International Security and Gender E-Book

Nicole Detraz

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Dimensions of Security
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 438

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

What does it mean to be secure? In the global news, we hear stories daily about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about domestic-level conflicts around the world, about the challenges of cybersecurity and social security. This broad list highlights the fact that security is an idea with multiple meanings, but do we all experience security issues in the same way?

In this book, Nicole Detraz explores the broad terrain of security studies through a gender lens. Assumptions about masculinity and femininity play important roles in how we understand and react to security threats. By examining issues of militarization, peacekeeping, terrorism, human security, and environmental security, the book considers how the gender-security nexus pushes us to ask different questions and broaden our sphere of analysis. Including gender in our analysis of security challenges the primacy of some traditional security concepts and shifts the focus to be more inclusive. Without a full understanding of the vulnerabilities and threats associated with security, we may miss opportunities to address pressing global problems.

Our society often expects men and women to play different roles, and this is no less true in the realm of security. This book demonstrates that security debates exhibit gendered understandings of key concepts, and whilst these gendered assumptions may benefit specific people, they are often detrimental to others, particularly in the key realm of policy-making.

Leseprobe

International Security and Gender

To my family

Doug, Brenda, Kirby, and Paige

International Security and Gender

NICOLE DETRAZ

polity

Copyright © Nicole Detraz 2012

The right of Nicole Detraz to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2012 by Polity Press

Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6305-0

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com

Contents

Acknowledgements

1   Understanding Gender in Security Debates

2   Gendered Militarization and Militarism

3   Gender in Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding

4   A Gendered Understanding of Terrorism

5   Human Security and Gender

6   Gender, Security, and Environment

Conclusion: The Contributions of Gender Lenses to Security

References

Index

Acknowledgments

International Relations has fascinated me since my first year as an undergrad. I would like to start by thanking all who make this field so captivating. I cannot imagine studying anything else. I would specifically like to thank the community of feminist security scholars for producing important and thought-provoking work. You have been the most welcoming and supportive collection of people that I could ever hope to interact with. Thanks for allowing me to join in the engaging conversations that you are having. Your work has been and continues to be an inspiration to me.

Along the way I have had a wonderful community who have encouraged me and enabled this research on international security and gender. I want to start by thanking all of my professors who challenged me to think critically about IR. I also want thank my department at the University of Memphis for being so supportive of my work. From having in-depth discussions about ontology and epistemology, to comparing notes about the writing process, to going with me to get cupcakes, you all help me in countless ways. Thanks in particular to Sera Babakus, Gira Joshi, and Chad Wallace for research help.

Additionally, several people provided source suggestions, general feedback, or comments on outlines and earlier chapter drafts. Thanks to Soumita Basu, Keri Brondo, Catia Confortini, Caron Gentry, Annica Kronsell, Jennifer Lobasz, Megan MacKenzie, Swati Parashar, and two anonymous reviewers. In addition, I am extremely thankful to Laura Sjoberg for answering numerous emails, providing comments, and generally being one of the most supportive people I have ever met. The feedback from all of you made the final product better; however I accept any errors as my own.

Finally, I owe an enormous thank you to Louise Knight and David Winters at Polity Press for all of their hard work on this book at each stage of the process. Thanks for your professionalism, encouragement, and continued commitment to the project.

1

Understanding Gender in Security Debates

The Arab Spring is a term used to refer to the series of uprisings that took place in several states in the Middle East and North Africa in 2010–2011. This movement captured the attention of the general public, policy experts, and security scholars. We heard about peaceful and violent protests, the actions of state security forces, the activities of “insurgent groups,” and discussions by the United Nations Security Council. Each of these elements has ties to security. In the global news, we hear stories daily about domestic-level conflicts around the world, about wars and tensions between states, about ideas like cyber-security and social security. This broad list highlights the fact that security is an idea with multiple meanings. Security is a uniquely important concept in the modern world. Common understandings of security range from inter-state war and conflict studies to a concern for well being at an individual level. Security has historically been one of the most fundamental topics of concern for international relations (IR) scholars. Largely since the end of the Second World War, scholars have worked to define and understand security in the global community. Throughout its existence, security studies has been marked by competing definitions of security. Ronnie Lipschutz (1995: 8) argues “there are not only struggles over security among nations, but also struggles over security among notions. Winning the right to define security provides not just access to resources but also the authority to articulate new definitions and discourses of security, as well.” This quote suggests that the ways in which we define security have important implications for the scholarly and policy realms.

Security is an idea that governments typically take very seriously, so calling something a security issue often results in increased attention and resources being channeled in the direction of the “security issue.” To demonstrate how important security has been for both states and IR scholarship, we can examine the concepts of high politics and low politics. Within IR, high politics has always been the exclusive realm of security, while low politics includes things like economics, social issues, and the environment. In the hierarchy of issues states face, security is at the top, while all other issues are placed beneath it. The term high politics is illustrative of the central place security has had for scholars and policymakers. Asking questions and problematizing this concept contributes to making scholarship and policymaking more reflexive. It causes us to step back and examine our assumptions about both the definition of security and also the way security policy is formulated and carried out. An important component of problematizing security is understanding the host of connections between security topics/concepts and gender.

What Is Gender?

This book draws on feminist scholarship in order to explore how security and gender intersect. Much important insight into the connections between gender and security has come from feminist scholars, who approach the issue from a variety of perspectives. Feminism is best thought of as a large umbrella term which contains a range of subcategories. In other words, there are a great many feminisms. What holds them together is the goal of revealing and challenging widespread inequality in society. Most feminists focus specifically on inequality in the form of women’s subordination; however, this is typically part of a broader concern about how multiple forms of inequality intersect. Feminists will have different ways of understanding the sources of this inequality as well as different suggestions for how to deal with them, but at their root they all seek an international community in which people are not discriminated against because they are identified as women or men.

Gender is the central, uniting concept for feminist scholars. According to Marysia Zalewski (1995: 339) “the driving force of feminism is its attention to gender and not simply to women. To be sure, for many feminists the concern about the injustices done to women because of their sex is paramount, but the concept, nature and practice of gender are key.” Gender can be defined as a set of socially constructed ideas about what men and women ought to be. This definition has a few important pieces; firstly the idea of social construction. Rather than gender roles and assumptions being deterministic entities, they directly come out of a society’s expectations. Gender characteristics are cultural creations passed on through socialization (D’Amico and Beckman 1994; Eisenstein 2007). The process of gender socialization begins at birth, if not before, for many children. When a child is born, it is identified as a boy or girl. A friend or family member may buy a blue outfit and a truck for a new baby boy or a pink outfit and a doll for a new baby girl. This reflects what society tells them is an “appropriate” item for a boy or a girl. While there is nothing natural about these gifts, gender roles become so ingrained in society that they take on the appearance of being natural or “normal.” This means when individuals act in ways that defy these gender norms they are seen as being unnatural. It is also important to note that gender identity is expected from society. Individuals are identified as boy or girl even if they themselves do not feel comfortable with those identities.

The second piece of the definition refers to the difference between gender and sex. Peterson and Runyan (1999: 30) point out:

Because models of appropriate gender behavior vary, we know that femininity and masculinity are not timeless or separable from the contexts in which they are observed. Thus, gender rests not on biological sex differences but on interpretations or constructions of behavior that are culturally specific and may or may not have anything to do with biological differences.

The term “sex” is typically used to describe biological differences between people understood to be men and people understood to be women (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007). Gender describes the socially constituted differences between these same groups. “Masculinities and femininities are made up of behaviour expectations, stereotypes, and rules which apply to persons because they are understood to be members of particular sex categories” (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007: 6). To go back to the earlier example, there is nothing biologically determined about the sex category of male that would necessarily be associated with the color blue. There is no evidence that the color blue is associated with testosterone production. Instead, blue is simply one of a number of shades possible for painting a room or dying fabric. It is because of gender that some societies associate blue with masculine babies and pink with feminine babies.

There has been a general lack of attention to gender in IR scholarship. More importantly, much IR scholarship continues the assumption that gender differences are deterministic; that men and women really do exhibit dichotomous characteristics. Helen Kinsella (2003: 296) argues “by insisting on a definition of sex and gender as if their conceptions are already settled and natural categories – indeed, empirical categories – one completely misses the politics and power of conceptual definition and the relationship of concepts to understanding. Categories and concepts are not neutral.” Not all feminists agree on what this means for future scholarship. Where disagreement often comes into play is in discussions of what should be done about this and the consequences that are likely to follow.

Gender analysis challenges the reduction of people to simplistic assumptions about their identity based on a set of socially constructed expectations. Men are one thing and women are another. This disregards the complexity of individuals. Moreover, it tends to assume that generalizations can be made across cultures with regard to the characteristics and experiences of members of gender groups. Some feminists from the global South in particular have critiqued this position and argued this reduces the agency of women who are often viewed as “victims” (Mohanty 2003; Sedghi 1994). This critique is also extended to feminists who disregard the complexity of experiences across the globe, including differing experiences based on race, class, sexual orientation, etc. Peterson and Runyan (2010:7) explain that “[i]ntersectional analysis holds that there are no generic women and men; our gender identities, loyalties, interests, and opportunities are affected by intersecting and cross-cutting gender, race, class, national, and sexual identities. Whereas some parts of our identities may confer privilege, others may serve to disadvantage us.” For example, a straight, white, middle-class woman in France can have very different experiences, challenges and perspective than a gay, Arab, lower-class woman in Jordan. To imply the fact that both are women makes them equal in the larger group of gender is to deny the complexity of the world.

That being said, gender is an important concept in IR because of its role is shaping inequalities in society. In every society, traits and characteristics associated with masculinities are more highly valued than those associated with femininities. This affects both how institutions in society look, and the differential access of men and women to these institutions. Ann Tickner (1992: 7) claims “gender difference has played an important and essential role in the structuring of social inequalities in much of human history and that the resulting differences in self-identifications, human understandings, social status, and power relationships are unjustified.” This relates to the concept of patriarchy. Cynthia Enloe (2004: 4) explains “patriarchy is the structure and ideological system that perpetuates the privileging of masculinity.” Many different types of social structures and institutions can be patriarchal. For example, when an institution is said to require people who are “rational,” “level-headed,” or “decisive,” as is the case with many powerful Western institutions including public office, powerful corporations, etc., the institution is privileging characteristics associated with masculinities. Most feminists discuss patriarchy because patriarchal systems marginalize that which is associated with female, leading to the marginalization of women themselves. Both men and women are instrumental in supporting patriarchal systems and their continuation. Feminist scholars do not argue all men actively support the marginalization of women while women are innocent victims in this process. Patriarchy is a deeply rooted process that works in both seen and unseen ways.

In sum, gender refers to a set of socially constructed expectations about what men and women ought to be. Gender is distinct from biological sex, and includes a set of criteria about how people should be. IR scholarship has been slow to incorporate gender and gender concerns in a significant way. This is unfortunate because of the role patriarchy has in structuring institutions in ways that value that which is masculine over that which is feminine.

What is Security?

There is not a single, agreed-upon definition of security that exists within academic circles. In fact, scholars have remarked that security is an extremely complex concept, and the literature on security reflects a wide variety of views (Buzan 1991; Buzan and Hansen 2009; Steans 2006). At a very basic level, security refers to a condition of being “protected, free from danger, safety” (Der Derian 1995: 28). While this definition of security does not identify who or what is being protected, it is important to think about security by asking both what is the referent object of security, and what are the necessary conditions for security.

Countries, or states in IR terminology, have historically been the principal subject of security scholarship. Traditional security scholarship is conceptualized as the study of the threat, use, and control of military force (Nye and Lynn-Jones 1988; Walt 1991). Many security scholars assume conflict between states is always a possibility and the use of military force is a key component to the maintenance of security for states. This means it is the state that has been seen as the legitimate actor to define security, to create security policy, and to enforce security policy, often through the military. This idea of security is typically referred to as national security or state security. The term national security comes from the idea that it is the security of the nation, or the state more accurately, that is dominant. Most international relations scholarship understands a distinction between the terms state and nation. A state is an entity with a distinct territory and government (e.g. France). A nation is a group tied together through common language, history, ethnicity, etc. (e.g. the Kurds). While there is some attention given to other entities in traditional security studies, the focus tends to come back to the state. This is because all states in the international system are considered to be important actors to include in analyses of security. This includes states from the global North and global South. The North/South labels can be problematic, but they are used as a way to highlight the different positions dominant states and non-dominant states have within the international system. It is used as a category of analysis to point out differing power relationships and systems of marginalization.

The fact that the state has been the key actor associated with “security” has particular implications both for the position of states in the international system, and for the way security is studied and carried out. Many scholars argue that states have typically benefitted from being seen as the sole providers of security and the object that needs to be secure. In fact, the identity of states as providers of security has been a large part of the international community for centuries (Campbell 1998). States derive legitimacy from this role of state security provision. This implies that the states’association as the protectors of security gives it a particular authority. It is under-stood as legitimate for states to use deadly force as long as that force is deployed in the name of state security. The security label also comes with certain policy expectations. Lene Hansen (2006: 35) claims “security discourses are thus characterized by a dual political dynamic: they invest those enacting security policies with the legitimate power to undertake decisive and otherwise exceptional actions, but they also construct those actors with a particular responsibility for doing so.” This means we tend to see an obligation for some actor, often the state, to address security issues or “fix” them.

During the past few decades, these conceptions of security have been challenged by scholars wishing to problematize, or contest, state security’s position as the dominant view of security in IR as well as those wishing to include new elements into security discourses such as economics and the environment (Buzan 1991; Barnett 2001). These moves have been discussed as broadening and deepening security studies. In a widely cited discussion of the evolution of security scholarship, scholars Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams (1996: 230) identified the trends of broadening “to include a wider range of potential threats” and deepening to include “moving either down to the level of individual or human security or up to the level of national or global security.” Other voices have called for an opening of the security agenda. Annick Wibben (2008) argues that opening the security agenda entails discussing the meaning(s) of security. This includes questioning why appeals to security remain so powerful in both IR scholarship and policymaking.

These moves toward broadening and deepening security were propelled forward in a meaningful way in the 1990s. When the Cold War ended, there was a radical shift in the way the public and the academy viewed security. The familiar security threat of the Soviet Union was now gone, and it was not immediately clear who or what would replace it. Once traditional notions of security become questioned and perhaps more open to interpretation, room is made for the inclusion of previously neglected additions to security. This is where notions like economic security, human security, and environmental or ecological security come into play. As the perceived threats to state security receded, many security scholars, and the security community in general, began to accept the idea that there might be non-military threats to state security. This implies that, while the target of concern for security scholars may have remained the state, the nature of the threat shifted from being solely military to something else. Several new threats to security were identified as central to the preservation of state security during the early 1990s. Among these were threats associated with environmental damage (environmental security), energy availability (energy security), the lack of sufficient stores of food (food security) and an array of difficulties associated with the global South including the possibility of failed states and transboundary crime (Barnett 2001).

During roughly the same time period, there were calls to move the focus away from the security of states and direct it to people in general. These moves resulted in concepts like human security and environmental security being debated by multiple actors. In particular, the human security narrative was the result of members of the international community using the context of the end of the Cold War to shift the focus away from states as the primary referent of security and bring the focus to individuals. This reflects a deepening of security because it moved the discussion of security down to the level of people. This was important because it served as a direct threat to traditional ideas of security. The relationship between human security and traditional security will be taken up in Chapter 5.

Additionally, fields like critical security studies (CSS), the Copenhagen School, and feminist security studies have emerged as a challenge to traditional security scholarship. Ken Booth (2005: 16), a key CSS scholar, explains the field as “concerned with the pursuit of critical knowledge about security in world politics. Security is conceived comprehensively, embracing theories and practices at multiple levels of society, from the individual to the whole human species.” Three central concepts of CSS are security, community, and emancipation, suggesting a radically different way to understand security in IR. Richard Wyn Jones (1999: 160) argues the main task of CSS scholars is to attempt to undermine the existing hegemonic security approaches. The Copenhagen School, associated most closely with scholars Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, has outlined the process of securitization for society. They explain that securitizing, or presenting something as an existential threat, prompts a strong reaction from the state and often results in “emergency” measures being justified. “The invocation of security has been the key to legitimizing the use of force, but more generally it has opened the way for the state to mobilize, or to take special powers, to handle existential threats” (Buzan et al. 1998: 21). These scholars challenge traditional notions of security by highlighting the discursive power of security and calling attention to how security language has important impacts on the ground. Along with feminist security studies, which will be discussed below, CSS and the Copenhagen School are examples of communities of scholars who challenge mainstream security definitions and policymaking.

Threats and Vulnerabilities

Threat and vulnerability are two terms commonly discussed in connection with both traditional notions of security and expanded versions. P. H. Liotta (2005: 51) explains that a threat is “identifiable, often immediate, and requires an understandable response … A threat, in short, is either clearly visible or commonly acknowledged.” A security threat is often understood to be an entity or phenomenon that undermines the safety and continued existence of the state. Threats are something to be acted swiftly upon in order to eliminate them and maintain security. An example would be if an enemy’s army was marching toward a state’s borders, that state would marshal its own forces to meet them.

Vulnerability is a broader concept than threat. A general definition of vulnerability is the liability to suffer damage in a potentially dangerous event (Gaillard 2010). These events can be natural, economic, political, etc. Vulnerabilities are not as clearly defined as threats, but can include disease, hunger, unemployment, crime, social conflict, etc. (Liotta 2005). In a discussion of security in most forms, it is necessary to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities. The sources of threats and vulnerabilities will vary for different types of security, however. For example, the sources of threats in environmental security will come from things like increased competition over natural resources or damage from natural disasters rather than military might of a state. Most scholars wishing to problematize the idea of state security argue we must be concerned with both threats and vulnerabilities.

The inclusion of vulnerabilities and alternative threats into a discussion of security is not, however, viewed by all as a positive move. For example, in a widely read critique of the notion of environmental security, Daniel Deudney (1990: 194) claims “if all large-scale evils become threats to security, the result will be a dedefinition rather than a redefinition of security.” Wæver (1995) offers another warning, claiming that expanding the notion of security may actually serve to strengthen the hold the state possesses over more areas. His logic is that since security issues have traditionally been seen as the purview of the state, identifying threats other than military ones as security threats will give the state greater control over more issues. Securitization means “the issue is presented as an existential threat, requiring emergency measures and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure” (Buzan et al. 1998: 24). State-sponsored solutions may or may not be the optimal resolution for each problem.

In sum, security studies has a long history within IR, but has seen some important changes in recent years (Buzan and Hansen 2009; Collins 2007; Williams 2008). These changes include the addition of elements that have not historically been understood as high politics. There are those who enthusiastically welcome these additions as challenges to state-centric, military security scholarship. Alternatively, there are those who see these additions as either watering down the concept of security past the point of effectiveness, or as unnecessarily militarizing or securitizing issues that are better addressed through a different discourse. Each of these shifts in security studies can be understood by using gender lenses. As will be discussed below, using gender lenses to view a topic results in asking particular questions and challenging dominant understandings of definitions and discourses.

Gender and Security

Several feminist scholars analyze the specific linkages between gender and security. These feminist authors often claim “security must be analyzed in terms of how contemporary insecurities are being created and by a sensitivity to the way in which people are responding to insecurities by reworking their understanding of how their own predicament fits into broader structures of violence and oppression” (Tickner 2001: 47). Feminists are often suspicious of statist versions of security that treat the survival and well being of institutions as more important than the survival and well being of individuals (Hudson 2005; Tickner 2001). Additionally, feminist security scholars specifically seek to understand the unique security situations of women and men. Most acknowledge that both women and men are often negatively impacted by war and conflict; however these impacts are typically gendered. Rather than assume conflict or war impacts everyone similarly, or even that it impacts the marginalized in the same ways, feminist security scholars conclude that all stages of conflict are gendered- and this often serves to make women more vulnerable than men to security threats. Feminist security studies concentrate on the ways world politics can contribute to the insecurity of individuals, especially individuals who are marginalized and disempowered (Enloe 2000; 2007; 2010; Reardon and Hans 2010). This is in contrast to traditional security approaches that have typically evaluated security issues either from a structural perspective or at the level of the state and its decisionmakers. There is a tendency in this literature to look at what happens during wars as well as being concerned with their causes and endings (Riley et al. 2008; Tickner 2001).

There is a danger, however, in a simplistic analysis that automatically views women as victims in times of war. This volume calls for a more nuanced understanding of the particular experiences of women and men during times of conflict. This caution is echoed by many feminists who argue against simplistic notions of peaceful women and aggressive men. The automatic connection of women with an uncomplicated definition of peace has worked to devalue both women and peace. A project that unquestioningly asserts an association between women and peace may actually serve to disempower women by defining them in opposition to the ideas security studies considers most crucial, specifically strategizing for and fighting in wars (Tickner 2001). Still, many feminists who engage in security studies do focus on particular issues and abuses women often face during war or conflict. These include rape in war, military prostitution, refugees (many of whom are women and children), and more generally issues about civilian casualties. Additionally, there has been increased attention paid to the place and experiences of women as political and military leaders, soldiers, revolutionaries, and terrorists.

This book explores gendered understandings of security rather than simply the roles and responses of women in the security debate. As mentioned above, gender can be defined as a set of socially constructed ideas about what men and women ought to be. Gender analysis involves examining gender-based divisions in society and differential control of/access to resources. This is different from an approach seeking to bring women into an analysis, which can isolate women from the broader socio-cultural context in which behavioral norms are embedded. Therefore, this book will not only explore the particular position of women and men within the context of security, but also investigate the objects of study and the specific language used in the present security discussions for examples of gendered implications.

Why Study Women?

Like most feminist scholars, I see the inclusion of gender in my analysis to mean both men and women are important subjects of study. In order to understand how gender “works” in the world, it is essential to include the socially constructed categories of men and masculinities as well as the socially constructed categories of women and femininities in our analyses. It is also essential to recognize that there are multiple genders. “Race/ethnicity, class, sexuality, and other cultural variations shape gender identities and performances” (Peterson and Runyan 2010: 3). Terrell Carver (2003: 290) claims “it is often difficult to persuade men that they have any gender or that gender is of any relevance or interest, other than as something that women do, about women…” On the contrary, gender stereotypes have profound implications for men as well. This is particularly the case when we examine something like expectations of masculine behavior. Traits associated with masculinities in many societies include being active, displaying reason, being political beings, etc. (Peterson and Runyan 1999). These are constraining standards to live up to, and many men face ridicule when they fall short of achieving masculine ideals.

This book will address both masculinities and femininities with regard to international security; however, there will be a great deal of attention paid to the experiences of women. While most feminists are careful to stress that both men and women need to be included in any analysis, the experiences of women often have something important to tell us. This is particularly true for a book about international security. In many facets of international security, women participate on the margins. Shedding light on the ways they experience international security issues allows us to go beyond the typical discussions and topics of concern. With regard to the effects of war on women specifically, Ann Tickner (2001: 51) explains:

By looking at the effects of war on women, we can gain a better understanding of the unequal gender relations that sustain military activities. When we reveal social practices that support war and that are variable across societies, we find that war is a cultural construction that depends on myths of protection; it is not inevitable … The evidence we now have about women in conflict situations severely strains the protection myth; yet, such myths have been important in upholding the legitimacy of war and the impossibility of peace. A deeper look into these gendered constructions can help us to understand not only some of the causes of war but how certain ways of thinking about security have been legitimized at the expense of others, both in the discipline of IR and in political practice.

This underscores that looking at both the experiences of men and women are important, even if we have to probe the margins in order to get a complete picture. For example, there is often an assumption that war is a “man’s business,” yet women have played an active role in fighting and supporting wars throughout history (Mazurana et al. 2005). It is interesting to reflect on the roles of women during times of war, during peacebuilding initiatives, in the face of environmental conflict; and the widely held assumption that these roles are nonexistent or at least less important than the roles of men. The assumption that women are not actively involved in security issues relates to the marginalization of women’s experiences in general. Marginalization is linked to exclusion and discrimination. When groups are marginalized in (or by) society, they are excluded from spheres of power and decisionmaking. This exclusion makes discrimination against them fairly easy to achieve. If their voices are not counted as important and heard throughout the process of policymaking, then it is simple to leave them and their concerns on the margins. When groups are excluded “several forms of discrimination occur, such as limited access to government services or high-profile political roles, discriminatory access to higher-education institutions such as medical and engineering schools, and limited access to resources such as agricultural products and social welfare” (D’Costa 2006: 131). For these reasons, it is important to give particular attention to the experiences of men and women in our analyses of security.

Analyzing Security Through Gender Lenses

Like much feminist work, this book casts a wide net of scholarship and draws on several different literatures including general security studies, feminist security scholarship, and work specifically on human security, peacekeeping, terrorism/militancy, and environmental security. Following the work of Cynthia Enloe (2007), the book uses a feminist curiosity to ask questions that often remain unasked in mainstream security scholarship. Enloe (2004: 3) claims “[a]ny power arrangement that is imagined to be legitimate, timeless, and inevitable is pretty well fortified. Thus we need to stop and scrutinize our lack of curiosity. We also need to be genuinely curious about others’ lack of curiosity – not for the sake of feeling self-satisfied, but for the sake of meaningfully engaging with those who take any power structure as unproblematic.” Using a feminist curiosity to examine international security involves asking questions like “Why have certain definitions of security, war, and terrorism been dominant within security studies?” “Who benefits and who suffers when traditional definitions are used?” “How can definitions be rethought in ways that reduce inequality and encourage security for people in their daily lives?”

One way to explore the connections between security and gender is to examine security issues through gender lenses. We can think about gender lenses like the different lenses of a camera. As any photography buff knows, there is a vast array of camera lenses to choose from. Some lenses allow for wide views, some for intense close-ups, while others filter out certain colors. If we take a picture with one lens, particular elements of a scene will come to light. For example, if we take a picture of a beach with a wide-angle lens we can see much more of the scene than would be possible with a regular lens. Because of this, the pictures taken with each lens will look different. The wide-angle shot will show the entirety of the scene including a broad expanse of white sand, a long row of beach chairs with umbrellas, and crowds of people swimming, lying on the sand and walking along the water. The regular lens will give more detail to a smaller area, including a couple sitting under a big red umbrella with two children building a sandcastle a few feet from the clear blue water. In much the same way, using gender lenses allows us to view different elements of gender as we explore a particular topic. Peterson and Runyan (1999, 2010) have popularized the idea of examining topics in international relations through gender lenses. They argue that gender lenses allows us to examine issues in ways that go beyond what is typically visible and present in IR scholarship. Steans (2006: 30) claims that to use gender lenses “is to focus on gender as a particular kind of power relation, and/or to trace out the ways in which gender is central to understanding international processes and practices in international relations. Gender/feminist lenses also focus on the everyday experiences of women as women and highlight the consequences of their unequal social position.”

It is important to stress the plural in the idea of gender lenses in order to highlight the fact that there are multiple elements of gender that can inform IR scholarship. If we use a gender lens that is also sensitive to class issues in order to understand the recent global economic downturn, our analysis will focus on issues like the North–South differences in the “feminization of poverty.” Additionally, if we use a gender lens that is also sensitive to sexual orientation, we can better understand the differences of experience “motherhood” may have for a straight single-mother versus a lesbian couple who faces discrimination when they try to adopt a child. It is important to understand gender with regard to a variety of topics, including international security, and it is important to do this in a way that acknowledges the complexity of people’s perspectives and experiences. As conceptualizations of security shift and broaden, it is imperative that gender informs the discussion. By using gender lenses, this book can identify the ways gender is currently incorporated in security issues, as well as the ways gender can be incorporated in security studies into the future.

Each of our understandings of security has important ties to gender. This book provides an introduction to the links between gender and security by analyzing some of the key issues and topics within security studies through gender lenses. The book challenges narrow ideas of security and provides an alternative conceptualization that seeks to broaden and deepen understandings of security. This book is premised on the idea that there are multiple ways scholars, policy-makers, the media and other actors discuss and understand security issues. In other words, there are a variety of security discourses at play. Discourses can be thought of as “specific ensembles of ideas, concepts and categorization that are produced, reproduced and transformed in a particular set of practices and through which meaning is given to physical and social realities” (Hajer 1995: 45). This definition suggests that discourses are constantly evolving entities that are shaped over time. Political debates are typically informed by multiple discourses, although certain discourses may become more dominant than others as coalitions of actors succeed in promoting their preferred understanding of the world. As certain discourses take hold, some types of policy responses may become more or less viable and the interests of some groups may be served more than others (Bäckstrand and Lövbrand 2005; Cohn 1993; Haas 2002; Hajer 1995; Litfin 1999).

The goals of the book are twofold. First, I want to illustrate that concepts and topics within security studies look different when we examine them through gender lenses. Incorporating gender into security studies pushes us to ask different questions and broaden our sphere of analysis. Second, I want to show that this broadened sphere of analysis offers a more holistic understanding of security that reflects reflexive scholarship and benefits the process of policymaking. Gender analysis reveals multiple forms of insecurity that people experience daily, many of which are absent in traditional security scholarship. It also demonstrates some of the gendered consequences of using existing discourses of militarization, peacekeeping, terrorism, human security, and environmental security.

An idea tied to this second goal is to reflect on the emancipatory potential that gender lenses offers when linked to key themes and topics in security studies. The idea of emancipation features in much feminist scholarship and beyond. The work of Ken Booth (1991: 319), a leading figure in critical security studies and the Welsh School, or Aberystwyth School, is particularly useful when thinking about the concept and potential of emancipation. He claims emancipation is:

The freeing of people (as individuals and groups) from the physical and human constraints which stop them carrying out what they would freely choose to do. War and the threat of war is one of those constraints, together with poverty, poor education, political oppression and so on. Security and emancipation are two sides of the same coin. Emancipation, not power or order, produces true security. Emancipation, theoretically, is security.

Booth (2007: 115) later explains:

… to practise security (freeing people from the life-determining conditions of insecurity) is to promote emancipatory space (freedom from oppression, and so some opportunity to explore being human), and to realize emancipation (becoming more fully human) is to practise security (not against others, but with them).

In order to consider emancipation along these lines, it is necessary to be clear about the security narratives involved. Security in these terms does not refer to state security, or the protection and maintenance of the state, but rather has much more in common with notions of human security. There are various definitions of human security, as will be discussed in Chapter 5; however, they each shift the focus of security to people. This approach to emancipation suggests a concern with the ability of people to freely make choices.

Examining emancipation through gender lenses requires reflexive scholarship which highlights the various ways that constraints to the achievement of security are gendered (Basu 2011). It also requires an acknowledgment that a path to security will include getting past socially constructed gender identity (Hudson 2005; Tickner 2002). When our actions and the interpretations of our actions are guided by gender norms, this constrains and limits our ability to freely choose what to do and how to be. Choice is also constrained by gender through widespread gender inequity that persists across most societies. Finally, it requires particular attention to both marginalization and agency when examining obstacles to emancipation. Just as it is unhelpful to lump all men with war and all women with peace, so too is it unhelpful to assume men have a clear path to emancipation while women do not. It is essential to recognize the complex ways obstacles to emancipation manifest in society and overlap with categories of race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. It is also important to recognize how marginalization and the silences that accompany marginalization present unique challenges for emancipation. Lene Hansen (2000: 287) reminds us to pay particular attention to instances “when insecurity cannot be voiced, when raising something as a security problem is impossible or might even aggravate the threat being faced.” This makes the goal of incorporating the voices of marginalized actors especially important, but problematic at the same time. The idea of “giving voice” makes many feminists uncomfortable, as it is associated with simplistic assumptions about the agency of Northern women and the passivity of Southern women (Wibben 2011). For these reasons, it is not necessary to “give voice” in order to think about emancipation and security, but rather it is necessary to make space for multiple interpretations and perspectives on freedom and choice.

Some scholars have critiqued the concept of emancipation for being universalist and utopian. Critics of universalism “express concerns about the dangers of forcing others to be free, denying the legitimacy of difference, and imposing values that are ultimately Western in philosophical origin” (McDonald 2009: 121). Feminists have also expressed concern about the extent to which the individual should be/can be the ultimate referent of security practices. Laura Sjoberg (2011: 119) argues security as emancipation “requires us to categorize individuals such that we can see what their identities demand they be emancipated from. Each of these critical approaches suggests categorization and distinction among and between individuals essential for ‘emancipation.’” There is a concern that these distinctions may have the potential to silence people and groups. These critiques and concerns are important and essential to consider when exploring the connections between security and gender. They remind us of the importance of engaging with the idea of emancipation in a way that avoids oversimplification and acknowledges the complexity of sources of insecurity more broadly.

This book strives to highlight how feminist interpretations of central issues and concepts within security studies intersect with the goals of emancipation. Laura Shepherd (2010: xx) defines emancipation as “freedom from tyranny or oppression, the production of autonomy.” Emancipation is consistent with removing sources of insecurity. These sources of insecurity can stem from various sources and processes. The goal of an emancipatory project is to remove sources of insecurity in order to allow people to make choices freely. This exercise requires acknowledging that theorizing about emancipation is not static, but rather requires understanding certain contexts and particular circumstances that will change over time (Basu 2011; Steans 1998). Strategies for emancipation require frequent analysis and rethinking so they reflect changing conditions and power structures. None of this is to suggest emancipation is easy or even to suggest it has a definite endpoint of achievement. Sources of insecurity are often deeply entrenched within society and can even stem from a person being associated with a particular category, such as a gender, race, or class (Sjoberg 2011). While acknowledging the difficulty of this enterprise, feminist IR projects of this kind act as a point to begin larger conversations about how to engage in scholarship and policymaking that is guided by an overall goal of human well being. Security and emancipation are conceptualized as processes rather than defined end points (McDonald 2009).

Outline of the Volume

The remainder of the book is divided into five chapters which explore various topics of security, and a brief conclusion. Chapter 2 will examine the gendered elements of militarization and militarism for society. Each of these concepts is typically associated with elements of security, and each has been criticized for playing a role in legitimizing violence as a way of resolving conflicts. They are also linked to the establishment of power relationships and hierarchies in the global community. Additionally, each of the terms is typically understood to be associated with males and masculinities. Both state and non-state institutions that are heavily militarized are frequently made up largely of men, led by men, and infused with similar types of masculinities. This chapter examines some of the important consequences militarization and militarism have for society with a particular focus on how these consequences are gendered.

Chapter 3 explores gender as it relates to peacekeeping and peace-building. Security studies have moved away from a narrow focus on war and conflict to the study of peace. The international community has increasingly embraced the idea of encouraging peace between adversaries, even in some instances if the actions taken towards this goal violate state sovereignty. The concepts of both peacekeeping, or the potential use of military force to maintain peace between two potential foes, and peacebuilding, or striving to rebuild society in the aftermath of conflict or peacekeeping, have become relatively popular among both security scholars and policymakers. This chapter explores the role of women in peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts, as well as gendered elements to the overall conceptualization of these important security topics.

After the Cold War, the definitions and scope of security studies shifted. The remaining chapters reflect this shift by examining topics that are part of an expanded or at least altered idea of security. A major shift in security studies, particularly in the post-9/11 period, is a rise in attention to terrorism. Chapter 4 looks at the connections between gender and terrorism. It asks questions about why terrorists are often portrayed as angry, radical, non-white, young men and what the implications of this portrayal are. It explores the various terrorism discourses that are used by states, militant groups, and the media to claim that terrorism scholarship and counterterrorism policymaking must be informed by reflexive understandings of what motivates people to engage in violence.

“Human security” represents another avenue of expansion in recent security scholarship. The idea of human security refers to the security of people rather than states. According to a 1994 United Nations report there are several dimensions of human security, and each of these has important links to gender. The book’s fifth chapter explores how the discussions about human security’s potential to broaden and deepen security debates have largely left gender out of the equation. Some scholars have welcomed notions of human security as a way of avoiding state-centered ideas of security. However, many feminists have cautioned that human security must still consistently take into account gender and gender-based inequalities. The chapter examines topics associated with human security through gender lenses, including human trafficking and global health.

Chapter 6 continues the trend of examining the broadening and deepening of security scholarship through an exploration of the connections between gender, security, and the environment. Scholars and policymakers have recently used concepts of “environmental security” to link the ideas of traditional security scholarship to the environment. Some have viewed these connections as a positive way to highlight the serious threats that environmental degradation raise for both people and states, while others view them as another example of loading down the idea of security with conceptual baggage. This chapter will assess the terrain of the security and environment debate, and address the inclusion of gender into this debate. The chapter will address the theoretical and practical implications of ignoring the gendered aspects of security and the environment through an examination of climate change as a security issue with unique gender connections.

Incorporating gender into security debates requires rethinking some of the key assumptions and concepts of security scholarship and policymaking. The book’s conclusion expands on these ideas by arguing that integrating gender involves examining how security debates are gendered, as well as exploring the unique experiences of men and women in security situations. The conclusion draws together discussions from previous chapters around the theme of the shifts that come with including gender into security scholarship. The chapter includes sections on some of the social and policy implications of gendered security concepts, as well as including commentary on possible future directions for security scholarship and the links to gender.

Gender fundamentally alters the way we understand traditional and evolving security concepts. Looking at security issues through gender lenses involves asking new questions and conceptualizing key concepts in alternative ways. The book argues the necessity of including gender into discussions and evaluations of security and security concerns. Security scholarship has shifted from being narrowly concerned with state security and war to broadly considering a host of security threats and issues. Each of these elements of security scholarship has a unique relationship with gender – or socially constructed ideas about what men and women ought to be. Security debates exhibit gendered understandings of key concepts, and these gendered assumptions and understandings benefit particular people and are often detrimental to others, particularly as they influence the process of policymaking. The title of the book reflects the idea that security is an overarching concept with implications for the entire international community. International security is not used here to refer only to the removal of threats at the international level, but rather is intended to convey the goal of thinking about security from the level of humans to the entire globe. For this reason, the chapters will draw on examples and perspectives from both the global North and South. Through these perspectives we can reflect on the implications of rethinking security in ways that reveal the central location of gender.

2

Gendered Militarization and Militarism