GENDER AND SECURITY

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GENDER AND SECURITY

• Johanna Valenius
• International History Seminar
• January 9, 2009

Current work NATO in Afghanistan UNSCR 1325 as
a tool for enhanced effectiveness
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Four questions

• Who or what is in danger
• Who or what constitutes the threat
• Who provides for security
• By what means

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Security?

• A contested concept
• traditional Realist view states provide
  security with military means
• Post-Cold War no agreement
• E.g. former Yugoslavia
• Ethnic and religious conflicts spill over state
  borders
• Civil wars
• Afghanistan suicide bombers, IEDs

4
Security?

• Critical and feminist theories
• Social construction of reality through language
• Security and security threats are socially
  constructed
• Difference between critical and feminist theories
• Gender
• Theories are based on masculine (? men) values,
  experiences, language
• Carol Cohn Sex and Death in the Rational World
  of Defense Intellectuals (Signs 1987)

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Feminist Security Studies

• Question the perceived absence of women in world
  and security politics (e.g. Cynthia Enloe)
• Question the naturalized nature of security does
  the state provide security to its male and female
  citizens always?
• Question the perceived peacefulness and pacifism
  of women
• Question the gendered assumptions of feminist
  research women and men should be
  femininities and masculinities
• Collective or individual security
• Gender-based exceeding state borders

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Whose security and by what means

• The state does not only protect its citizens but
  can also be a threat
• new wars
• Protecting the state is a masculine duty and
  privilege
• For the sake of womenandchildren
• Protected women and male protectors
• NATO bombing Kosovo
• Afghanistan and Iraq
• Our men saving their/brown women from their/brown
  men
• Men protecting their masculine honor

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Gendered insecurities

• Men
• Battle deaths
• Gender-based violence against civilian boys and
  men
• Women
• Sexualized violence
• Refugees and IDPs malnutrion and diseases kill
  more than guns
• Domestic violence in post-conflict setting (the
  Balkans, Afghanistan)
• Crisis management operations

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Wide security

• Copenhagen School
• Buzan, Waever, Wilde
• securitization
• International vs. social security
• Security collective survival
• Human security
• Economic, food, environmental, health, political,
  social, individual, collective
• Gendered human

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Feminist critique of the Copenhagen School

• Lene Hansen (2000)
• Women dont have possibilities to voice their
  security concerns ? cannot be securitized
• Women dont form a clear enough identity category
  to form a required collective
• Honor killings in Pakistan security as silence
• Afghanistan security as avoiding women

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Conclusion

• Wide security although critical of gender
  blindness
• Questions the perceived simplicity of security
• State and military security are not insignificant