On Friday 25 October, the United Nations Department of Peace Operations (DPO) launched its report ‘Towards Equal Opportunities for Women in Defense’ during the 2024 United Nations’ Week on Women, Peace and Security. Written by the Geneva Center for Security Sector Governance (DECAF), with input from subsequent documents from the Office of the DPO for Law and Security Institutions and other experts working at the UN, this report presents a survey of achievements and obstacles to the advancement of women. meaningful participation at all levels in security sectors around the world, and provides recommendations for next steps to achieve greater equity and inclusion.
The report includes seven ‘tracks’ for gender equality in defence, based on good practice, identified as follows (Ministry of Peace Operations 2024, p.8):
- Explore barriers to women’s participation.
- Develop recruitment strategies to attract more women.
- Improve retention rates for women.
- Build a culture of diversity and inclusion.
- Combating sexual discrimination, harassment, and abuse.
- Promoting career development programs for women.
- To ensure equal promotion of female service members.
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 feel that women’s collaboration with the military goes against this. The inclusion of women is inconsistent with the anti-militarist, decolonialist and peace activist positions adopted by many scholars, activists and practitioners. However, women, like all marginalized groups, have the human right to be involved in all aspects of politics and society and should be able to influence decision-making in the most powerful government institutions, including defense and security, and global governance. All marginalized groups must have some input in shaping their own transformation. At a practical level, the diversity of personnel in defense and security and governance institutions around the world is thought to create echo chambers that lead to narrow and often self-centered ways of thinking about peace, security and prosperity.
However, as many scholars see, the military practices embedded in WPS programs maintain a global ‘muscular neoliberal security order’, while being dominated by white, gender-biased definitions of security and peace. Maini and David Duriesmith’s research shows that Sector-Sensitive Security Sector Reform (SSR) and demobilization, demobilization and rehabilitation (DDR) programs that support post-conflict reconstruction are often informed by a male ideology that reinforces the power base of elite men in a given nation. the state, rather than establishing true equality and diversity in public sector decision-making on defense and security. At the same time, the WPS narrative used to promote women’s participation not only emphasizes the importance of women and ignores the experiences of LGBTQ+ (and the feelings and needs of many marginalized groups) but values women as a contribution of gender, rather than gender. equality.
This difficult relationship is also challenged by the country’s climate, characterized by the revision and rise of Cold War muscular politics; the decline of multilateralism; the rise of militarism (in 2023, global military spending was 2.44 trillion dollars, compared to 1.56 trillion USD ten years ago) and the continued spread of non-state violent actors, many of which are involved in proxy wars. Meanwhile, elite men and their political leaders especially men choose to use their security sectors for deadly purposes, the most obvious current examples are the civil war in Sudan; Russia’s illegal and aggressive invasion of Ukraine, and the killing of Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza and illegal interventions in Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
During the UN Women, Peace and Security Week events in New York last month, UN staff and ambassadors ignored international politics and focused on apolitical questions about the practical reasons for women’s inclusion in security. This showed a will among UN staff to continue business as usual, but also a desire to avoid the high emotions and political tensions that undermine the Security Council’s business that continues to flow into other committees and functions. Therefore, in the presentation of the report ‘Women who protect’, the representatives of the Secretary General of the UN argued that the engagement of women was essential for the security and peace of the world.
For those who support the common cause of representing more women in defence, the DPO’s report provides a new benchmark for future progress. However, the findings of this report do not show an accurate picture of the global trend: the report admits that only 55 countries (one third of the UN member states with armed forces) responded to this survey, which was repeatedly sent by the UN Office. Law on Law and Security Institutions, while in-depth discussions on best practice are carried out with only 18 member states. The report notes that representation from all regions was achieved, however with limited data collection, there was no opportunity to assess regional trends in relation to wider global trends. Some data is so sparse, it’s hard to know what it represents for defense and security agencies. The report also states that women now comprise 10% of military representation, but this figure was taken from a survey of only 21 countries (Ministry of Peace Operations, 2024, p.33). These figures would not have been significantly different if more member states had completed the survey.
Because of these limitations, recommendation 18 of the report urges member states to ‘share information and good practices on equal opportunities for women in the security sector’, through regional organizations, the Expert Group on Women’s Security, Peace and Security, the WPS Focal Points Network and other channels ( Department of Peace Operations, 2024, p.64).
Yet this recommendation will not be met unless the defense sector becomes more transparent – a difficult task, given how sensitive the military is about sharing its gender data. Defense Departments around the world may avoid public scrutiny because they have no means of collecting data (such as in the Central African Republic); because progress is slow, or because there is resistance at the highest levels of leadership and thus no real desire to make real, long-lasting, transformative change. In Rwanda, at the time I did the research, the Rwanda Defense Force would only share data on dealing with conflict-related violence and did not disclose statistics on recruitment, retention and positions of women in the Gender Monitoring Office – a government agency established to oversee meeting the 30% women target in all institutions, according to the Rwandan constitution.
Similarly in the UK, there is currently no formal parliamentary oversight of women and LGBTQ+ equality in the British Armed Forces. It recently began reporting to the House of Commons Defense Committee, following the devastating results of the 2021 Atherton inquiry and numerous employment tribunal cases of discrimination and sexual harassment reported by the British media. However, evidence suggests that women’s parliamentary oversight of defense systems, including budget oversight, accelerates gender mainstreaming.
Regular reporting of gender data should also be made freely available. For example, the Indian Armed Forces, which now has two female Generals for the first time in its history – publishes annual data on the website of the Indian Ministry of Defense. According to Lieutenant General Sadhna Saxena Nair, speaking at a high-profile event in New York, the move is largely due to India’s ‘robust democracy’, which has led Parliament to ask the Ministry of Defense to provide real-time, open-source gender data so that progress can be tracked and monitored effectively. However, parliamentary oversight of ‘women in defence’ programs should not be limited to examining gender data. Security sector reform requires continued public engagement and should not be done behind closed doors. Governments must rethink security more broadly to ensure that public concerns extend to concerns about the security of people and the environment, and that these are integrated into strategy and planning.
Further Studies in E-International Relations
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