On Friday 25 October, the United Nations Department of Peace Operations (DPO) released a report titled ‘Towards equal opportunities for women in defense’ during the United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security Week 2024. This report, prepared by the Geneva Center for Security Sector Governance (DECAF) with input on subsequent drafts from the DPO Secretariat for Rule of Law and Security Institutions and other experts working at the United Nations, provides an examination of the successes and barriers to advancing women’s human rights. Provides recommendations on next steps to achieve meaningful participation and greater parity and inclusion at all levels of the defense sector globally.
The report includes seven ‘accelerators’ for gender equality in defense based on best practice, and identifies: (Office of Peace Operations 2024, p.8).
- Assess barriers to women’s participation.
- Strengthening our recruitment strategy to attract more women.
- Improve retention rates among women.
- Build a culture of diversity and inclusion.
- Fight against sexism, harassment and abuse.
- Promotes career development programs for women.
- Ensure equal promotion of female soldiers.
Feminists and gender scholars have long had a difficult relationship with the idea of integrating women into the defense sector. Women, Peace and Security (WPS) should be about peace and many believe that cooperation between women and the military contradicts this. The inclusion of women is inconsistent with the anti-militarist, post-colonial, and peace activist positions embraced by many scholars, activists, and practitioners. However, like all marginalized groups, women have the human right to participate in all spheres of politics and society and should be able to influence decisions in the most powerful institutions of state, including defence, security and global governance. All marginalized groups should have some say in shaping change. At a more practical level, it is believed that diversifying the workforce of defense, security and global governance institutions can prevent echo chambers that lead to narrow and often self-serving ways of thinking about peace, security and prosperity.
However, as many scholars have observed, the militarization processes involved in the WPS program maintain a global ‘strong neoliberal security order’ while being dominated by white racist definitions of women/gender, security and peace. According to research by Mine and David Duriesmith, gender-sensitive security sector reform (SSR) and demilitarization, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programs that support post-conflict reconstruction typically strengthen the power base of elite men within a particular country. Influenced by masculine logic. Rather than introducing true equality and diversity into public sector decision-making on defense and security, the WPS narrative used to encourage women’s participation essentializes women and their LGBTQ+ experiences (as well as the experiences and needs of marginalized male groups). Not only are they often ignored, but women’s value is framed in terms of their gender contributions rather than their gender. equality.
These difficult relationships are made even more difficult by the current geopolitical environment, which is characterized by a modification and intensification of the Cold War politics of the Cold War era. decline of multilateralism; There is increasing militarization (global military spending will be $2.44 trillion in 2023, compared to $1.56 trillion a decade ago) and violent non-state actors continue to be prevalent, many engaging in proxy wars. Meanwhile, male elites and their mostly male political leaders are choosing to use the defense sector for lethal purposes, the most notable current example being the Sudanese civil war. Russia’s illegal and aggressive invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and illegal interventions in Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
At a UN Women, Peace and Security Week event in New York last month, UN staff and diplomats ignored international politics and focused on non-political questions about the practical reasons why women participate in defence. This signaled a willingness among UN staff to continue business as usual, but also a desire to avoid the high emotions and political tensions that increasingly permeate other committees and activities and undermine the work of the Security Council. Therefore, in launching the ‘Women in Defense’ report, representatives of the UN Secretary-General argued that women’s participation is essential for security and world peace.
For those who support normative reasons for advocating for more women in defence, the DPO’s report provides a new benchmark against which future progress can be assessed. But the report’s findings by no means provide an accurate picture of global trends. The report acknowledges that only 55 countries – a third of UN member states with militaries – responded to surveys repeatedly sent by the UN Secretariat. In-depth interviews on the rule of law, security institutions and best practices were conducted in just 18 Member States. The report notes that while representation was achieved across all regions, the limited data collected did not provide an opportunity to assess regional trends in relation to broader global trends. Some of the data is so small that it is difficult to know how representative it is of defense and security agencies. The report also states that women currently make up 10% of the armed forces, but this figure is extrapolated from a survey of just 21 countries (Office of Peace Operations, 2024, p.33). If more member states had completed the survey, these figures could be significantly different.
Taking these limitations into account, Recommendation 18 of the report calls on Member States to ‘share information and best practices on equal opportunities for women in the defense sector’ through regional organizations and informal expert groups on women, peace and security. I urge you. Security, WPS focal networks and other pathways (Department of Peace Operations, 2024, p.64).
However, this recommendation will not be achieved unless the defense sector becomes more transparent. This is a difficult task given how sensitive the military is to sharing gender data. Defense ministries around the world are able to avoid public scrutiny because they lack data collection mechanisms, as is the case in the Central African Republic. Either progress is slow, or there is resistance at the top and there is no real desire to create real, lasting change. In Rwanda, when I conducted my research, the Rwandan National Defense Force only shared data on addressing conflict-related sexual violence and did not disclose statistics on the recruitment, retention and ranking of women to the Gender Monitoring Office. In accordance with the Rwandan Constitution, we oversee the achievement of the target of 30% representation of women in all institutions.
Similarly, in the UK there is currently no formal parliamentary oversight of women’s and LGBTQ+ equality within the British Armed Forces. Following the damning results of the Atherton inquiry in 2021 and a number of high-profile employment tribunal cases about racism and sexual abuse reported by the British media, only very recently has reporting begun to the House of Commons Defense Committee. Nonetheless, there is evidence that congressional oversight of women in defense planning, including budget oversight, accelerates gender mainstreaming.
Regular reporting on gender data should also be provided free of charge. For example, the Indian Army, which has two female generals for the first time in its history, publishes annual data on the Indian Ministry of Defense website. Lieutenant General Sadhna Saxena Nair said at a high-profile event in New York that much of the plan was due to India’s ‘strong democracy’. This prompted Congress to request real-time disclosure from the Department of Defense. Obtain gender data to better track and monitor progress. But congressional oversight of the ‘Defend Women’ initiative should not end with examining gender data. Security sector reform requires the continued engagement of civil society and cannot be done behind closed doors. Governments must rethink security more broadly to ensure that public concerns extend to concerns about human and ecological security and that these concerns are integrated into strategies and plans.
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