The gender mainstreaming gap: Security Council resolution 1325 and UN peacekeeping mandates

ABSTRACT

In response to women’s frequent marginalization in conflict settings, the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security in 2000. It called for including a gender perspective into peacekeeping operations and for enhancing women’s participation in all aspects of post-conflict reconstruction. This article contributes to the empirical literature on the implementation of UNSCR 1325, examining the extent of gender mainstreaming in UN peacekeeping mandates. Situated in a theoretical framework of gradual norm cascades, it hypothesizes that UNSCR 1325 has increased gender content in mandates, but selectively so. Statistical analyses of an original dataset covering all 71 UN peacekeeping operations from 1948 until 2014 reveal that gender-mainstreamed mandates are more likely in conflicts with high levels of sexual violence. In designing gendered peacekeeping mandates, actors thus appear to be responsive to cues about the salience of a very visible, albeit narrow, gender issue emanating from the respective conflict rather than being guided by the universalist norms of women’s participation entrenched in UNSCR 1325.

Acknowlegdements

The author would like to thank Daniela Donno, Lena Wängnerud, Mattias Agerberg, Aiysha Varraich, Marcus Tannenberg and the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on previous drafts of this article. Thanks go also to Dara Cohen for sharing her dataset on rape in civil conflicts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

About the author

Anne-Kathrin Kreft is a PhD candidate at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research interests include civil conflict, wartime sexual violence and women's political mobilization.

Notes

1 UN Women, ‘Gender Mainstreaming’.

2 Gender mainstreaming is a concept with many definitions; see, for example, Caglar, ‘Gender Mainstreaming’. The definition employed in this article centralizes the goal of gender equality in the target state rather than adopting a purely organizational approach.

3 Bell and O’Rourke, ‘Peace Agreements or Pieces of Paper’.

4 Olsson et al., ‘Women's Participation in International Operations’.

5 Karim and Beardsley, ‘Female Peacekeepers and Gender Balancing’.

6 Basini, ‘Gender Mainstreaming Unravelled’.

7 Askin, ‘Holding Leaders Accountable’.

8 Jones, Gendercide and Genocide; Carpenter, ‘Recognizing Gender-Based Violence’.

9 For an insightful discussion of the overlooked dimensions of sexual violence against boys and men as well as women's involvement in perpetration of sexual violence in conflict, see Carpenter, ‘Recognizing Gender-Based Violence’.

10 Wood, ‘Armed Groups and Sexual Violence’; Butler et al., ‘Security Forces and Sexual Violence’; Wood, ‘Variation in Sexual Violence’; Hayden, ‘Rape and Rape Avoidance’.

11 Leatherman, Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict; Wood, ‘Sexual Violence during War’; Handrahan, ‘Conflict, Gender, Ethnicity’; Skjelsbæk, ‘Sexual Violence and War’.

12 Bop, ‘Women in Conflicts’; Buvinic et al., ‘Violent Conflict and Gender Inequality’.

13 Urdal and Che, ‘War and Gender Inequalities’.

14 Li and Wen, ‘Immediate and Lingering Effects’; Plümper and Neumayer, ‘Unequal Burden of War’.

15 Mazurana et al., Gender, Conflict, and Peacekeeping; Handrahan, ‘Conflict, Gender, Ethnicity’; Sørensen, Women and Post-Conflict Reconstruction.

16 United Nations, ‘United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325’, 2.

17 Ibid., 3.

18 United Nations, ‘United Nations Security Council Resolution 1820’.

19 Hudson, ‘En-Gendering UN Peacekeeping Operations’.

20 Fritz et al., ‘Women, Peace, Security’; Gumru and Fritz, ‘Women, Peace and Security’; Swaine, ‘Assessing the Potential’.

21 Bell and O’Rourke, ‘Peace Agreements or Pieces of Paper’.

22 Olsson et al., ‘Women's Participation in International Operations’.

23 Karim and Beardsley, ‘Female Peacekeepers and Gender Balancing’.

24 Basini, ‘Gender Mainstreaming Unravelled’.

25 Binder et al., ‘Empty Words or Real Achievement?’

26 Barrow, ‘UN Security Council Resolutions’.

27 Black, ‘Mainstreaming Resolution 1325?’

28 Raven-Roberts, ‘Gender Mainstreaming in United Nations’.

29 Tryggestad, ‘Trick or Treat?’

30 United Nations, ‘United Nations Peacekeeping Operations’, 48.

31 Allen and Yuen, ‘The Politics of Peacekeeping’.

32 Stojek and Tir, ‘Supply Side of United Nations’.

33 Junk, ‘Function Follows Form’.

34 Shepherd, ‘Power and Authority’; Hill et al., ‘Nongovernmental Organizations’ Role’.

35 O’Hare, ‘Realizing Human Rights’; Gallagher, ‘Ending the Marginalization’; Binion, ‘Human Rights’; Oloka-Onyango and Tamale, ‘“The Personal Is Political”’.

36 United Nations, ‘Beijing Declaration’, 7.

37 Tryggestad, ‘Trick or Treat?’

38 Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights; Moravcsik, ‘Origins of Human Rights Regimes’.

39 Finnemore and Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics’.

40 Shepherd, ‘Power and Authority’; Hill et al., ‘Nongovernmental Organizations’.

41 PeaceWomen, ‘National Action Plans’.

42 Barnett and Finnemore, ‘Politics, Power, and Pathologies’, 700.

43 See, for example, Acker, ‘From Sex Roles to Gendered Institutions’; Chappell and Waylen, ‘Gender and the Hidden Life’.

44 Raven-Roberts, ‘Gender Mainstreaming in United Nations’.

45 Barrow, ‘UN Security Council Resolutions’, 232.

46 Karim and Beardsley, ‘Female Peacekeepers and Gender Balancing’.

47 Tryggestad, ‘Trick or Treat?’

48 Karim and Beardsley, ‘Ladies Last’.

49 Ellerby, ‘(En)gendered Security?’

50 Cohen, ‘Explaining Rape during Civil War’.

51 Amnesty International, ‘Sudan: Darfur’.

52 Human Rights Watch, ‘Sexual Violence and Its Consequences’.

53 United Nations Economic and Social Council, ‘E/CN.4/2005/NGO/118’, ‘E/CN.4/2005/NGO/91’, ‘E/CN.4/2005/NGO/173’, ‘E/CN.4/2006/NGO/139’, ‘E/CN.4/2006/NGO/225’; United Nations General Assembly, ‘A/HRC/S-4/NGO/9’; United Nations General Assembly, ‘A/HRC/S-4/NGO/10’; United Nations General Assembly, ‘A/HRC/4/NGO/104’.

54 Thus offering more nuance than the dichotomous coding by Karim and Beardsley, ‘Female Peacekeepers and Gender Balancing’.

55 United Nations, ‘S/RES/1291 (2000)’, 4.

56 United Nations, ‘S/RES/1778 (2007)’, 3.

57 United Nations, ‘S/RES/1270 (1999)’, 3.

58 United Nations, ‘S/RES/2149 (2014)’, 10.

59 United Nations, ‘S/RES/1996 (2011)’, 4.

60 United Nations, ‘S/RES/2100 (2013)’, 10.

61 United Nations, ‘S/2007/307/Rev.1’, 15.

62 Ibid., 24.

63 Coppedge et al., ‘V-Dem Country-Year Dataset V5’. In cases where a UNPKO affects more than one target state, the models presented here include the average value for the women's CSO participation index across all affected states, but are robust to alternative specifications including the lowest and highest value across target states.

64 Voeten et al., ‘United Nations Assembly Voting Data’.

65 Coppedge et al., ‘V-Dem Country-Year Dataset V5’.

66 The results are robust to the inclusion of intra-state conflict instead of the multidimensional mandate.

67 Based on model 1 for intra-state conflicts and multidimensional mandates with women's CSO participation held at its mean.

68 Cohen, ‘Explaining Rape during Civil War’.

69 For multidimensional mandates with women's CSO participation held at its mean. Ideally, an interaction model would illuminate this relationship, but the small sample size precludes such an analysis at this stage.

70 Turner, Congo, 2.

71 As per the data in Cohen, ‘Explaining Rape during Civil War’.

72 See, for example, Basini, ‘Gender Mainstreaming Unravelled’.

73 ‘UNAMID Gender Advisory Unit’.

74 Department of Peacekeeping Operations, ‘Gender Advisory Team’.

75 Hudson, ‘En-Gendering UN Peacekeeping Operations’.

76 Finnemore and Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics’.

77 Cohen, ‘Explaining Rape during Civil War’.