Militaries

War and Climate Change

Dr. Neta Crawford

October 18, 2023

Hybrid - Ballroom A (U03-3550A Campus Center), University of Massachusetts Boston. For in-person attendance:

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Topics

“In My Eyes He Was a Man”: Poor and Working-Class Boy Soldiers in the Iran-Iraq War

Citation:

Ahmadi, Shaherzad R. 2018. "'In My Eyes He Was a Man': Poor and Working-Class Boy Soldiers in the Iran-Iraq War." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 14 (2): 174-192.

Author: Shaherzad R. Ahmadi

Abstract:

During the Pahlavi period in Iran (1925–79), poor and working-class families were more likely to expect young sons to work to support the household. These boys, in turn, were more autonomous. Middle-class families, on the other hand, protected and controlled boys. Researchers have assumed that religious zealotry was the primary inspiration for boys to enlist in the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, ignoring the ways in which class inflected boyhood. While religious fervor may have been a motivation for some of the poor and working-class Iranian boys (between ten and fourteen) who enlisted, the expectation that they work took precedence. Moreover, at least some of these boys were eager to participate in war-front masculine homosociality rather than remain in feminized domestic spaces. This study analyzes biographies, census data, newspaper accounts, and original oral history interviews.

Keywords: Iran-Iraq War, childhood, boy soldiers, Pahlavi Iran, class

Topics: Age, Youth, Armed Conflict, Class, Combatants, Child Soldiers, Male Combatants, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran

Year: 2018

'People Want to See Tears’: Military Heroes and the ‘Constant Penelope’ of the UK’s Military Wives Choir

Citation:

Cree, Alice. 2020. “'People Want to See Tears’: Military Heroes and the ‘Constant Penelope’ of the UK’s Military Wives Choir.” Gender, Place & Culture 27 (2): 218–38. 

Author: Alice Cree

Abstract:

This article offers a feminist analysis of the UK’s Military Wives Choir as a vehicle for depicting the subject of the ‘Penelope’ military wife. The Penelope subject is characterised by patriotic feminine stoicism, and is a figure through which the masculine military hero is created and reflected. This paper will use the example of the Military Wives Choir to the argue that the making of the Penelope military wife subject in the national imagination is an important means through which women married to servicemen are rendered useful for the military. Drawing on primary fieldwork with the Plymouth branch of the choir alongside an analysis of secondary material such as song lyrics and Gareth Malone’s BBC television programme The Choir: Military Wives, my discussion will centre on three themes; lyrics & music, history & time of the state, and violence & representation. By discussing the making of the Penelope subject through these lenses, this paper will contend that there are clear, yet often nuanced, forms of violence at work in the representation of the choir. And yet, as this article will conclude, in order to shed a more textured light on this violence what is needed is a critical and in-depth engagement with the lived experiences of the women of the choir.

Keywords: critical military studies, feminist geopolitics, military wives, military wives choir, gender

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Nationalism, Violence Regions: Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2020

When Are Women Deployed? Operational Uncertainty and Deployment of Female Personnel to UN Peacekeeping

Citation:

Tidblad-Lundholm, Kajsa. 2020. “When Are Women Deployed? Operational Uncertainty and Deployment of Female Personnel to UN Peacekeeping.” International Peacekeeping 27 (4): 673–702.

Author: Kajsa Tidblad-Lundholm

Abstract:

This study explores how the duration of missions affects the participation of women in United Nations (UN) peace operations. I argue that women are less likely to be deployed in the early stages of missions because new missions are associated with high levels of operational uncertainty, which is ultimately a type of risk. Instead, women’s participation will increase over time as the uncertainty decreases and the operating environment becomes more predictable. In an extended analysis, I also explore if the level of gender equality in a troop contributing country affects the decision to deploy women to the early phases of missions. Applying a large-N approach, I study the proportion of women in military contributions to UN peace operations between 2009 and 2015. Using a set of multilevel mixed-effects generalized linear models, the main argument find empirical support. However, when the robustness of the findings is challenged, there is indication that there could be additional factors that affect operational uncertainty and the perceived risk associated with an operating environment. The result of the extended analysis indicate that more gender equal countries are more prone to deploy larger proportions of female military personnel, regardless of when the deployment takes place.
 

Keywords: women's participation, UNSCR 1325, peacekeeping, United Nations, peace operations

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Organizations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Peacekeeping

Year: 2020

Exploring Gender Norms in the Lebanese Internal Security Forces

Citation:

Rougvie, Kate. 2018. "Exploring Gender Norms in the Lebanese Internal Security Forces." Al-Raida Journal 42 (1): 6-19.

Abstract:

Feminist scholarship focusing on security, gender, and conflict indicates gender norms that privilege the masculine and inferiorize the feminine are particularly pronounced within militarized security institutions (Whitworth, 2004). The male-dominated security sector promotes a particular type of masculinity (Connell, 2005), which reinforces gender-blind security institutions (Bastick, n.d.; Valasek, 2008; Enloe, 1983; Enloe, 2007). In this article, I will explore the ways in which this dynamic is produced in the context of Lebanon. I will investigate how social constructions of gender are reinforced by, and shape the nature of Lebanon’s highly militarized police force, and the potential impact of this on its capacity to respond to gendered needs. I will begin by demonstrating the importance of gender perspectives to security theory and discourse. I will then explore the ways in which gender norms manifest in the militarized Internal Security Forces (ISF) and the reasons for, and the impact of this manifestation on their capacity to be a gender-responsive institution. Such an analysis will touch on the role of the police in preventing and responding to gender-based violence (GBV), and women’s participation in the ISF.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Gender-Based Violence, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Security Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Lebanon

Year: 2018

Fixing Gender: The Paradoxical Politics of Peacekeeper Training

Citation:

Holvikivi, Aiko. 2019. "Fixing Gender: The Paradoxical Politics of Peacekeeper Training." PhD diss., The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Author: Aiko Holvikivi

Abstract:

Over the past two decades, gender training for military and police peacekeepers has become institutionalised in the global governance of peace and security. Such training purports to respond to gendered harms previously ignored in, or actively caused by, peacekeeping operations. This evolving transnational practice involves the introduction of gender knowledge – indebted to feminist theorising and activism – into police and military organisations – commonly characterised as institutions of hegemonic masculinity. This thesis takes the tension between feminism and martial institutions as its point of departure to investigate what meaning the term gender acquires in training for uniformed peacekeepers, asking: What epistemic and political work does gender training do in martial institutions? Investigating the pedagogical practices of gender training through a multi-sited ethnography, I approach this question with the help of feminist, postcolonial, (and) queer epistemic perspectives. I conceptualise gender training as involving the production of knowledges around gender; knowledges which enable ways of being and acting in the world. I suggest that training practices often produce an understanding of gender that serves martial politics and reproduces colonial logics in the peacekeeping enterprise, thereby emptying the term of the transformative political hopes that feminist theorists typically invest in the concept. At the same time, I identify moments of tension, in which gender training appears to be destabilising hierarchical martial logics and engaging in subversive pedagogy. In sum, I argue that ambivalence is an integral feature of gender training, and locate political potential in the cultivation of resistant pedagogies, which exploit the margins of hegemonic discourses to engage in subversive strategies of destabilisation and delinking. This thesis provides an empirical contribution to an under-studied area of global governance, as well as forwarding feminist theorising on political strategies for engaging with and against institutions of state power.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Peacekeeping

Year: 2019

The Gender and Security Agenda: Strategies for the 21st Century

Citation:

Oudraat, Chantal de Jonge, and Michael E. Brown, eds. 2020. The Gender and Security Agenda: Strategies for the 21st Century. London: Routledge.

Authors: Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, Michael E. Brown

Annotation:

Summary:
This book examines the gender dimensions of a wide array of national and international security challenges.
 
The volume examines gender dynamics in ten issue areas in both the traditional and human security sub-fields: armed conflict, post-conflict, terrorism, military organizations, movement of people, development, environment, humanitarian emergencies, human rights, governance. The contributions show how gender affects security and how security problems affect gender issues.
 
Each chapter also examines a common set of key factors across the issue areas: obstacles to progress, drivers of progress and long-term strategies for progress in the 21st century. The volume develops key scholarship on the gender dimensions of security challenges and thereby provides a foundation for improved strategies and policy directions going forward. The lesson to be drawn from this study is clear: if scholars, policymakers and citizens care about these issues, then they need to think about both security and gender.
 
This will be of much interest to students of gender studies, security studies, human security and International Relations in general. (Summary from Routledge)
 
Table of Contents:
 
1. Gender and Security: Framing the Agenda 
Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Michael E. Brown
 
2. Gender and Armed Conflict 
Kathleen Kuehnast
 
3. Gender and Peacebuilding 
Anne Marie Goetz and Rob Jenkins
 
4. Gender and Terrorism 
Jeannette Gaudry Haynie
 
5. Gender and Military Organizations 
Ellen Haring 
 
6. Gender and Population Movements 
Jane Freedman
 
7. Gender, Development and Security 
Jeni Klugman
 
8. Gender and Environmental Security 
Edward R. Carr
 
9. Gender, Humanitarian Emergencies and Security 
Tamara Nair
 
10. Gender, Human Rights and Security 
Corey Levine and Sari Kouvo
 
11. Gender, Governance and Security 
Jacqui True and Sara E. Davies
 
12. Promoting Gender and Security: Obstacles, Drivers and Strategies 
Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Michael E. Brown

 

Topics: Armed Conflict, Development, Environment, Gender, Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Peace and Security, Post-Conflict, Peacebuilding, Rights, Human Rights, Terrorism

Year: 2020

The Health Impacts of Violence Perpetrated by Police, Military and Other Public Security Forces on Gay, Bisexual and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men in El Salvador

Citation:

Davis, Dirk A., Giuliana J. Morales, Kathleen Ridgeway, Modesto Mendizabal, Michele Lanham, Robyn Dayton, Juana Cooke, Karin Santi and Emily Evens. 2020. “The Health Impacts of Violence Perpetrated by Police, Military and Other Public Security Forces on Gay, Bisexual and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men in El Salvador.” Culture, Health & Sexuality 22 (2): 217-32.

Authors: Dirk A. Davis, Giuliana J. Morales, Kathleen Ridgeway, Modesto Mendizabal, Michele Lanham, Robyn Dayton, Juana Cooke, Karin Santi, Emily Evens

Abstract:

Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men face both high levels of violence and a disproportionate burden of poor health outcomes. We explored violence perpetrated against Salvadoran gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men by public security forces; perceived motivations of violence; and impacts on health. We conducted structured qualitative interviews with 20 participants and used systematic coding and narrative analysis to identify emergent themes. Nearly all participants described the physical, emotional, sexual and/or economic violence by public security forces. Most attributed being targeted to their gender expression and/or perceived sexual orientation. The most common impact was emotional distress, including humiliation, fear and depression; lasting physical injuries were also widely reported. Study participants felt unable to report these incidents for fear of retribution or inaction. Men reported feelings of helplessness and distrust, avoidance of authorities and altering when, where or how often they appeared in public spaces. Programmes and interventions should focus on providing mental health services for LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) victims of violence, educating public security forces on the legal rights of Salvadorans and expanding current LGBTI-inclusive policies to all public security forces.

Keywords: violence, men who have sex with men, police, military, El Salvador

Topics: Gender, Men, Health, Mental Health, LGBTQ, Male Victims, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Security, Sexuality, Sexual Violence, SV against Men, Violence Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: El Salvador

Year: 2020

A Threat to Canadian National Security: A Lesbian Soldier's Story

Citation:

Gouliquer, Lynne, Carmen Poulin, and Jennifer Moore. 2018. "A Threat to Canadian National Security: A Lesbian Soldier's Story." Qualitative Research in Psychology 15 (2-3): 323-35.

Authors: Lynne Gouliquer, Carmen Poulin, Jennifer Moore

Abstract:

Before 1992, lesbians and gay soldiers were purged and discharged from the Canadian military for “reasons of homosexuality.” Those caught or suspected of homosexuality were subject to lengthy, humiliating, and degrading interrogations. This short story sheds light on this painful past. It is based on findings of a nationally funded pan-Canadian longitudinal study examining how Canadian military policies and practices influenced the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender soldiers and their partners. In total, 126 people were interviewed. While in the military, countless soldiers were investigated, numerous interrogated, many lost their careers, some committed suicide and others survived. Personal details have been changed to ensure the anonymity of the people, but it is their voices that tell this story. An official state apology was delivered November 28, 2017. Due to an impending class action court case, an agreement for compensation was also reached. Compensation and memorials will be forthcoming to those who were affected by the LGBTQI2+ purge campaign. To this day, no evidence exists that these soldiers were “ever” a threat to national security.

Keywords: Canadian military, discharged soldiers, homosexuality, interrogations, justice, LGBT, national security, purge campaign

Topics: Combatants, Justice, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Security, Sexuality Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Canada

Year: 2018

Pages

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