Peacekeeping

Sylabus Topic

Women and Gender Perspectives in the Military: An International Comparison

Citation:

Egnell, Robert, and Mayesha Alam, eds. 2019. Women and Gender Perspectives in the Military: An International Comparison. Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press. 

Authors: Robert Egnell, Mayesha Alam

Annotation:

Summary:
“Women and Gender Perspectives in the Military compares the integration of women, gender perspectives, and the women, peace, and security agenda into the armed forces of eight countries plus NATO and United Nations peacekeeping operations. This book brings a much-needed crossnational analysis of how militaries have or have not improved gender balance, what has worked and what has not, and who have been the agents for change.
 
The country cases examined are Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia, and South Africa. Despite increased opportunities for women in the militaries of many countries and wider recognition of the value of including gender perspectives to enhance operational effectiveness, progress has encountered roadblocks even nearly twenty years after United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 kicked off the women, peace, and security agenda. Robert Egnell, Mayesha Alam, and the contributors to this volume conclude that there is no single model for change that can be applied to every country, but the comparative findings reveal many policy-relevant lessons while advancing scholarship about women and gendered perspectives in the military.” (Egnell and Alam 2019)
 
Table of Contents: 
1. Introduction: Gender and Women in the Military—Setting the Stage
Robert Egnell and Mayesha Alam
 
2. Women in UN Peacekeeping Operations
Sabrina Karim
 
3. Sweden's Implementation of a Gender Perspective: Cutting Edge but Momentum Lost
Robert Egnell
 
4. The Gender Perspective and Canada's Armed Forces: Internal and External Dimensions of Military Culture
Stéfanie von Hlatky
 
5. The Role and Impact of Change Catalysts on the Netherlands Defense Organization: Integration of Women and Gender in Operations
Yvette Langenhuizen
 
6. Women and Gender in the US Military: A Slow Process of Integration
Brenda Oppermann
 
7. Women, Gender, and Close Combat Roles in the UK: "Sluts," "Bitches," and "Honorary Blokes"
Anthony King
 
8. Are Women Really Equal in the People's Army? A Gender Perspective on the Israel Defence Forces
Hanna Herzog
 
9. The Case of Australia: From "Culture" Reforms to a Culture of Rights
Susan Harris Rimmer
 
10. Three Waves of Gender Integration: The Causes, Consequences, and Implications for the South African Armed Forces
Lindy Heinecken
 
11. Integrating Gender Perspectives at NATO: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Charlotte Isaksson
 
12. Conclusion: Lessons of Comparison and Limits of Generalization
Robert Egnell and Mayesha Alam

Topics: Gender, Women, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Peace and Security, Peacekeeping, Security, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325 Regions: Africa, MENA, Southern Africa, Americas, North America, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Nordic states, Northern Europe, Western Europe, Oceania Countries: Australia, Canada, Israel, Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States of America

Year: 2019

Deepening the Conversation: Feminism, International Policing and the WPS Agenda

Citation:

Huber, Laura K, and Natalie F Hudson. 2019. "Deepening the Conversation: Feminism, International Policing and the WPS Agenda." International Peacekeeping 26 (5): 579-604.

Authors: Laura Huber, Natalie Hudson

Abstract:

Scholarship on international police reform and Women, Peace and Security (WPS) has flourished in the last decade and the potential for engagement across these two bodies of literature is promising. Given the increased use of police personnel in international peace missions and emphasis on gender mainstreaming policies, the need for assessing the impact of these two trends has never been greater. Thus, this paper seeks to bridge gaps between the mainstream policing scholarship and feminist scholars focused on post-conflict peacebuilding police reforms. We explore how feminist scholars can engage with policing literature’s technocratic language and ‘in the field’ experience as well as how policing scholars can interact with feminist scholars to transform traditional approaches to security in the context of the WPS Agenda. We demonstrate the benefits of increased dialogue and interaction by highlighting the common and diverging challenges in both fields in three areas: the design, implementation, and evaluation. Finally, to illustrate the dynamic intersection of these areas of study and practice, we examine the transnational policing efforts to gender mainstream the Liberian National Police (LNP) in the context of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL).

Keywords: feminism, police, Gender, security sector reform, peacekeeping

Topics: Feminisms, Gender Mainstreaming, International Organizations, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Post-Conflict, Security Sector Reform Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Liberia

Year: 2019

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

"It is Important, but...': Translating the Women Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda into the Planning of EU Peacekeeping Missions

Citation:

Deiana, Maria-Adriana, and Kenneth McDonagh. 2018. "'It Is Important, But...': Translating the Women Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda into the Planning of EU Peacekeeping Missions." Peacebuilding 6 (1): 34-48. 

Authors: Maria-Adriana Deiana, Kenneth McDonagh

Abstract:

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.

Keywords: Gender, peace, security, EU peacekeeping, planning, Narratives

Topics: Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Mainstreaming, Peacekeeping, Peace and Security, Security Regions: Europe

Year: 2018

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

Amputated Men, Colonial Bureaucracy, and Masculinity in Post-World War I Colonial Nigeria

Citation:

Njung, George N. 2020. “Amputated Men, Colonial Bureaucracy, and Masculinity in Post-World War I Colonial Nigeria.” Journal of Social History 53 (3): 620-43.

Author: George N, Njung

Abstract:

Since the 1980s, several aspects of masculinity in relation to the First World War, including the image of the citizen-soldier, have been well studied. Other aspects, however, such as the experience of combat and its impact on peacetime masculinities lag well behind. Though wartime and postwar experiences in Africa provide a repertoire for gender and masculinity research, the continent has been neglected in this realm of studies. British colonial Nigeria contributed tens of thousands of combat men to the war with thousands becoming disabled and facing challenges to their masculine identities, yet there is no serious research on this topic for Nigeria. This paper contributes to this long-neglected aspect of African history. Known in colonial archival documents only as “amputated men,” war- disabled Nigerian men struggled to navigate colonial bureaucracy in order to ob- tain artificial limbs and redeem what they considered their lost manhood. Employing data collected from the Nigerian and British archives, the article’s objectives are twofold: it analyzes the diminishment of the masculine identities of war-disabled men in Nigeria following the First World War, and it explains how such diminishment was accentuated by an inefficiently structured British colonial bureaucracy, paired with British colonial racism. The article contributes to schol- arship on WWI, disability studies, gender studies, and colonial studies, through examination of the protracted legacies of the global conflict on the African continent.

 

 

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Peacekeeping, Post-Conflict, Race Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Nigeria

Year: 2020

Women in UN Peacekeeping Operations

Citation:

Sabrina Karim. 2019. "Women in UN Peacekeeping Operations." In Women and Gender Perspectives in the Military: An International Comparison, edited by Robert Egnell and Mayesha Alam, 23-40. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Author: Sabrina Karim

Annotation:

Summary:
"This chapter explores the UN’s implementation of a gender perspective by asking three main questions. First, why were decisions made in the UN to include a gender perspective in peacekeeping operations? And who were the key decision makers in making changes in missions? Here the key insight is that attempts to bring attention to the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda started in the 1990s, but the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 in 2000 set the stage for UN peacekeeping operations to ensure a gender perspective in all peacekeeping missions. Next, what does the integration of women and gender perspectives look like when it is operationalized in peacekeeping missions? DPKO has implemented UNSCR 1325 mainly through two mechanisms: gender balancing and gender mainstreaming. While gender mainstreaming may be a more holistic way to ensure that missions adopt a gender perspective, gender balancing has been a more popular route owing to expedience. Nevertheless, there are drawbacks to this approach, mainly that female peacekeepers are not able to reach their full potential because of the gendered structures that exist both in contributing country militaries and within the peacekeeping mission. While gender mainstreaming is perhaps a preferable tool, it suffers from inadequate conceptualization and has not been effective because of a pervasive male dominance within peacekeeping culture. 
 
Moving forward, an assessment of DPKO’s past strategy, achievements, and shortcomings is necessary to evaluate the potential for peacekeeping missions to lead in promoting gender issues globally. Because of its comparative advantage in implementing a gender perspective, the UN is regarded as a model for WPS efforts in the militaries of individual countries. Thus, to understand how the UN has implemented a gender perspective and the effects of such implementation, this chapter first explores the evolution of integrating a gender perspective into peacekeeping operations and provides an understanding of why decisions were made to include a gender perspective in peacekeeping operations in the 2000s. This historical tracing helps us understand how gender perspectives might be brought to national militaries. The chapter then demonstrates that the UN, policymakers, and some scholars opted to take an instrumentalist approach in justifying why a gendered approach was necessary. The next part of the chapter highlights how implementation occurred; the UN implemented both gender balancing and gender mainstreaming but has perhaps prioritized gender balancing because it is easier to measure. The chapter concludes with some of the existing challenges that remain to more fully integrate a gender perspective in peacekeeping operations." (Karim 2019, 23-24)

Topics: Gender, Gender Balance, Gender Mainstreaming, International Organizations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Peacekeeping, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325

Year: 2019

Keeping the Peace: Gender, Geopolitics and Global Governance Interventions

Citation:

Henry, Marsha Giselle. 2019. "Keeping the Peace: Gender, Geopolitics and Global Governance Interventions." Conflict, Security & Development 19 (3): 263-68.

Author: Marsha Giselle Henry

Abstract:

This contribution examines who and what constitute peacekeeping, and how this exacerbates gendered and geopolitical inequalities. While the number and distribution of peacekeepers (boots on the ground) is highly dependent upon Global South men and Global North money, peacekeeping appears to be more genderfriendly and truly globally representative. Despite significant transformations in the nature of peacekeeping operations, it appears that many of the more recent changes, such as introducing more female peacekeepers, has done very little to change the patriarchal and colonial culture of peacekeeping. This article exposes the perpetuation of inequalities and suggests that such interventions need to be critically examined in more detail.

Keywords: Gender, peacekeeping, geopolitics, global division of labour, equality

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Organizations, Peacekeeping

Year: 2019

Gendered Legacies of Peacekeeping: Implications of Trafficking for Forced Prostitution in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Citation:

Koester, Diana. 2020. "Gendered Legacies of Peacekeeping: Implications of Trafficking for Forced Prostitution in Bosnia-Herzegovina." International Peacekeeping 27 (1): 35-43.

Author: Diane Koester

Abstract:

A growing body of research shows that peacekeeping missions are ‘gendered’, both in terms of composition and organizational cultures. However, studies have tended to focus on more immediate consequences of these characteristics. This short contribution on effects of trafficking for forced prostitution in Bosnia–Herzegovina suggests that gender norms can also significantly influence longer-term legacies of peace operations. It briefly highlights connections between large-scale peacekeeping and the emergence of Bosnia–Herzegovina as a sex-trafficking destination and discusses enduring implications of these trends for regional, local and human security. This case suggests that considering the role of gender norms and women’s specific experiences can help develop the wider research agenda outlined in this forum: the study of peacekeeping legacies.

Topics: Gender, Women, Peacekeeping, Security, Human Security, Trafficking, Sex Trafficking Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina

Year: 2020

Situating Agency, Embodied Practices and Norm Implementation in Peacekeeping Training

Citation:

Holmes, Georgina. 2019. "Situating Agency, Embodied Practices and Norm Implementation in Peacekeeping Training." International Peacekeeping 26 (1): 55-84.

Author: Georgina Holmes

Abstract:

Applying a Bourdieusian feminist practice theory approach to the study of norm implementation, this article introduces a fourth level of analysis, the embodied subject who is expected to be governed by peacekeeping norms. It does so by examining the training experiences of Rwandan tactical-level female military peacekeepers deployed in mix-gender contingents to UNAMID. It is argued that the pre-deployment training space is a field of norm contestation and negotiation, wherein gendered peacekeeper subject positions and gendered peacekeeping labouring practices are constructed and performed. The research findings suggest that by partially complying with the UN’s gender mainstreaming norms, the Rwanda Defence Force strengthens the military’s gender protection norms and establishes the sexual division of labour of the mission area. Trained to perform a scripted Rwandan female subject position, some women find they are not adequately prepared for the more challenging situations they find themselves in when working in multi-dimensional peacekeeping operations and devise alternative, informal training practices to better equip themselves prior to deployment. The case study draws on 65 depth-interviews with Rwandan military personnel, trainers and external consultants and non-participatory observations of field exercises.

Keywords: peacekeeping, Gender, pre-deployment training, norms, international practice theory

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gender Mainstreaming, Livelihoods, Peacekeeping Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa Countries: Rwanda

Year: 2019

Pages

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