The significance of gender studies within the field of International Security will be analysed through a multifaceted response to the debate. Feminist thought dichotomises gender from sex; gender, a socially constructed expectation of specific characteristics that are associated with an individual’s biological sex. Gender constructs highlight that masculine behaviour is mapped as the correct activity carried out by men, whereas women possess feminine attributions. Scholars have argued that this gendered system of social hierarchy, favours masculine characteristics over feminine attributes. Branches of feminist thought such as positivist, constructivist, postcolonial and poststructuralist will be adopted to offer an explanation into the role of gender in understanding how states react to security threats. Furthermore this exploration will consider the presence of gendered analyses in recent international affairs such as the Bosnian crisis of 1992-1995 and the US invasion into Afghan territory. The appreciation of the gender security nexus enables a security analysis that challenges the traditional security concepts and offers a broad and inclusive outlook. Finally this assessment will arrive at the conclusion stating that ignoring the relevance of gender within security debates restricts comprehension of pressing security issues on the global stage.
Gender analyses offer a narrative explaining the women traditionally ostracised from the practice of war; an activity publicly deemed as a masculine domain. War discourses have a tendency to focus on combatants, prisoners of war and officers which largely focuses on the experiences of men (Whitworth, 2008). Women are assumed to be effected indirectly through war, only disrupted and sometimes collaterally injured or killed (Whitworth, 2008). These accounts have played a considerable role in reinforcing the identity of women as insignificant in times of insecurity and war; women ‘simply’ filling the domestic context. However, the complexity of female involvement in conflict is implicit. Enloe (1983), representing the early constructivist thought, acknowledges the pivotal domestic roles taken by women in periods of conflict, drawing upon the unpaid and invisible jobs that fuel soldiers in combat. There is a significant position that lies outside the physical activity of war that females have long symbolised. Women fill this space in terms of epitomising home, the referent object, the reason for entertaining in war (). Therefore women have provided a purpose for soldiers to sacrifice their life and to defend the state, an explanation ignored in traditional security studies but vital in understanding war motives.
Moreover, gender can be adopted to explain state’s implementation of military attacks on the international arena. Cooke’s (2013) seminal exploration into the driving forces behind the US intervention into Afghan territory enforces that the armed intrusion was a result of major network news anchors’ attention to the plight of women at the hand of Taliban forces. This in itself, is arguably the praxis of constructivist feminist theory, a branch of feminist thought highlighted by Tickner () that gender is a social construct that has social consequences. Social media in this example has reinforced the gender binary that women are vulnerable. The coverage of men brutally attacked did little to motivate securitising behaviour from the US Cooke (2013) indicates. This therefore substantiates the concept that women are perceived as legitimate referent objects in state’s agenda. It is also important to recognise media usage which highlights the move from conflict confined within national borders to the international, readdressing a confined security threat of a nation to the interests of another.
Furthermore, Cooke (2013) draws a connection between the media coverage of suppressed females and the infamous phrase in Spivak’s (1985) progressive piece. Cooke pronounces that the British justification for the abolition of suttee in the nineteenth century was a military force based on “white men saving brown women from brown men” (Spivak, 1985, p. ), a postcolonial feminist rhetoric. Postcolonial feminism is a dyadic exploration of the subjugation of women from previously colonised nations based on the interrelationship between race, class and gender, moving away from the biased First World feminist voice in International Security (Chowdhry and Nair, 2002, p.10). The US military attacks here, highlight the importance of understanding the impact of imperialism in conjunction with gender discourses that effect what states constitute a security threat. This example projects the notion that female emancipation is only achievable at the hands of First world men, the liberators and enslavers, a gender binary entrenched in current international security issues. The perception of female fragility, with ‘brown women’ as the most vulnerable, Cooke infers legitimises the protection of women which is at risk of being exploited to justify attacks for an ulterior motive by dominant states. This example also fundamentally provides an insight into the notion and rhetoric that “white men” are the overarching protectors of emancipation in the contemporary world, demonising “brown men” as security threats. The potential manipulation of gender constructs to legitimise military action is an important area of International Security to be acknowledged. An international security analysis requires a consideration of gender, not in isolation, but in conjunction with post-imperial acknowledgements, offering a more inclusive analysis of security threats.
Furthermore traditionalist Western academia, grounded in high politics of war and realpolitik has its foundations the experiences of men. The perpetual reinforcement that war is associated with men is imbedded in syllabus teaching(…). Postmodern feminist thought however attempts to deconstruct any posit that claims to have found a single truth (Steans, 1998, p.25). A line of thought supported by the recent presence of female soldiers which nullifies claims that there are universal characteristics among men and women. Gender analyses have deconstructed behaviour from sex, and shown that women have the potential to be more than mere bystanders or referent objects in conflict. An example of this is the Somalia’s National Army that consists of women fighting on the front line facing Al-shabab (TEDx Talks, 2014). This example challenges gender biases and dismantles the unsubstantiated traditional gendered perceptions of war. If women are undermined as incapable of aggression and power, a state is at risk of overlooking potential threats to security, like the recent mobilisation of female ISIS suicide bombers (Burke, 2016). The shock of female soldiers that Burke (2016) highlights, infers that it is almost incomprehensible for state actors to view women as aggressors. The presence of women in these positions forces one to readdress their perceptions on what constitutes a security threat, it negates traditional international security concepts in reaffirming that human behaviour is not confined to a biological sex, in turn validating the constructivist feminist explanation that gender is merely a construction.
Gender analyses of International Security provide explanations into the conduct of war tactics. As Carpenter (2003) indicates throughout the positivist feminist stance, gender, as an analytical category to study war, pays particular attention to the gendered conduct of war and humanitarian intervention. The Bosnian War of 1992-95 serves as an example of gender constructs rooted in instances of conflict, as stated in Hansen’s (2013) analysis. The international armed conflict in the Bosnian and Herzegovina territory began following the partition of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines. The war’s profound nature, centralising on female rape from other ethnic groups as a means to emasculate the men of that community has been identified as a strategy to undermine the opponent (). The Bosnian rapes were not only a strategical military tactic adopted by both sides, but a practice that reinforce a gender identity of the Bosnian nation (). This example enforces women as persistently the referent object in international security to be securitised by men. The intrenched gender binary is reflected in the Bosnian war conduct that men should protect their women, therefore it is important for contemporary International Security studies to consider this example as a caveat to understand the strategic nature of gender constructs within war.
Furthermore, in association with wartime sexual violence, there appears to be a connection individuals make identifying this kind of violence to only depictions of women. The armed conflict in ex-Yugoslavia was a pivotal instant that brought sexual violence within war to the forefront of international agenda. For instance in the year 2000, the United Nations Security Council called for gender mainstreaming into peacekeeping operations in Resolution 1325 (What is U.N. Security council resolution 1325 and why is it so critical today?, 1960). Resolution 1325 aimed to defend women against “sexual torture, enforced prostitution, sexual slavery, mutilations and sexual trafficking” (Whitworth, 2008). Thus arguably providing a solution to Liberal feminist concerns with legislative female representation. However, some forms of contemporary violence are left invisible, most significantly excluding the sexual violence toward men. The International Criminal Tribunal (1999) documents outline cases pertaining to the sexual violence toward men in the Bosnian war. However, there appears to be a lack of acknowledgement toward social appreciation of sexual violence, where men arguably should serve as the referent object. Gender analyses can explain the reasoning behind the supposed taboo of male rape through gender binaries which limit individuals to view men as vulnerable.
Moreover, the characteristics associated with men and women based on gender constructs effects social expectations for job aspirations which indirectly effects war conduct. Vyain et al’s (1999) psychological study indicates that men and women fulfil the social construction in seeking jobs attributed to gender binaries. This is noticeable in the political domain where masculine traits have long been dominant. As Tilly (1990, p.42) famously uttered, “war made the state and the state made war”, therefore within this definition there appears to be an interconnection between war and state actors. The ubiquity of male presence in the political sphere can be identified through the Liberal feminist lens (Whitworth, 2008), looking at the female representation in the G20 summit in 2016. The disproportionate representation of only three female leaders in international security decision making roles (China 2016, 2016) does not reflect the females within the world’s population. Thus, arguably the conduct of war does not adequately reflect the interests of females. The behaviour of statesmen are inherently at the core of security missions and negotiations. Gender explanations offer a vital insight into the reasons behind this female detachment from the political and military sphere.
The Us presidential debate highlights the importance of a gendered nexus as Clinton was continually criticised for her femininity due to the intrenched notion that a woman cannot lead a country. Wilz (2016) indicates that in order for women in the political domain to be taken seriously, it is essential for them to adopt stereotypical masculine characteristics, such as rationality. The fact that Clinton cannot perform femininity and be successful in the political American terrain affirms the prelevance of gender roles. This is highlighted by the postmodernist feminist stance, that gender is a performance, stated by Butler (2011). The inference is that compassion, nurturing and emotive conduct, feminine gender binaries are unappreciated traits in international affairs. This is highlighted in the discursive rhetoric in elections of a state that intervenes in considerable ‘humanitarian intervention’. It is also important to consider, if masculine traits are favoured in politics this must effect the manner in which international security is conducted; favouring power, rationality and aggression.
Furthermore, the importance of a gender lens is prominent in the transition in the identification of what constitutes a legitimate target in jus in bello. Jus in bello presents an argument that a legitimate target is an individual in uniform (Blum, 2016). Perhaps an understandable claim when war was fought traditionally on a battle ground, however contemporary warfare is multifaceted which sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish combatants from non-combatants. This transition can be identified through the use of drone warfare. US foreign policy administration officials will recognise all military age males in a strike zone as combatants, (Becker and Shane, 2014) expect those explicitly identified through intelligence services proving their innocence. There appears to be a normalisation to perceive men as expendable in times of war, an almost desensitisation toward male death. This quotation pronounces males as a legitimate concern to the US and highlights the propensity by which current security issues places the majority of men as security threats. The constructivist gender analysis offers an explanation to this US perception as the social constructs limit possibility of women as threats and reinforce the identification of men as aggressors.
Gender analyses are important analytical angles to the complex contemporary study of International Security. The relevance of gender lenses stretches from male dominated physical involvement in war, to the implicit and divisive gendered discourse that underlies politics, confining state actors, the prominent decision makers in periods of insecurity, to primarily men. This exploration provides a broad analysis on the importance of gender in International Security, paying attention to the poststructuralist argument, embodied by Enloe’s analysis of the subtle yet poignant domestic role of females. Additionally, the post-colonial feminist stance that highlights that gender is important to the contemporary understanding of International Security, but it is not a concept that can stand alone, other explanations such as historical colonial insight adds depth to the gender critique. The evidence aforementioned highlights that this perpetuates the constructed perception that certain realms in society are confined to a biological sex.