Private Military & Security

Citation:

Vrdoljak, Ana F. 2015. “Women, PMSCs and International Law: Gender and Private Force.” In Gender and Private Security in Global Politics, edited by Maya Eichler, 187-207. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author: Ana F. Vrdoljak

Abstract:

The application of international law norms and shortcomings of existing regulatory regimes covering PMSCs reinforce concerns about transparency and accountability in respect of gender-related violence, harassment, and discrimination. This chapter focuses on the main issues and legal concerns raised by the impact of the privatization of war on women. The first part examines current initiatives at the international level to provide a regulatory framework for PMSCs and encompasses the obligations of states (and international organizations) in respect of international humanitarian law, human rights law, and use of force. The second part outlines the influence of civil society participation (including feminist academics, women’s NGOs, and so forth) in breaking the “silence” within international organizations and international law concerning violence against women and girls and its potential influence upon the regulation of PMSCs.

Keywords: women, private military and security companies, international law, human rights law, International Humanitarian Law, United Nations, PMSCs

Topics: Civil Society, Gender-Based Violence, International Law, International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Organizations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Privatization, Violence

Year: 2015

Citation:

Vrdoljak, Ana F. 2010. “Women and Private Military and Security Companies.” In War By Contract: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law and the Regulation of Private Military and Security Companies, edited by Francesco Francioni and Natalino Ronzitti, 1-25. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author: Ana F. Vrdoljack

Abstract:

Lack of clarity about the application of international law norms and inadequacies of existing regulatory regimes covering private military and security companies have reinforced concerns about transparency and accountability in respect of gender-related violence, harassment and discrimination. This chapter focuses on the main issues and legal concerns raised by the impact of the privatisation of war on women, both as PMSC employees and civilians. Part I highlights how armed conflict, civil unrest, occupation and transition have a detrimental effect upon the lives of women with particular reference to safety, displacement, health and economic disadvantage. Part II provides a summary of existing international humanitarian law and human rights provisions relating to women. Part III examines recent developments within the United Nations, the work of the ICRC, and international criminal law jurisprudence shaping these legal norms. Part IV considers the key recommendations of recent international and international initiatives covering PMSCs and women.

Keywords: women, private military and security companies, Gender, sexual assault, forced prostitution, human trafficking, sexual harassment, discrimination, international law, International Humanitarian Law, human rights

Topics: Armed Conflict, Occupation, Displacement & Migration, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Health, International Law, International Criminal Law, International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Organizations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Privatization, Rights, Human Rights, Violence

Year: 2010

Citation:

Eichler, Maya. 2013. “Gender and the Privatization of Security: Neoliberal Transformation of the Militarized Gender Order.” Critical Studies on Security 1 (3): 311-25.

Author: Maya Eichler

Abstract:

The increasing reliance on private military and security companies (PMSCs) in contemporary military conflict marks a historic shift in the state’s organization of military violence. This transformation has gendered underpinnings and entails gender-specific outcomes, at the same time as it reveals a gendered continuum between public and private military and security organizations. As the US example illustrates, security privatization was facilitated by the broader neoliberal transformation of the militarized gender order and itself has had negative implications for gender equality in the military and security sphere. Based on original research, this article argues that PMSCs are deeply gendered organizations whose employment practices tends to intensify the gendered division of labour that is characteristic of public militaries. While business and operational needs may allow for temporary disruptions of gender norms, masculinism remains not only vital but is reinvigorated by privatization. Political goals such as gender equality are sidelined in a sector premised on de-regulation and free markets. In contrast to problem-solving approaches that view gender as a problem of accountability or operational effectiveness in regards to PMSCs, this article shows that gender is deeply implicated in the expansion and organization of private force at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Keywords: private security, privatization of military security, PMSCs, Gender, feminist security studies, neoliberalism, militarization, United States

Topics: Armed Conflict, "New Wars", Economies, Gender, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Masculinism, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Militarization, Privatization, Violence Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2013

Citation:

Stachowitsch, Saskia. 2015. “The Reconstruction of Masculinities in Global Politics: Gendering Strategies in the Field of Private Security.” Men and Masculinities 18(2): 363-386.

Author: Saskia Stachowitsch

Abstract:

The concept of masculinities has been central to the analysis of private security as a gendered phenomenon. This research has either focused on the identity constructions and practices of security contractors as men or on masculinity as a theoretical and ideological framework for making sense of security outsourcing. This article aims to overcome this dualism by developing a relational, strategic, and discursive understanding of masculinities and focusing on the gendering strategies that create them. These strategies are identified as masculinization of the market and feminization of the state, feminization and racialization of (some) security work, hypermasculinization as a critical or affirmative discourse, romanticizing the autonomous male bond, and militarization of private security. It is argued that private security as well as critical discourses on it integrate business, humanitarian, and militarized masculinities in a way that ultimately legitimizes masculinism and reconstructs masculinity as a privileged category in international politics.

Keywords: private security, feminist international relations, PMSCs, gendering strategies, masculinism

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Militarization, Security Regions: Americas, North America, Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom, United States of America

Year: 2015

Citation:

Chisholm, Amanda, and Saskia Stachowitsch. 2016. “Everyday Matters in Global Private Security Supply Chains: A Feminist Global Political Economy Perspective on Gurkhas in Private Security.” Globalizations 13 (6): 815-29. 

Authors: Amanda Chisholm, Saskia Stachowitsch

Abstract:

In a case study of Nepalese Gurkhas working for Western private military and security companies (PMSCs), this article develops feminist global political economy understandings of global labour chains by exploring how the ‘global market’ and the ‘everyday’ interact in establishing private security as a gendered and racialised project. Current understandings of PMSCs, and global markets at large, tend to depoliticise these global and everyday interactions by conceptualising the ‘everyday’ as common, mundane, and subsequently banal. Such understandings, we argue, not only conceal the everyday within private security, but also reinforce a conceptual dualism that enables the security industry to function as a gendered and racialised project. To overcome this dualism, this article offers a theoretically informed notion of the everyday that dissolves the hegemonic separation into ‘everyday’ and ‘global’ levels of analysis. Drawing upon ethnography, semi- structured interviews, and discourse analysis of PMSCs’ websites, the analysis demonstrates how race, gender, and colonial histories constitute global supply chains for the security industry, rest upon and reinforce racialised and gendered migration patterns, and depend upon, as well as shape, the everyday lives and living of Gurkha men and women.

Keywords: Gurkhas, private security, feminist security studies, feminist global political economy, masculinity

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Economies, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Political Economies, Race, Security Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Nepal

Year: 2016

Citation:

Chisholm, Amanda. 2017. “Clients, Contractors, and the Everyday Masculinities in Global Private Security.” Critical Military Studies 3 (2): 120–41. 

Author: Amanda Chisholm

Abstract:

This article explores the intimate relationships between the client and the security contractor. It draws upon autoethnography to bring into focus the client/contractor encounters and demonstrate how such encounters (re)shape the marginal and hegemonic men/masculinities of the security industry – masculinities which work to legitimize not only who and what are appropriate security providers but also how value/valuation of security is understood and practised. As such it contributes to the broader debates about gender and war by (1) demonstrating how the researcher is always embedded in and shaped by the research she produces; and (2) by bringing to the fore the multitude of masculinities, beyond the hegemonic militarized, that emerge in private security markets.

Keywords: autoethnography, military, militarization, private military and security companies, masculinities, feminist political economy

Topics: Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Militaries, Militarization, Political Economies, Security

Year: 2017

Citation:

Eichler, Maya, ed. 2015. Gender and Private Security in Global Politics. Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author: Maya Eichler

Abstract:

For two hundred years the provision of military security has been a central and defining function of the modern nation-state. The increasing reliance on private military and security companies in contemporary conflict marks a fundamental transformation in the organization of military violence, and it raises issues of accountability and ethics that are of particular concern to feminists. This privatization of force not only enables states to circumvent citizens' democratic control over questions of war and peace, but also undermines women's and minority groups' claims for greater inclusion in the military sphere. Gender and Private Security in Global Politics brings together key scholars from the fields of international relations, security studies, and gender studies to argue that privatization of military security is a deeply gendered process. The chapters employ a variety of feminist perspectives, including critical, postcolonial, poststructuralist, and queer feminist perspectives, as well as a wide range of methodological approaches including ethnography, participant-observation, genealogy, and discourse analysis. This is the first book to develop an extended feminist analysis of private militaries and to draw on feminist concerns regarding power, justice and equality to consider how to reform and regulate private forces

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

Gender and the Privatization of Military Security: An Introduction

(Maya Eichler)

1. Military Privatization as a Gendered Process: A Case for Integrating Feminist International Relations and Feminist State Theories

(Saskia Stachowitsch)

2. Military Privatization and the Gendered Politics of Sacrifice

(Bianca Baggiarin)

3. Gender, PMSCs, and the Global Rescaling of Protection: Implications for Feminist Security Studies

(Maya Eichler)

4. (Re)Producing American Soldiers in An Age of Empire

(Isabelle V. Barker)

5. From Warriors of Empire to Martial Contractors: Reimagining Gurkhas in Private Security

(Amanda Chisholm)

6. The License to Exploit: PMSCs, Masculinities, and Third Country Nationals

(Jutta Joachim and Andrea Schneiker)

7. Aversions to Masculine Excess in the Private Military and Security Company and their Effects: Don't Be a "Billy Big Bollocks" and Beware the "Ninja!"

(Paul Higate)

8. Heternormative and Penile Frustrations: The Uneasy Discourse of the Armorgroup Hazing Scandal

(Chris Hendershot)

9. Engendering Accountability in Private Security and Public Peacekeeping

(Valerie Sperling)

10. Women and PMSCs: International Law and Regulation

(Ana Filipa Vrdoljak)

11. Empathy, Responsibility, and the Morality of Mercenaries: A Feminist Ethical Appraisal of PMSCs

(Jillian Terry)

Conclusion

(Maya Eichler)

Afterword

(Anna Leander)

Topics: Combatants, Gender, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Security

Year: 2015

Citation:

Terry, Jillian. 2015. “Empathy, Responsibility, and the Morality of Mercenaries: A Feminist Ethical Appraisal of PMSCs.” In Gender and Private Security in Global Politics, edited by Maya Eichler. Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author: Jillian Terry

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security

Year: 2015

Citation:

Vrdoljak, Ana Filipa. 2015. “Women and PMSCs: International Law and Regulation.” In Gender and Private Security in Global Politics, edited by Maya Eichler. Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author: Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, International Law, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security

Year: 2015

Citation:

Sperling, Valerie. 2015. “Engendering Accountability in Private Security and Public Peacekeeping.” In Gender and Private Security in Global Politics, edited by Maya Eichler. Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author: Valerie Sperling

Topics: Gender, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Peacekeeping

Year: 2015