International Security and Gender

Nicole Detraz

• Editorial: Polity
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745663050
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Categoría: Paz y desarrollo global

What does it mean to be secure? In the global news, we hear stories daily about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about domestic-level conflicts around the world, about the challenges of cybersecurity and social security. This broad list highlights the fact that security is an idea with multiple meanings, but do we all experience security issues in the same way? In this book, Nicole Detraz explores the broad terrain of security studies through a gender lens. Assumptions about masculinity and femininity play important roles in how we understand and react to security threats. By examining issues of militarization, peacekeeping, terrorism, human security, and environmental security, the book considers how the gender-security nexus pushes us to ask different questions and broaden our sphere of analysis. Including gender in our analysis of security challenges the primacy of some traditional security concepts and shifts the focus to be more inclusive. Without a full understanding of the vulnerabilities and threats associated with security, we may miss opportunities to address pressing global problems. Our society often expects men and women to play different roles, and this is no less true in the realm of security. This book demonstrates that security debates exhibit gendered understandings of key concepts, and whilst these gendered assumptions may benefit specific people, they are often detrimental to others, particularly in the key realm of policy-making.

1

Understanding Gender in Security Debates

The Arab Spring is a term used to refer to the series of uprisings that took place in several states in the Middle East and North Africa in 2010–2011. This movement captured the attention of the general public, policy experts, and security scholars. We heard about peaceful and violent protests, the actions of state security forces, the activities of “insurgent groups,” and discussions by the United Nations Security Council. Each of these elements has ties to security. In the global news, we hear stories daily about domestic-level conflicts around the world, about wars and tensions between states, about ideas like cyber-security and social security. This broad list highlights the fact that security is an idea with multiple meanings. Security is a uniquely important concept in the modern world. Common understandings of security range from inter-state war and conflict studies to a concern for well being at an individual level. Security has historically been one of the most fundamental topics of concern for international relations (IR) scholars. Largely since the end of the Second World War, scholars have worked to define and understand security in the global community. Throughout its existence, security studies has been marked by competing definitions of security. Ronnie Lipschutz (1995: 8) argues “there are not only struggles over security among nations, but also struggles over security among notions. Winning the right to define security provides not just access to resources but also the authority to articulate new definitions and discourses of security, as well.” This quote suggests that the ways in which we define security have important implications for the scholarly and policy realms.

Security is an idea that governments typically take very seriously, so calling something a security issue often results in increased attention and resources being channeled in the direction of the “security issue.” To demonstrate how important security has been for both states and IR scholarship, we can examine the concepts of high politics and low politics. Within IR, high politics has always been the exclusive realm of security, while low politics includes things like economics, social issues, and the environment. In the hierarchy of issues states face, security is at the top, while all other issues are placed beneath it. The term high politics is illustrative of the central place security has had for scholars and policymakers. Asking questions and problematizing this concept contributes to making scholarship and policymaking more reflexive. It causes us to step back and examine our assumptions about both the definition of security and also the way security policy is formulated and carried out. An important component of problematizing security is understanding the host of connections between security topics/concepts and gender.

What Is Gender?

This book draws on feminist scholarship in order to explore how security and gender intersect. Much important insight into the connections between gender and security has come from feminist scholars, who approach the issue from a variety of perspectives. Feminism is best thought of as a large umbrella term which contains a range of subcategories. In other words, there are a great many feminisms. What holds them together is the goal of revealing and challenging widespread inequality in society. Most feminists focus specifically on inequality in the form of women’s subordination; however, this is typically part of a broader concern about how multiple forms of inequality intersect. Feminists will have different ways of understanding the sources of this inequality as well as different suggestions for how to deal with them, but at their root they all seek an international community in which people are not discriminated against because they are identified as women or men.

Gender is the central, uniting concept for feminist scholars. According to Marysia Zalewski (1995: 339) “the driving force of feminism is its attention to gender and not simply to women. To be sure, for many feminists the concern about the injustices done to women because of their sex is paramount, but the concept, nature and practice of gender are key.” Gender can be defined as a set of socially constructed ideas about what men and women ought to be. This definition has a few important pieces; firstly the idea of social construction. Rather than gender roles and assumptions being deterministic entities, they directly come out of a society’s expectations. Gender characteristics are cultural creations passed on through socialization (D’Amico and Beckman 1994; Eisenstein 2007). The process of gender socialization begins at birth, if not before, for many children. When a child is born, it is identified as a boy or girl. A friend or family member may buy a blue outfit and a truck for a new baby boy or a pink outfit and a doll for a new baby girl. This reflects what society tells them is an “appropriate” item for a boy or a girl. While there is nothing natural about these gifts, gender roles become so ingrained in society that they take on the appearance of being natural or “normal.” This means when individuals act in ways that defy these gender norms they are seen as being unnatural. It is also important to note that gender identity is expected from society. Individuals are identified as boy or girl even if they themselves do not feel comfortable with those identities.

The second piece of the definition refers to the difference between gender and sex. Peterson and Runyan (1999: 30) point out:

Because models of appropriate gender behavior vary, we know that femininity and masculinity are not timeless or separable from the contexts in which they are observed. Thus, gender rests not on biological sex differences but on interpretations or constructions of behavior that are culturally specific and may or may not have anything to do with biological differences.

The term “sex” is typically used to describe biological differences between people understood to be men and people understood to be women (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007). Gender describes the socially constituted differences between these same groups. “Masculinities and femininities are made up of behaviour expectations, stereotypes, and rules which apply to persons because they are understood to be members of particular sex categories” (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007: 6). To go back to the earlier example, there is nothing biologically determined about the sex category of male that would necessarily be associated with the color blue. There is no evidence that the color blue is associated with testosterone production. Instead, blue is simply one of a number of shades possible for painting a room or dying fabric. It is because of gender that some societies associate blue with masculine babies and pink with feminine babies.

There has been a general lack of attention to gender in IR scholarship. More importantly, much IR scholarship continues the assumption that gender differences are deterministic; that men and women really do exhibit dichotomous characteristics. Helen Kinsella (2003: 296) argues “by insisting on a definition of sex and gender as if their conceptions are already settled and natural categories – indeed, empirical categories – one completely misses the politics and power of conceptual definition and the relationship of concepts to understanding. Categories and concepts are not neutral.” Not all feminists agree on what this means for future scholarship. Where disagreement often comes into play is in discussions of what should be done about this and the consequences that are likely to follow.

Gender analysis challenges the reduction of people to simplistic assumptions about their identity based on a set of socially constructed expectations. Men are one thing and women are another. This disregards the complexity of individuals. Moreover, it tends to assume that generalizations can be made across cultures with regard to the characteristics and experiences of members of gender groups. Some feminists from the global South in particular have critiqued this position and argued this reduces the agency of women who are often viewed as “victims” (Mohanty 2003; Sedghi 1994). This critique is also extended to feminists who disregard the complexity of experiences across the globe, including differing experiences based on race, class, sexual orientation, etc. Peterson and Runyan (2010:7) explain that “[i]ntersectional analysis holds that there are no generic women and men; our gender identities, loyalties, interests, and opportunities are affected by intersecting and cross-cutting gender, race, class, national, and sexual identities. Whereas some parts of our identities may confer privilege, others may serve to disadvantage us.” For example, a straight, white, middle-class woman in France can have very different experiences, challenges and perspective than a gay, Arab, lower-class woman in Jordan. To imply the fact that both are women makes them equal in the larger group of gender is to deny the complexity of the world.

That being said, gender is an important concept in IR because of its role is shaping inequalities in society. In every society, traits and characteristics associated with masculinities are more highly valued than those associated with femininities. This affects both how institutions in society look, and the differential access of men and women to these institutions. Ann Tickner (1992: 7) claims “gender difference has played an important and essential role in the structuring of social inequalities in much of human history and that the resulting differences in self-identifications, human understandings, social status, and power relationships are unjustified.” This relates to the concept of patriarchy. Cynthia Enloe (2004: 4) explains “patriarchy is the structure and ideological system that perpetuates the privileging of masculinity.” Many different types of social structures and institutions can be patriarchal. For example, when an institution is said to require people who are “rational,” “level-headed,” or “decisive,” as is the case with many powerful Western institutions including public office, powerful corporations, etc., the institution is privileging characteristics associated with masculinities. Most feminists discuss patriarchy because patriarchal systems marginalize that which is associated with female, leading to the marginalization of women themselves. Both men and women are instrumental in supporting patriarchal systems and their continuation. Feminist scholars do not argue all men actively support the marginalization of women while women are innocent victims in this process. Patriarchy is a deeply rooted process that works in both seen and unseen ways.

In sum, gender refers to a set of socially constructed expectations about what men and women ought to be. Gender is distinct from biological sex, and includes a set of criteria about how people should be. IR scholarship has been slow to incorporate gender and gender concerns in a significant way. This is unfortunate because of the role patriarchy has in structuring institutions in ways that value that which is masculine over that which is feminine.

What is Security?

There is not a single, agreed-upon definition of security that exists within academic circles. In fact, scholars have remarked that security is an extremely complex concept, and the literature on security reflects a wide variety of views (Buzan 1991; Buzan and Hansen 2009; Steans 2006). At a very basic level, security refers to a condition of being “protected, free from danger, safety” (Der Derian 1995: 28). While this definition of security does not identify who or what is being protected, it is important to think about security by asking both what is the referent object of security, and what are the necessary conditions for security.

Countries, or states in IR terminology, have historically been the principal subject of security scholarship. Traditional security scholarship is conceptualized as the study of the threat, use, and control of military force (Nye and Lynn-Jones 1988; Walt 1991). Many security scholars assume conflict between states is always a possibility and the use of military force is a key component to the maintenance of security for states. This means it is the state that has been seen as the legitimate actor to define security, to create security policy, and to enforce security policy, often through the military. This idea of security is typically referred to as national security or state security. The term national security comes from the idea that it is the security of the nation, or the state more accurately, that is dominant. Most international relations scholarship understands a distinction between the terms state and nation. A state is an entity with a distinct territory and government (e.g. France). A nation is a group tied together through common language, history, ethnicity, etc. (e.g. the Kurds). While there is some attention given to other entities in traditional security studies, the focus tends to come back to the state. This is because all states in the international system are considered to be important actors to include in analyses of security. This includes states from the global North and global South. The North/South labels can be problematic, but they are used as a way to highlight the different positions dominant states and non-dominant states have within the international system. It is used as a category of analysis to point out differing power relationships and systems of marginalization.

The fact that the state has been the key actor associated with “security” has particular implications both for the position of states in the international system, and for the way security is studied and carried out. Many scholars argue that states have typically benefitted from being seen as the sole providers of security and the object that needs to be secure. In fact, the identity of states as providers of security has been a large part of the international community for centuries (Campbell 1998). States derive legitimacy from this role of state security provision. This implies that the states’association as the protectors of security gives it a particular authority. It is under-stood as legitimate for states to use deadly force as long as that force is deployed in the name of state security. The security label also comes with certain policy expectations. Lene Hansen (2006: 35) claims “security discourses are thus characterized by a dual political dynamic: they invest those enacting security policies with the legitimate power to undertake decisive and otherwise exceptional actions, but they also construct those actors with a particular responsibility for doing so.” This means we tend to see an obligation for some actor, often the state, to address security issues or “fix” them.

During the past few decades, these conceptions of security have been challenged by scholars wishing to problematize, or contest, state security’s position as the dominant view of security in IR as well as those wishing to include new elements into security discourses such as economics and the environment (Buzan 1991; Barnett 2001). These moves have been discussed as broadening and deepening security studies. In a widely cited discussion of the evolution of security scholarship, scholars Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams (1996: 230) identified the trends of broadening “to include a wider range of potential threats” and deepening to include “moving either down to the level of individual or human security or up to the level of national or global security.” Other voices have called for an opening of the security agenda. Annick Wibben (2008) argues that opening the security agenda entails discussing the meaning(s) of security. This includes questioning why appeals to security remain so powerful in both IR scholarship and policymaking.

These moves toward broadening and deepening security were propelled forward in a meaningful way in the 1990s. When the Cold War ended, there was a radical shift in the way the public and the academy viewed security. The familiar security threat of the Soviet Union was now gone, and it was not immediately clear who or what would replace it. Once traditional notions of security become questioned and perhaps more open to interpretation, room is made for the inclusion of previously neglected additions to security. This is where notions like economic security, human security, and environmental or ecological security come into play. As the perceived threats to state security receded, many security scholars, and the security community in general, began to accept the idea that there might be non-military threats to state security. This implies that, while the target of concern for security scholars may have remained the state, the nature of the threat shifted from being solely military to something else. Several new threats to security were identified as central to the preservation of state security during the early 1990s. Among these were threats associated with environmental damage (environmental security), energy availability (energy security), the lack of sufficient stores of food (food security) and an array of difficulties associated with the global South including the possibility of failed states and transboundary crime (Barnett 2001).

During roughly the same time period, there were calls to move the focus away from the security of states and direct it to people in general. These moves resulted in concepts like human security and environmental security being debated by multiple actors. In particular, the human security narrative was the result of members of the international community using the context of the end of the Cold War to shift the focus away from states as the primary referent of security and bring the focus to individuals. This reflects a deepening of security because it moved the discussion of security down to the level of people. This was important because it served as a direct threat to traditional ideas of security. The relationship between human security and traditional security will be taken up in Chapter 5.

Additionally, fields like critical security studies (CSS), the Copenhagen School, and feminist security studies have emerged as a challenge to traditional security scholarship. Ken Booth (2005: 16), a key CSS scholar, explains the field as “concerned with the pursuit of critical knowledge about security in world politics. Security is conceived comprehensively, embracing theories and practices at multiple levels of society, from the individual to the whole human species.” Three central concepts of CSS are security, community, and emancipation, suggesting a radically different way to understand security in IR. Richard Wyn Jones (1999: 160) argues the main task of CSS scholars is to attempt to undermine the existing hegemonic security approaches. The Copenhagen School, associated most closely with scholars Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, has outlined the process of securitization for society. They explain that securitizing, or presenting something as an existential threat, prompts a strong reaction from the state and often results in “emergency” measures being justified. “The invocation of security has been the key to legitimizing the use of force, but more generally it has opened the way for the state to mobilize, or to take special powers, to handle existential threats” (Buzan et al. 1998: 21). These scholars challenge traditional notions of security by highlighting the discursive power of security and calling attention to how security language has important impacts on the ground. Along with feminist security studies, which will be discussed below, CSS and the Copenhagen School are examples of communities of scholars who challenge mainstream security definitions and policymaking.

Threats and Vulnerabilities

Threat and vulnerability are two terms commonly discussed in connection with both traditional notions of security and expanded versions. P. H. Liotta (2005: 51) explains that a threat is “identifiable, often immediate, and requires an understandable response … A threat, in short, is either clearly visible or commonly acknowledged.” A security threat is often understood to be an entity or phenomenon that under...