Thank you for giving me this opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee on National Defence. I am a tenured full professor in the Department of Women's Studies and Feminist Research at the University of Western Ontario. I also hold the Canada research chair in global women's issues.
In November of last year I wrote an op-ed in Policy Options. My original title for the op-ed was “A few good women: A reality check for Canada's peacekeeping pipe dream”, but I noticed that the editors decided to publish it with the more straightforward title of “Short-sighted commitments on women in peacekeeping”. This is a topic I've maintained an interest in for a very long time. In the op-ed that I wrote, I shared my concerns about the way that women's role in peacekeeping is being packaged and curated. I'll do the same in my comments today.
One of the highlights of the UN peacekeeping defence ministerial conference hosted by Canada in 2017 was the announcement of a five-year pilot fund, worth $15 million, that would be used to recruit, train and promote female military and police personnel for United Nations peacekeeping missions. In making this commitment, Ottawa takes its cues from and throws its weight behind United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, which was passed in the year 2000. Resolution 1325 urged all member countries to increase the participation of women in peacekeeping operations, or PKOs. It also called on all parties in conflict to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse, in situations of armed conflict.
The central premise of UNSCR 1325 is that increasing the number of women in a peacekeeping operation will improve the operational effectiveness of the mission. The resolution assumes that appointing or recruiting more women leaders, decision-makers, military or police officers, and soldiers is a means of better protecting the safety and rights of women and girls in the countries in which PKOs are deployed. It assumes that female victims of sexual violence will be more comfortable speaking to and being protected by female peacekeepers. Incorporating more women into peacekeeping missions was also a way for the UN to counter mounting evidence of sexual abuse and exploitation committed by male peacekeepers. Thus, by having a “civilizing” effect on their male colleagues, the presence of women peacekeepers was expected to lead to lower levels of sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping missions.
The notion that women are not just inherently more peaceful than men but are also able to pacify male violence is empirically not well verified, but it continues to inform current policy on women and peacekeeping. Historian Gerard DeGroot, a vocal advocate for the inclusion of more women in peacekeeping operations, argues that women in armed groups appear to have a “civilizing effect” on men by preventing undesirable male behaviour, including sexual aggression and abuse. In a keynote address he made to UN officials in 2010, DeGroot said that women can improve the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations for the simple reason that they are not men and that women, it seems, are less inclined toward violence.
While not stated explicitly in DeGroot's remarks, the central assumption is that women can essentially shame men into behaving more appropriately. There's very little empirical evidence to support these assumptions, but they have acquired the status of truism without much verification. However, there is evidence that women's presence in small numbers or even significant numbers does not have any influence upon men's behaviour. For example, based on her research in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dara Cohen, a researcher at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, finds that when faced with similar social constraints and pressures, women are as capable of perpetrating abuse as their male peers.
Just to be clear, my argument is not that women or men are natural perpetrators of violence or abuse, but rather that under certain conditions, both sexes may be prone to such behaviours.
That many of the assumptions justifying women's increased participation in peacekeeping operations, that they are less corrupt, for example, and less prone to sexual violence or abuse, do not often hold water in practice is a fact that should not be so surprising, since the number of uniformed women personnel in peacekeeping operations is still extremely small.
In August 2018—these are the most recent figures—women made up just under 4%, or 3.95% to be precise, of military peacekeepers, and 11.2% of police personnel in global peacekeeping operations. This is far short of the target of 20% by 2014, which was set by the UN Police in 2000.
Research on employment and social equity in other male-dominated occupations indicates that a workplace must have at least 15% women to reduce what is called the minority effect, and ideally aim for 30% to obtain demonstration effects of critical mass.
Women are burdened in multiple ways in certain industries, including in peacekeeping operations, where they are heavily under-represented, but treated as change agents, i.e., where they are expected to lead the way in changing entrenched masculine work cultures. In such environments, women often face the predicament of being considered more nurturing and less bellicose than men, either by their nature or through socialization. These are qualities that ironically have traditionally been perceived as making women unsuitable for military and police forces, while they simultaneously find they are being included in these institutions for possessing the same qualities.
There are much-publicized accounts of women peacekeepers carrying out community service and outreach activities in host settings, especially with the recent deployment of all female peacekeeping units—for example, Indian women in Liberia, and Bangladeshi women in Haiti. There are greater opportunities for systematic research to understand what contributions female military and police personnel make, and whether they are any different from the contributions made by male peacekeepers. There has never been any doubt that both civilian and military peacekeepers can make very meaningful contributions to peacekeeping operations.
If compassion, empathy and sensitivity to local populations are important attributes of peacekeepers—I agree they are—then why can't we train all peacekeepers, regardless of gender, to be compassionate, empathetic and sensitive? Why are these seen as attributes that can only be brought in intact by women?
In pointing out the problems with essentialist assumptions about including women in peacekeeping, I must be very cautious not to provide ammunition to misogynists and anti-feminists, who would rather women not be present at all in military and police forces. Those of us who are skeptical of the operational effectiveness rationale for increasing the number of women in peacekeeping are not at all against women's participation in peacekeeping. We just express doubt about the way in which it is packaged. As a researcher, I obviously have the job of asking critical questions, even of policies that I support.
Women make up 50% of Canada's and the world's population. They should be as self-justifiably entitled to jobs in peacekeeping operations as men are, without bearing the additional burden of “civilizing” missions and improving operational effectiveness. Having more women peacekeepers contributes to the goal of a gender-equal, more representative peacekeeping mission. Gender equality and representativeness should be ends in themselves, and not means toward somewhat misguided ends.
I know that advocates of the operational effectiveness argument may find these critiques quite frustrating. They may even find them exasperating. They say we should get the job done and ask if it matters that we're doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
I would argue that an important step toward gender equality in peacekeeping is to appreciate that distinction between a rights-based argument, and an instrumental argument. After all, if we increase the number of women in peacekeeping operations and find that we still have high levels of sexual exploitation and abuse and that the women have not been able to transform these institutions, are we then justified in asking women to leave?
In closing, I would like to emphasize that gender is not the only relevant marker of identity among peacekeepers. Class, race, religion, education, language, ethnicity and nationality all figure very heavily in the identity of peacekeepers. In any conversation about diversifying peacekeeping missions, we must pay close attention to them.
Thank you for listening.
