Agents of Change? Gender Advisors in NATO Militaries

ABSTRACT

This paper is about the experiences of Gender Advisors in NATO and partner militaries, and the question of whether militaries can contribute to a feminist vision of peace and security. Gender Advisors are increasingly being adopted as a mechanism to help militaries to implement commitments under the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Based on semi-structured interviews and a workshop with individuals working as Military Gender Advisors from 2009 to 2016 in Afghanistan, Kosovo and in NATO and national military commands and headquarters, this paper explores their own perceptions of their work, its goals, shortcomings and achievements. It highlights Military Gender Advisors’ strong commitment to Women, Peace and Security aims, but the resistance their work faces within their institutions, and challenges of inadequate resourcing, preparation and contextual knowledge. Military Gender Advisors’ experiences paint a picture of NATO and partner Militaries having in some places made progress in protection and empowerment of local women, but fragile and partial. These findings speak to wider debates within feminist security studies around whether and how militaries achieve human security in peacekeeping operations, and the risks of militarization of the Women, Peace and Security agenda.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Gender Advisors who gave of their time so generously. They would also like to acknowledge the constructive feedback of discussants and audience members at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in Baltimore USA 2017 and the Pan-European Conference on International Relations in Barcelona 2017, where earlier drafts of this paper were presented, Synne Dyvik, Callum Watson and the anonymous reviewers for this journal.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the Authors

Megan Bastick is a doctoral candidate in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on military responses to sexual violence in conflict.

Claire Duncanson is a senior lecturer in International Relations in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. She has published widely on issues related to gender and peacebuilding.

Notes

1 UN Women, Preventing Conflict, 258.

2 Noting that these figures are based on self-reporting by nations to NATO. Not all of the Gender Advisors reported as ‘trained’ would have completed NATO’s accredited training scheme, and the quality and rigour of nations’ Gender Advisor training varies.

3 NATO IMS Office of the Gender Advisor. 2017. Summary of the National Reports.

4 Through NATO’s Defence Planning Process, Allies must report to NATO every two years on how they are developing gender capability, as part of harmonising their national defence plans with those of NATO (Private meeting, NATO Headquarters, 30 May 2016).

5 As of March 2017, the UN had a Military Gender Advisor within seven of its peacekeeping missions (Private correspondence with UN DPKO Military Gender Officer, 16 March 2017).

6 UNSCR 1325 (2000); UNSCR 1820 (2008); UNSCR 1888 (2009); UNSCR 1889 (2009); UNSCR 1960 (2010); UNSCR 2106 (2013); UNSCR 2122 (2013) and UNSCR 2242 (2015).

7 Reeves, Involvement of Parliaments, 15–16.

8 NATO IMS Office, Summary of the National Reports, 33.

9 NATO/EAPC, Implementing UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

10 NATO, Comprehensive report on the NATO/EAPC policy on the implementation of UNSCR 1325 on women, peace and security and related resolutions.

11 NATO, Bi-Strategic Directive 40-1: Integrating UNSCR 1325, para 1.3, 1.4.

12 For a more detailed overview of NATO’s policy development around Women, Peace and Security, see Wright, “Ending sexual violence”

13 For a full account of anti-militarist feminists' critique, see Duncanson, “Anti-militarist feminist approaches”

14 Ormhaug et al., “Armed Conflict Deaths”; Rehn and Sirleaf, Women, War, Peace.

15 Peterson and Runyan, Global Gender Issues, 143.

16 Eisenstein, Sexual Decoys, 25; see also Whitworth, Men, Masculinities and UN Peacekeeping.

17 Cockburn, From Where We Stand, 239 and Peterson and Runyan, Global Gender Issues, 159.

18 WILPF, “Gender, Economic, Social and Ecological Justice,” 2.

19 WILPF, Vision and Mission.

20 See, for example, Cockburn and Enloe, “Militarism, Patriarchy and Peace Movements”; Connell, Masculinities.

21 Whitworth, Men, Militarism, and UN Peacekeeping.

22 King, “Women in Combat”; Weinstein, Gender Camouflage.

23 Jennings, “Women’s Participation”; Heinecken, “Are Women Really”; also see discussion in Duncanson and Woodward, “Theorising Women’s Military Participation”

24 Heinecken, “Transitions and Transformation,” 364.

25 Cockburn, “Snagged on the Contradiction”; Cohn, “Mainstreaming Gender in UN Security”; Otto, “Women, Peace and Security.”

26 Wright, “Ending Sexual Violence.”

27 Cockburn, “Snagged on the Contradiction,” 50.

28 See, e.g. Khalili, “Gendered Practices of Counterinsurgency”; Mesok, “Affective Technologies of War”; Pratt, “Reconceptualizaing Gender.”

29 Cockburn and Hubic, “Gender and the Peacekeeping Military,” 117–18.

30 Duncanson and Woodward, “Theorising Women’s Military Participation.”

31 Katzenstein, Faithful and Fearless.

32 Kronsell, Gender, Sex and the Post-national Defence; Moskos et al., The Post-modern Military.

33 Ackerley et al., Feminist Methodologies.

34 Kesteloo, Gendered Discourses.

35 Swedish Defence Research Agency, Operational Effectiveness; Egnell et al., Implementing a Gender Perspective; Longworth and Engdahl, Getting Perspective.

36 Hurley, “The Genderrman.”

37 Lackenbauer and Langlais. Review of the Practical Implications.

38 EU Operation Headquarters, Final Report.

39 NATO Public Diplomacy Division, Secretary General’s Annual Report, 59.

40 NATO, Bi-Strategic Directive 40-1, paras 1–11.

41 Ibid., paras 1–9. b.

42 Olsson and Tejpar, The Swedish PRT.

43 The Swedish Armed Forces offered a Gender Advisor course to international participants from October 2009, but this was not NATO certified until 2011. An e-learning course on gender perspectives for personnel deploying to ISAF was launched in late 2010.

44 NATO, Bi-Strategic Directive 40-1, para 1.11h.

45 NATO, Bi-Strategic Directive 40-1 Revision 1.

46 Ibid., paras 1–4. c.

47 NATO, Bi-Strategic Directive 40-1 Revision 1, para 1-4, d.

48 Ibid., A-2.

49 NATO ACO ACT, Bi-Strategic Directive 40-1, 19–20.

50 NATO, Secretary General’s Annual Report, 59.

51 Katsenstein, Faithful and Fearless.

52 UN Women, Preventing Conflict, 258; see also Nordic Centre, Whose Security?

53 Egnell et al., Implementing a gender perspective, vi; also see Lackenbauer and Langlais, Review of the Practical Implications; Swedish Defence Research Agency, Operational Effectiveness.

54 NATO commentators on drafts of this paper highlighted the Gender Functional Planning Guide published in July 2015 to improve gender analysis, and that Periodic Mission Reviews in ISAF, KFOR and Resolution Support Missions have been supposed to include gender analysis. Just one of our interviewees mentioned periodic gender reporting within Resolution Support Mission.

55 Egnell et al. Implementing a Gender Perspective; Lackenbauer and Langlais, Review of the Practical Implications; Kesteloo, Gendered Discourses and Practices.

56 Prescott, “NATO Gender Mainstreaming,” 58.

57 Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, Seeking Out Their Afghan Sisters.

58 Kesteloo, Gendered Discourses and Practices, 29, 33.

59 Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, Seeking Out Their Afghan Sisters, 22.

60 Noting that NATO’s Civil Society Advisory Panel on Women, Peace and Security is advocating that NATO conduct regular impact assessments of its Women, Peace and Security work and gendered impact assessments of NATO operations and missions. Civil Society Advisory Panel on Women Peace and Security 2017, 22.

61 Caglar et al., Feminist Strategies in International Governance; Eyben and Turquet, Feminists in Development Organizations.