The Softer Side of Security
By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN
Over the last half decade, military affairs have increasingly become a unique area of analysis for international relations theorists, political economists, sociologists, anthropologists and most recently, gender study and sexuality specialists.
The focus on nation states’ monopolization and mobilization of force has been analyzed from so many perspectives in academia, it is difficult to find an existing discipline that has not already attempted to penetrate into the scope of militarized warfare or some aspect of organized force or violence.
Such is the case for two relatively new foci of the social sciences and more importantly, international relations (IR). Specifically, these embody the private military and security company (PMSC) phenomenon and gender studies and analysis within international affairs, the latter being a subject most often situated in IR as an international human rights issue.
Until now, the little that existed of gender analyses of security studies focused mainly on external pagemasculinity cultures within largely male-dominated institutions like domestic police and military forces.
However, this analysis has managed to transcend not only into the realm of international peacekeeping, but into the PMSC industry, two areas that have long enjoyed immunity from the scrutiny of a gender and sexuality perspective.
While some security specialists have been more than willing to share their research with a new twist, gender and sexuality analysts have already begun to focus on the overwhelming absence of females in militaries, international peacekeeping forces and PMSCs.
On 2 June, a troubled UN released a external pagereport highlighting the decline of female personnel in peacekeeping missions, citing that female peacekeepers make up “only eight percent of the U.N. police force and about two percent of the soldiers provided by member states.”
This has caused the UN to go on the offensive, releasing a external pageGender and Security Sector Reform Toolkit that aims to serve as a “comprehensive tool to strengthen the security sector’s response to violence against women and other gender-based crimes,” while emphasizing possible positive operational roles of women in the UN and the PMSC industry.
Inviting women into the process
Lt Col Carmen Estrella, special assistant to the UN deputy military adviser, explained why the role of women in security operations is essential: “Women bring a softer face to UN peacekeeping missions, one that is not about war fighting but about peacekeeping […] We help women of these nations to understand and see that they have a voice and can be part of the peacekeeping process themselves, and that is what the UN is trying to promote."
But coupled with a declining population of female recruits with an expanding private military and security industry, security specialists are beginning to ponder if and how these companies might be able to fill the void. This is where the role of the PMSC comes in to play, not only as an actor that might potentially be effective in future peacekeeping missions, but as a external pagemechanism that has the potential to “greatly improve operational effectiveness throughout the [private military and security] sector and positively shape its future development.”
Security sector reform (SSR) specialists are already attempting to incorporate gender and sexuality issues into policy recommendations for the PMSC industry, recognizing that similar to militaries and police forces, PMSCs often contain “Macho subcultures [that] do not provide a hospitable environment for women.”
Arguments from the side of SSR are multifaceted. On one hand, the argument is political: Private military and security companies should hire more women to further legitimize an industry which has already been tarnished at almost every level. This argument was made after external pagereports surfaced external pagehighlighting numerous abuses in Iraq against fellow female military and contractor personnel that became socially institutionalized among contractors, with offenders suffering little or no reprimand or punishment.
The second argument is functional. SSR specialists maintain that in some cases, the operational role of women can be more advantageous than that of males in various contexts. For example, external pageone SSR report lists some potential areas in which women can enhance a peacekeeping mission’s operational effectiveness:
“Research shows that local men and women tend to see female staff as more approachable and less threatening, even in traditional societies; [thus, women can be used] to perform body searches on [other] women; […] to serve as positive role models for local women who are considering joining, for instance, the police; […] to take a different approach in the detection of security risks, thereby potentially enhancing identification of the specific types of danger that women are exposed to in host societies.”
Most interestingly, it concludes: “In traditional societies, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, it is dangerous for a local woman to be seen speaking to male security personnel; she could, however, talk to a woman. Therefore, the employment of female staff can ensure a better utilization of resources; the extraction/gathering of information may be more effective and the analysis of issues affecting local communities more accurate.”
Anything men can do…
Some researchers that focus on gender and sexuality issues warn that militaries, UN peacekeeping forces and private industry alike should be careful not to manage women’s issues as an international, gender-based 'affirmative action' program. One analyst suggests that these institutions should be hesitant to frame women’s issues as a 'women-can-do-anything-men-can-do' paradigm.
“This is not only something that women have already proved, but this has been over-emphasized by the gender system to the point that in military situations, if it becomes the focus, it might be the instigator of violence and/or insecurity (i.e., which has been blamed for the over aggressive displacement of anger seen in hostage situations or taken out on victims in an attempt to justify male/state domination),” Gail M Zuckerwise, researcher at the Graduate Programme of Cultural Analysis at the Universiteit van Amsterdam told ISN Security Watch.
“The role of women should be framed as a positive addition without emphasizing the negatives that are 'normatively' linked to women in the military.”
For now, the UN is the biggest loser when it comes to populations of women in its own forces. As the US military pursues alternatives recruiting programs to facilitate its ongoing demand for personnel, one might expect that females will continue to be targeted for various functional roles by the Defense Department. Companies in the PMSC industry will most likely pursue the issue as many businesses do, and as to date there is no known business strategy plan recognizing the role of women in force operations or official recognition of internal macho subcultures.
Nevertheless, gender and sexuality students will continue to bring these issues to the forefront of their own studies which will inevitably spillover into the broader concerns of IR and security studies.