Achieving a gendered transformation of the post-conflict military through security sector reform: unpacking the private–public dynamics

ABSTRACT

Reforms of the post-conflict military are often part of a broader security sector reform (SSR), focusing on public state institutions in the security domain. The military, as a traditionally masculine institution, has been targeted for reforms related to gender integration and mainstreaming in order to make it more democratic and representative. Yet, while these efforts have partly succeeded in making gender issues essential to the military, I argue here that in order to achieve a gendered transformation of the military and erase the gender hierarchy, it is necessary to move focus beyond the public sphere and into the private to examine how these are mutually dependent. I illustrate this point through examples taken from interviews with soldiers from national armies in two countries that have experienced wide-ranging reforms following conflict: Burundi and South Africa. I identify three societal borders policing women in the private sphere, which have an impact in the public sphere: resistance to women in the army, women as primary caregivers, and men’s perceived superiority over women. The examples show how a gendered transformation needs to collapse borders between public and private in order to make visible gendered forms of exclusion and discrimination in the military.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• military
• security sector reform (SSR)
• private/public distinction
• women

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Nina Wilén is Research Director for the Africa Program at Egmont Institute for International Relations and Assistant Professor at Université Libre Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium. She is also a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo and an honorary Research Fellow at Stellenbosch University. The main focus of her research is different aspects of peace building and peacekeeping with a clear interest in security and gender issues. She has published widely on topics related to peace operations and the military and has conducted fieldwork in Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia, and the Congo. She is the author of the book Justifying Interventions in Africa: (De)Stabilizing Sovereignty in Liberia, Burundi and the Congo.

ORCID

Nina Wilén http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4142-0920

Notes

1 The term “SSR” is usually regarded as having originated in a speech by the Department for International Development (DfID) secretary of state Clare Short (Short 1999).

2 I draw on Verloo's and Walby’s articles and understand gender mainstreaming here as a strategy to achieve gender equality by making visible the gendered nature of assumptions, processes, and outcomes (Verloo 2001; Walby 2005).

3 For more on theorizing through experiences, see for example Hudson (2002, 115); Sjoberg (2014, 135).

4 I was also allowed to take part of a national workshop on SSR in another Ngozi, where members of the police, the intelligence service, and the defence sector participated.

5 The questions related to military trajectories and experiences with peacekeeping, but also to the integration of female staff.

6 I have transcribed and translated the interview from French to English.

7 In this article, only interviews and focus groups that were conducted by myself are used for the analysis.

8 It should be noted that most researchers acknowledge the existence of various different types of masculinities even within relatively homogenous institutions such as the military (Carreiras 2010, 475; Higate 2012, 32).

9 In this article, when “gender” is used as a verb, like “gender SSR”, the meaning is to integrate a gender perspective through different means, with the aim of achieving greater gender equality.

10 The concept “radical model” comes from Hudson, but I differ in how I define the model (Hudson 2012).

11 As a point of comparison, women make up approximately 6.2 percent of the Danish military (Summary of the National Reports of NATO Member and Partner Nations to the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives 2015) and 16 percent of the US military (Reynolds and Shendruk 2 018).

12 There is considerable literature discussing the resistance to women in the military and combat roles more specifically (Goldstein 2001; MacKenzie 2015); however, that discussion goes beyond the scope of this particular article, which is more centered on women’s personal experiences of this exclusion.

13 Interview with male sergeant major, Cape Town, May 27, 2015 (quoted in Wilén and Heinecken 2018).

14 Christine, from the radio interview “La place de la femme dans l’armée en Afrique” [“The Woman’s Place in the African Army”], November 29, 2011. Available at: www.rnw.nl/afrique/radioshow/la-place-de-la-femme-dans-l%E2%80%99arm%C3%A9e-en-afrique.

15 Interview with female major, Ngozi, Burundi, March 7, 2013.

16 MK is the abbreviation for the armed wing of South Africa’s ANC: Umkhonto Me Sizwe.

17 All women from the radio interview “La place de la femme dans l’armée en Afrique” [“The Woman’s Place in the African Army”], November 29, 2011. Available at: www.rnw.nl/afrique/radioshow/la-place-de-la-femme-dans-l%E2%80%99arm%C3%A9e-en-afrique.

18 Flora, from the radio interview “La place de la femme dans l’armée en Afrique” [“The Woman’s Place in the African Army”], November 29, 2011. Available at: www.rnw.nl/afrique/radioshow/la-place-de-la-femme-dans-l%E2%80%99arm%C3%A9e-en-afrique.

19 Interview with male rifleman, Infantry Battalion, Cape Town, May 27, 2015.

20 Interview with female rifleman, Infantry Battalion, Cape Town, May 27, 2015.

21 As a comparison, 84 percent of women interviewed from the Swedish Armed Forces reported experiencing sexual harassment in the past 24 months (Estrada and Berggren 2009, 177).

22 Interview with female major, Ngozi, Burundi, March 7, 2013.

23 Flora, from the radio interview “La place de la femme dans l’armée en Afrique” [“The Woman’s Place in the African Army”], November 29, 2011. Available at: www.rnw.nl/afrique/radioshow/la-place-de-la-femme-dans-l%E2%80%99arm%C3%A9e-en-afrique.

24 Interview with male colonel, Cape Town, South Africa, May 26, 2015.

25 Christine, from the radio interview “La place de la femme dans l’armée en Afrique” [“The Woman’s Place in the African Army”], November 29, 2011. Available at: www.rnw.nl/afrique/radioshow/la-place-de-la-femme-dans-l%E2%80%99arm%C3%A9e-en-afrique.