Hugely. In fact, all the research that has been done, even on peacekeeping operations, suggests that all of those things matter. It matters much more to have race, gender, education, language, nationality all factored in. I think it's really important to think of diversity in intersectional terms—you can be a woman and also be a person of colour, as I am. I think those identities are very important to consider, but then the danger is in assigning specific categories to people. When you read transcripts, for example, from the British when they were in India, they wanted to recruit Sikhs because they said they were a martial race. How offensive is that today, that Sikhs are good fighters because they're a martial race. To me, we would obviously never go anywhere with that argument. I find it a little troubling when that same argument can still be used, because it's an affirmative essentialism about women, and I don't think it does us any good.
On September 20th, 2018. See this statement in context.