Managing Women’s Peace: Strengths and Failures for Women, Peace, and Security Agenda
By Paul Kirby and Laura J. Shepherd
Columbia University Press, 2024
Women’s Peace Rule presents new, thought-provoking arguments that steer Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) research in exciting new directions. The authors’ extensive expertise, developed over years of study, is reflected in the rich detail provided throughout their first collaboratively written monograph, which provides a reliable, well-founded analysis of the WPS agenda.
Kirby and Shepherd argue that over the past two decades, WPS has often been unfairly reduced to a national discourse or technical resource, ignoring the relationship and multifaceted nature of the agenda. This reductionist tendency is common in International Relations (IR), especially under direct approaches. In contrast, drawing from critical IR, theories of governance, politics of emotions, and feminist and post-colonial thought, the authors aim not to simplify but to embrace the complexity of WPS. They engage with the agenda “not to explain but to engage” (p.26), aware of their position within the wider WPS community.
This book makes five important contributions to WPS scholarship. First, it reimagines WPS as an ‘ecological process’ of interconnected actors, activities, and artefacts, highlighting the multiplicity of agenda relationships. Second, it reframes vitality and failure not as two categories but as nature in the WPS, ‘an archipelago in the middle of a constant storm’ (p.55). Third, it acknowledges the tensions, fractures, and contradictions inherent in any feminist peace project. Fourth, it argues for a more nuanced understanding of WPS, which goes beyond different perspectives. Finally, in order to navigate this difficulty, the authors use an interesting method called ‘bricolage’ (Särmä, 2015), combining existing and new definitions, details, and processes, which they suggest should be used more in IR scholarship.
The book is organized into eight chapters. The first three chapters form the basis for the further analysis sections that follow. The authors provide an overview of the WPS literature, introduce the concept of ecosystem policy based on dimensions related to coexistence and a holistic approach, and build a case for moving beyond the WPS concept as a common regime. The quantitative analysis in the third chapter maps the WPS ecosystem with a large review of 237 policy documents (33 documents from the UN system, 161 NAPs and 43 WPS documents published by international and regional organizations), it lays the groundwork for subsequent analysis.
Chapter four discusses the history of ten WPS resolutions using interviews with staff to examine how these resolutions evolved and reveal their political significance. Using the metaphors of series, duel and theater, and while emphasizing the central role that the UN has and has had in the development of the WPS agenda, the authors highlight the dynamics, ties and relationships established between a set of diverse actors. areas during the formal agenda-setting process, which cannot be reduced to the work of networks focused only on the United Nations. The fifth chapter shifts the focus to states and their role in “managing the gender perspective,” challenging the traditional view that the publication of a National Action Plan (NAP) is automatically a sign of success. The authors argue for a contextual approach, paying particular attention to the intersection of Indigenous, ethnic, and national identities in the NAPs of settler colonial states and criticizing the introduction of Indigenous ideologies.
Chapter six examines the role of civil society in the WPS ecosystem, highlighting existing divisions and tensions within the system. The authors compare institutions such as NATO, which posits gender inclusion as both ethical and pragmatic (as well investigated by Von Hlatky, 2022), and groups such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which must navigate their abolitionist roots in WPS. discussions. This chapter reinforces the view that the agenda conflict of the WPS is central to its existence, highlighting at once the critical nature of the agenda. In the final analytical chapter, the authors explore the edges of the WPS ecosystem, where new alliances are emerging across policy domains. They explore the overlap between the WPS and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), as well as the intersection of the WPS with arms control and disarmament, showing how cross-pollination can produce both ‘new sources’. and dead ends’ (p. 203) in ecosystems.
Kirby and Shepherd summarize the main arguments of the book in the last chapter and point out six important disagreements within the WPS ecosystem. These tensions—between gender as ideology, vulnerability and agency, dominance and multiplicity, inclusion and exclusion, hierarchies, and the ongoing contest between peace and security—reflect broader challenges facing women’s peace projects, including women’s foreign policy projects. have been appearing for the past decade and have been mentioned repeatedly by the authors of the book.
Overall, Managing Women’s Peace provides a nuanced and insightful examination of the WPS agenda. Its critical, interdisciplinary approach, including international relations, theories of governance, the politics of emotion, and feminist and postcolonial thought, makes it an invaluable resource for academics and practitioners. It offers important new perspectives on the vitality and complexity of the WPS agenda and takes the reader on a stimulating intellectual journey through innovative research methods in the field of IR.
However, there are areas where this book could have gone further. One notable limitation is the lack of accessibility to a wider audience, especially for those less familiar with the technicalities of WPS scholarship or critical IR theory. This book assumes a high level of prior knowledge, which may exclude scholars and practitioners new to the field or those without a deep grounding in feminist or postcolonial theory. For non-experts, some sections can be challenging to follow, and the language sometimes tends to be overly academic. This can limit the book’s impact, especially in making its information widely applicable beyond the academic field.
Furthermore, while the book excels in highlighting the divisions and tensions within the WPS ecosystem, it offers few practical strategies for practitioners or policymakers aiming to navigate these conflicts. Given the ecosystem policy focus, this book could have included more practical information or recommendations for those working on the ground to address the contradictions between women’s perspectives and institutional constraints. For example, an in-depth examination of how women actors can rationally balance the competing demands of the WPS program may add more value to civil society and government agencies.
Finally, while this book very well discusses the questions and intersections of Indigeneity, race, and colonial history, taking insights from post-colonial and critical perspectives, I would argue that it would have benefited from a broader dialogue with non-Western perspectives. – Global South. In order to provide a broader and more diverse understanding of the WPS agenda, the book could have included multifaceted studies and perspectives from the Global South in chapters other than the fifth one on gender mainstreaming. A broader inclusion of voices from these contexts will deepen the book’s claims about the multiplicity of WPS relationships and provide a diverse understanding of the agenda’s global challenges and opportunities.
References
Särmä, S. (2015), ‘Collage: An Art-Inspired Approach to Studying Humor in World Politics’, in Popular Culture and World Politics: Ideas, Methods, Studiesed. F. Caso & C. Hamilton, Bristol, UK: International Relations
von Hlatky, S. (2022) Spreading Feminism: The Role of Gender in NATO Military OperationsOxford: Oxford University Press.
Further Studies in E-International Relations
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