuilding."Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 11 (2): 186-206. 

Authors: Caitlin Ryan, Helen Basini

Abstract:

This paper considers how the use of ‘hybridity’ in the peacebuilding literature overlooks the gendered dimensions of hybrid interactions. It does so by examining the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1325 national action plans (NAPs) for Liberia and Sierra Leone. By asking the gendered questions of ‘who participates?’ and ‘how do they participate?’ it draws from Mac Ginty’s conception of hybridity and traces the compliance and incentivizing power in hybridized peace, as well as the ability of local actors to resist and provide alternatives. However, Mac Ginty’s model is found to be inadequate because of its inattention to the gendered nature of power. It is found that with a gendered approach to hybridity, it is easier to trace the processes of hybridization of NAPs in post-conflict states where their implementation is limited. In asking the questions of ‘who’ and ‘how’, three conclusions about the gendered nature of hybrid peacebuilding are drawn: international intervention relies upon the ‘feminization’ of local actors; issues framed within the realm of the ‘masculine’ are more likely to get attention; and the Resolution 1325 agenda in post-conflict states can be subverted by framing it as a ‘soft’ issue.

Keywords: UNSC Res. 1325, hybrid peace, Liberia, Sierra Leone, National Action Plans

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Post-Conflict, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325 Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Liberia, Sierra Leone

Year: 2017

Displacement from Gendered Personhood: Sexual Violence and Masculinities in Northern Uganda

Citation:

Schulz, Phillip. 2018. "Displacement from Gendered Personhood: Sexual Violence and Masculinities in Northern Uganda." International Affairs 94 (5): 1101-19. 

Author: Phillip Schulz

Abstract:

This article empirically deconstructs the gendered effects of sexual violence on male survivors' masculinities in northern Uganda. Throughout the growing literature on the topic, the effects of wartime gender-based violence against men are widely seen as compromising male survivors' masculine identities, commonly framed as ‘emasculation’ by way of ‘feminization’ and/or ‘homo-sexualization’. Yet exactly how such processes unfold from survivors' perspectives remains insufficiently explored, nor has existing scholarship critically engaged with the dominant analytical categories and their associated terminologies. This article seeks to engage with both of these gaps. First, I identify normative and analytical shortcomings of the ‘emasculation’/‘feminization’ paradigm. Drawing on Edström, Dolan and colleagues, I propose an alternative reading to analyse the effects of sexual violence on gender identities. Second, I argue that the impact of sexual violence on masculinities is a layered process, compounded through numerous sexual and gendered harms and perpetuated over time. In northern Uganda, this process is composed of intersecting gendered harms that subordinate male survivors along gendered hierarchies, and that signify survivors' perceived inabilities to provide, protect and procreate—as expected of them by local constructions of hegemonic masculinity. I therefore emphasize that sexual violence against men strikes at multiple levels of what it means to be a man, which is important to understanding and addressing these layered gendered harms in the aftermath of the violations.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Conflict, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Men Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2018

Gender and Peace Negotiations: Why Gendering Peace Negotiations Multiplies Opportunities for Reconciliation

Citation:

Féron, Élise. 2017. "Gender and Peace Negotiations: Why Gendering Peace Negotiations Multiplies Opportunities for Reconciliation." In Negotiating Reconciliation in Peacemaking, edited by Valerie Rosoux and Mark Anstey, 93-109. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG. 

Author: Élise Ferón

Abstract:

Research, as well as fieldwork observation, has long established the multiple intersections between gender and conflicts. How masculinities and femininities are constructed in times of conflict and war, how gender and ethnicity are used in narratives and political discourses, how gender roles, militarism and war are tightly interrelated, and more generally how conflict impacts differently on women and on men, or how the meanings of conflict and security might diverge for women and men.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Conflict, Ethnicity, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Militarism, Security

Year: 2017

Women Smuggling and the Men who Help Them: Gender, Corruption and Illicit Networks in Senegal

Citation:

Howson, Cynthia. 2012. “Women Smuggling and the Men who Help Them: Gender, Corruption and Illicit Networks in Senegal.” Journal of Modern African Studies 50 (3): 421-45.

Author: Cynthia Howson

Abstract:

This paper investigates gendered patterns of corruption and access to illicit networks among female cross-border traders near the Senegambian border. Despite a discourse of generosity and solidarity, access to corrupt networks is mediated by class and gender, furthering social differentiation, especially insofar as it depends on geographic and socio-economic affinity with customs officers, state representatives and well-connected transporters. Issues of organisational culture, occupational identity and interpersonal negotiations of power represent important sources of corruption that require an understanding of the actual dynamics of public administration. While smuggling depends on contesting legal and social boundaries, the most successful traders (and transporters) strive to fulfil ideal gender roles as closely as possible. Ironically, trading on poverty and feminine vulnerability only works for relatively affluent women.

Topics: Corruption, Economies, Informal Economies, Poverty, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Femininity/ies, Trafficking, Human Trafficking Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Senegal

Year: 2012

Conditional Protection? Sex, Gender, and Discourse in UN Peacekeeping

Citation:

Jennings, Kathleen M. 2019. "Conditional Protection? Sex, Gender, and Discourse in UN Peacekeeping." International Studies Quarterly 63 (1): 30-42.

Author: Kathleen M. Jennings

Abstract:

How do peacekeepers operating in Haiti, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) discursively construct the local people, especially local women, and to what effect? I show a connection between peacekeepers’ representations of local people, articulated in discourse, and the gendered, often sexualized interactions and transactions in peacekeeping sites. Gender plays a central role in peacekeeper discourse. It situates the peacekeeper outside, and superior to, the chaotic, dysfunctional, feminized local. At the same time, a close reading of peacekeepers’ representations of local people disrupts idealized notions of peacekeeper masculinity as protective and benign, which still persist in peacekeeping circles, revealing it as something more vulnerable and brittle. The connection between discourse and (non)performance of peacekeeping duties is neither causal nor straightforward, but I argue that peacekeepers’ discursive constructions of locals affect how peacekeepers interpret their mandate to protect civilians: protection becomes conditional on peacekeepers’ perceptions of locals’ appearance, affect, behavior, and their ability to act out an idealized role as someone “worth” protecting. The article thus brings new insight to our understandings of gender, masculinities, and protection failures in peacekeeping.

 

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Peacekeeping Regions: Africa, Central Africa, West Africa, Americas, Caribbean countries Countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Liberia

Year: 2019

Smart Peacekeeping: Deploying Canadian Women for a Better Peace?

Citation:

Biskupski-Mujanovic, Sandra. 2019. "Smart Peacekeeping: Deploying Canadian Women for a Better Peace?" International Journal: Canada's Journal of Global Policy Analysis 74 (3): 405-21.

Author: Sandra Biskupski-Mujanovic

Abstract:

Canada announced its renewed commitment to United Nations peacekeeping with a special mission to increase the representation of women through the Elsie Initiative. That announcement marks a crucial time to examine peacekeeping as a gendered project that requires reflection on power and inequality between states and peacekeepers through an intersectional analysis that pays attention to gender and race. The major justification for increasing the number of women in peacekeeping operations has remained instrumental: deploying more women will lead to kinder, gentler, less abusive, and more efficient missions. However, there is little empirical evidence to support these claims. This paper looks at Canadian peacekeeping and arguments for women’s increased representation in peacekeeping operations for improved operational effectiveness as a “smart” peacekeeping strategy. It looks at the contradictions and controversies in Canadian peacekeeping and gender and smart peacekeeping that includes the Women, Peace, and Security agenda in general and within Canada, operational effectiveness claims, militarized masculinity, and militarized femininity. Without qualitative empirical data from Canadian women peacekeepers themselves, smart peacekeeping claims, which “add women and stir,” are largely anecdotal and do not adequately facilitate meaningful change.

Keywords: peacekeeping, Gender, Canada, inequality, race

Topics: Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Peacekeeping, Race, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Canada

Year: 2019

Mothers, Warriors and Lords: Gender(ed) Cartographies of the US War on Drugs in Latin America

Citation:

Telles, Ana Clara. 2019. “Mothers, Warriors and Lords: Gender(ed) Cartographies of the US War on Drugs in Latin America.” Contexto Internacional 41 (1): 15-38.

Author: Ana Clara Telles

Abstract:

This paper aims to offer a feminist, Latin-American reading on the gender representations that constitute the discourse on the US war on drugs in Latin America. Drawing upon the feminist literature on international security, this article explores some of the nuances of the US war-on-drugs discourse when it comes to gender. It argues that, although a gendered discourse has been constantly present in US official discourse, it has visibly changed in character as the USA’s antidrug policies became increasingly internationalized, militarized, and oriented by a ‘supply-side approach.’ Once deployed through the feminization of drug consumption as a moral degradation of the nation’s social body, US war-on-drugs discourse perceptibly changed to encompass a process of hyper-masculinization of the figure of the US drug warrior, supported by subordinate masculinities and femininities represented by the subaltern, feminized Latin American drug warriors, and the ruthless, hyper-aggressive drug lords. Ultimately, the gender(ed) cartographies of the USA’s war-on-drugs discourse work as conditions of possibility for framing the war on drugs as the only ‘solution’ to the ‘drug problem’ and reaffirm the incessant search for sovereignty that has as its ultimate goal the total control, domination and vigilance of human interaction with psychoactive substances: attributes of a hegemonic state masculinity par excellence. Through gendered (in)security performances, the state defends not only its ‘physical’ borders from external threats, but also its own frontiers of possibility.

Keywords: war on drugs, gender studies, gender representations, Latin America, illicit drugs

Topics: Armed Conflict, "New Wars", Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Trafficking, Drug Trafficking Regions: Americas, Central America, South America

Year: 2019

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