National Defence committee  I wouldn't say there is no evidence. There is some evidence, for example, from the all-female peacekeeping unit from India that served in Liberia, which said that local women actually found this to be very empowering and that they enjoyed interacting with women. I'm not sure if t

National Defence committee  I would say that's a much more broad-based effort aimed at including not just militarized and civilian peacekeepers, but also a much broader universe, as it were, that contains things like civil society organizations and women's grassroots organizations working on peace and secur

National Defence committee  Okay. There are several layers to that. One, as I mentioned in that article, when you look at it, the vast majority of peacekeeping operations are in the global south. There are very, very few in the global north countries, so there is an element of going out and civilizing the

National Defence committee  I was very pleased that as part of the feminist international assistance policy right now, there is $150 million, I want to say, that is being targeted for the support of NGOs of women's grassroots organizations. I think that is absolutely vital and I think it's complementary. It

National Defence committee  That's a difficult question to answer. I think the contexts are different for why people join militaries. I taught at California State University in the U.S. before I moved back to Canada, and I remember the ROTC being on campus and having genuine difficult recruiting, and at s

National Defence committee  Absolutely, but that will require transforming institutions much more deeply than just incrementally increasing small numbers of women.

National Defence committee  There isn't anything that isn't being done. I think women who want to join the military will join the military. They join police forces. I don't see any one thing that can be done. Of course, addressing the culture and talking about power are really important. It's not a quick f

National Defence committee  That's a really good question, and I've faced it multiple times. One thing I feel very strongly about is that even when I'm doing this work and I'm speaking to businesses, for example, whose bottom line is they are beholden to shareholders. They care about profits. We know that.

National Defence committee  In the research I look at, I think the biggest barrier is the power dynamic in the interface between the peacekeeping operations. I haven't see as much about whether coalitions are a bigger problem than.... That doesn't seem to be the point of friction as much, at least from the

National Defence committee  No, I would not. I hope I didn't make it sound as though that is the primary consideration. I think it's part of a broader effort of moving us back towards a different place at the UN, and I appreciate that. There is tremendous power to be had in being in the UN General Assembly.

National Defence committee  That is a big question. There is a much deeper reckoning to be had in terms of how militaries operate and how institutional hierarchies and reporting mechanisms operate. It's not a secret that we have issues with women in the military, and in Canada we have issues with the RCMP.

National Defence committee  No, not at all; that was never my argument. I don't think there's anything wrong. It's actually a fairly small amount of money if you think about it, and they might need more than that. I don't see anything wrong with spending that money on improving women's experiences, training

National Defence committee  I would say to try to change institutional cultures at a deeper level. Changing institutional cultures that foster behaviours like harassment and bullying will make a much bigger difference, because if we leave intact the structures that are problematic, then having more women ad

National Defence committee  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 int

National Defence committee  I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. When a group of people have been under-represented significantly in an institution, then I think saying we should treat everyone equally doesn't make any sense because that group has been historically under-represented. By th