The politics of gender in the UN Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security

ABSTRACT

Women’s groups have worked diligently to place gender and women’s vulnerability on the transnational security agenda. This article departs from the idea that negotiating and codifying gender and women’s vulnerability in terms of security represent a challenge to mainstream security contexts. By contrasting the UN Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security with feminist theory, this article aims to analyze what is considered to be threatened when women’s vulnerability is negotiated. The article identifies two approaches to the gender/security nexus: gendering security, which involves introducing ideas regarding gender-sensitive policies and equal representation, and securitizing gender, which proceeds by locating rape and sexual violence in the context of war regulations. We demonstrate that, although these measures are encouraged with reference to women’s vulnerability, they serve to legitimize war and the male soldier and both approaches depoliticize gender relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• security
• war
• peace
• UN Security Council resolution 1325

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Maria Jansson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University. Her research is oriented toward issues of gender and security, sexual and reproductive rights and women in the academy. Presently she is working on a comparative project regarding narratives of (in)security and HIV/AIDS after securitization. Among her publications are “Feeding Children and Protecting Women: The Emergence of Breastfeeding as an International Concern” in Women’s Studies International Forum (2009) and “Common-Sense Notions of ‘Nation’: A Challenge for Teaching” in Journal of Political Science Education (2013).

Maud Eduards is Professor Emerita of political science at the University of Stockholm. Her research is oriented toward issues pertaining to gender, violence, and women’s organizing, as in Forbidden Acts: On Women’s Organizing and Feminist Theory (2002) and Body Politics: On Mother Svea and Other Women (2007), both monographs in Swedish. Her recent research focuses on transnational relations, armed conflicts and the meaning of security, as in “What Does a Bath Towel Have to Do with Security Policy? Gender Trouble in the Swedish Armed Forces” in Making Gender, Making War: Violence, Military and Peacekeeping Practices (edited by A. Kronsell and E. Svedberg, 2012).

Notes

1. Despite recruitment efforts, the number of women in peacekeeping operations remains low. In 2012, only 3 percent of military personnel and 10 percent of police personnel were women (UN 2015). Although funding has increased over the years, resources for gender advisors and gender projects are also scarce (see Farr 2011; Reeves 2012).

2. By “the WPS resolutions” we refer to the body of resolutions labeled “Women and Peace and Security” adopted between 2000 and 2013, i.e. resolutions 1325, 1820, 1888, 1889, 1960, 2106.

3. For early discussions of feminist understandings of security, see Spike Peterson (1992), Jill Steans (1998) and Ann Tickner (2001). For an overview of feminist security studies (FSS) as a distinct tradition, see Laura Sjoberg (2013) and Annick Wibben (2011).

4. Detraz (2012); Tickner (2001); Wadley (2010); Wibben (2011). We use the concept of “mainstream theories” as a contrast to the elements of feminist theory we are discussing. We are well aware that “mainstream theories” is a wide concept that includes several different notions of security, but we argue that in the respect we discuss them, they are all subject to the same feminist criticism.

5. Even if it is debatable whether this is the aim of all feminist security theory and activism, we find that scholars such as Wibben express certain unease in defining the project as bringing in new referents. Wibben’s (2011) idea that feminist security studies should allow interventions clearly indicates the aim to change gender relations.

6. We use the term “the political” to denote a sphere open for negotiations of conflicts of interest. We are inspired by Chantal Mouffe’s (2005) notion of the political, even though we do not subscribe to her idea that the left-right conflict is the primary conflict that needs to encompass all politics.

7. For a discussion on problems of using security as a strategy, see Hudson (2010).

8. Buzan’s (2004) critique is directed to the concept of human security, arguing that such a broad notion of security will not be useful to guide political preferences. However, in more general terms, this critique sheds light on mainstream conceptualizations of the acuteness necessary for successful securitization. In that sense, the critique is also applicable to the feminist notion of security that we describe in this article. On the relation between gender security and human security see, for example, Hoogensen and Stuvøy (2006) and Boyd (2015). For a discussion of human security and its critics, see Chandler (2008).

9. See MacKenzie (2009) for a discussion of gender in the DDR process in Sierra Leone. She shows that women are actually desecuritized in this process and encouraged to return to the private sphere, while men are securitized as important for future conflicts.

10. For a discussion of the problem of deciding the time limits for what counts as war and post-conflict, see McLeod (2011) and Levine (2015).