National Defence committee  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 wom

National Defence committee  If I'm assuming rightly, you're asking me what factors lead women to be excluded from peacekeeping processes. I don't think I have a simple answer for that. Having been doing this research for a long time, I have found that one of the biggest problems is the general assumption t

National Defence committee  That's the one that I really struggle with, because, given the structures of peacekeeping operations and given the structures of militarized peacekeeping, I don't see how introducing small numbers of women can make a difference to peacekeeping operations. Having said that, I thi

National Defence committee  Can you repeat that for me, please?

National Defence committee  I think a broader conversation about power is really important. Most sexual abuse is not about the things people think about. It's not about sexual gratification. It is about power. I think people are put in positions of power—inherently, of power over others—which is why I think

National Defence committee  Frankly, there isn't enough evidence to tell us specifically about.... There is some research of our Canadian peacekeeping operations, but in general I would say there definitely isn't enough research to suggest that women in Canadian peacekeeping would make contributions that ar

National Defence committee  I haven't chanced upon that research yet, but there is a generalized culture of sexual exploitation and abuse within peacekeeping operations.

National Defence committee  I completely agree. I have absolutely no argument with the fact that women need to be in peacekeeping missions. The issue I have is with expecting different results from having women in peacekeeping operations. I absolutely agree there is no reason for it.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  That's a difficult one for me to answer, because I haven't actually researched whether or not women liked being in those positions, or whether they prefer to be. Peacekeeping itself is often seen by trained military personnel as being kind of a step down from active combat in man

National Defence committee  I agree.

National Defence committee  I would say empirically the findings are quite mixed, because there is still evidence of a lot of the issues I mentioned about power between peacekeeping operations and host countries. They absolutely still exist, so I'm not entirely convinced that we're in a golden era of new pe

National Defence committee  No, it's not, not in my opinion. I should provide a more complicated answer. The UN is in deep need of reform, and I say this as someone with incredible faith in the multilateral process and in multilateral institutions. However, I can believe in multilateral institutions and pr

National Defence committee  I see it as something that is well-intentioned but misguided. I think the trouble with positive gender essentialisms is that people don't question them enough. If you were to go around saying that all women are something or other, and if it's a very negative quality, you would h

National Defence committee  We know there is extensive research in a variety of male-dominated occupations showing that women, ethnic minorities and religious minorities tend to try to fit in with the majority. They don't challenge. It's obvious why: it's difficult for a person challenge when there isn't a