https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8065-188X
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ABSTRACT
The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has recently started to gain traction in Central Europe, notwithstanding discussion in the region about the harms that the so-called “gender ideology” allegedly causes. In 2017, the Czech Republic was the first Central European country to adopt its National Action Plan (NAP) on WPS. Through analyzing the Czech NAP, we explore what kinds of WPS policies can emerge in a seemingly hostile institutional environment, where the pursuit of gender equality is frequently ridiculed and the WPS agenda itself is nicknamed “wine, women, and song.” By combining a feminist institutionalist approach with feminist discourse analysis, we uncover the interplay of formal and informal institutional practices and anti-“gender ideology” discourses during the creation, adoption, implementation, and review of the Czech NAP. We show that, due in part to this glocalized backlash against “gender ideology,” the Czech NAP has been driven from the top down by a small group of femocrats who tend to focus on “small victories” and are careful not to draw too much attention to gender-related agendas. The resulting NAP, however, becomes a declaratory instrument grounded in gender essentialism, a narrative of victimhood, and conventional assumptions about women’s roles in peace and security.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the Editor of the Special Issue, Laura J. Shepherd, for the initial guidance, as well as for the valuable feedback provided to us while developing this article. We would also like to thank the journal’s Editors-in-Chief and the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Míla O’Sullivan is a Researcher at the Institute of International Relations (IIR) Prague and a PhD candidate at the IIR and Metropolitan University Prague. She is primarily researching Women, Peace and Security in the context of Central and Eastern Europe, focusing in particular on Czech foreign policy and the conflict in Ukraine. She serves as an academic advisor on gender in Czech foreign policy in various government bodies.
Kateřina Krulišová is a Lecturer in International Relations at Nottingham Trent University. Her research focuses on female perpetrators of political violence, gendered narratives within responsibility to protect (R2P) legitimizations, and the securitization of misogyny. She also serves as an academic advisor to the Czech Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. She is a Module Leader for undergraduate Feminist Theory and postgraduate Gender and Security modules.
Notes
1 When using the term “Central Europe,” we refer to the post-socialist countries, commonly known as the Visegrad Group: the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Poland, and Hungary.
2 In the remainder of this article, we use the term “anti-gender” as a shorthand for discussions that frame feminism and gender equality policies as Western dictatorship, Neo-Marxism, tyranny of political correctness, or harmful left-wing ideology.
3 The Czech expression “ženy, víno, zpěv” would translate literally as “women, wine, singing.” For the purposes of resonance with English-speaking readers, we have translated it as “wine, women, and song,” which has an identical meaning.
4 We recorded this comment during a meeting with the government’s WPS stakeholders.
5 There is no official English translation of the Department’s name, but the term “Gender Equality” is used in English when communicating with foreign partners. In Czech, the name of the Department contains the phrase “Equality for Women and Men,” as does the name of the Council.
6 At the time of writing this article, the Czech Republic has not ratified the Istanbul Convention.
7 By “institutions,” we mean the key governmental institutions that work on the WPS agenda: the GE Department and key Ministries.
8 The full list of committes and working groups under the Government Council for Equality between Women and Men is available at https://www.vlada.cz/cz/ppov/rovne-prilezitosti-zen-a-muzu/rada-vlady-pro-rovnost-zen-a-muzu-121632/.
9 This comment was provided to us by a Czech academic in February 2020.
10 Nyklová, Cidlinská, and Fárová (Citation2019) map the discourses and power dynamics in Czech IR. Their findings correspond with our experience. Kateřina was told that she will never “make it” in Czech academia if she wants to focus on gender in IR by a senior male academic, who argued that “no one cares about gender here.”
11 In October 2018, the Czech Republic was elected a member of the UN Human Rights Council for the period 2019–2021.
12 This was mentioned by an MFA representative at the workshop “Drafting the National Action Plan on UNSCR 1325” organized by the MFA in March 2016.
13 For instance, Finland’s first NAP was drafted in one year.
14 During 2019–2020, a first-ever expert Working Group on External Relations was set up by the GE Department for the preparation of the Gender Equality Strategy 2021–2030. This Group, comprising academics, civil-society representatives, and government officials, has shown that the expertise is there and hence the potential for feminist partnerships to emerge.
15 The Czech NAP’s thematic areas are (1) balanced representation of women and men in decision-making positions in relation to the WPS agenda, (2) reconciliation of work and private life in relation to the WPS agenda, (3) education and training in relation to the WPS agenda, (4) international cooperation in promoting the WPS agenda, (5) dignity and integrity of women in relation to the WPS agenda, (6) the WPS agenda and current global challenges, and (7) institutional support of gender equality in relation to the WPS agenda (Government of the Czech Republic Citation2017).
16 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Gender Marker.
17 This information was obtained in June 2020 during a personal conversation with a representative of the Ministry of Defense.