Today, the international community has at its disposal an underutilized tool to address the multidimensional problem of violent extremism: UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) on Women, Peace and Security. October 2015 marked the fifteenth anniversary of the adoption of the resolution, and the first time that the Security Council recognized that gender equality is a critical component of maintaining international peace and security. It is now widely recognized that conflict and peacebuilding are highly gendered activities, and that women and men experience violence and security differently.
Recognizing that the roles of women vary greatly from perpetrators or victims of violence, to their role as peacebuilders and political actors, is an important first step by security actors to take into account women’s different experiences and perspectives in international security and peace decision-making.
However, basing preventative approaches to violent extremism on a narrow understanding of what it means to be male or female—e.g. solely focusing on the roles of women or men—not only limits policy options but perpetuates two strategic blindspots: essentializing women and securitizing women’s roles in CVE. Both essentializing and securitizing prevents a diverse examination of how both men and women are affected by and influence the promotion and the prevention of extremist violence in of CVE policies and programs.
This is because a narrow focus on the roles of women and men excludes an examination of the context-specific, socially and culturally relevant opportunities and constraints that both men and women experience. As such, an exclusive focus on men and women’s roles obscures the entry points available to understand and counter violent extremism more effectively.
UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security can help shed light on these blindspots in CVE because it requires both the participation of women and a gender perspective in policies and programs related to international security and peace. As such, the resolution offers analytical tools to help CVE practitioners analyze the complex issue of violent extremism, namely the use of a gender perspective. A gender perspective helps to reveal solutions and courses of action that would otherwise be overlooked in highly localized, context-specific, socially and culturally sensitive conflicts.
Essentializing Women
More often than not, the consideration of women’s equal participation in addressing security matters such as violent extremism remain focused on identifying the range of women’s roles in CVE, such as mother, wife, or daughter. This can lead to essentializing women as a monolithic group.
Essentializing women means treating women as a homogenous group, and thus leads to a “one-size-fits-all” approach to increasing women’s participation in peace and security matters. Understood in the context of security, examples of essentializing women include assuming that all women are mothers or that all women are, by nature, more peaceful than men and therefore are more docile, submissive, and less interested in participating in political violence.
It is certainly true that mothers have historically played influential roles in peacebuilding. Some better known examples of this are from the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and the Mothers’ Fronts in Sri Lanka. Both groups used their identity as mothers to successfully shame their respective national governments into action to address human rights violations. But, assuming that all women share the same experiences as mothers, or assuming that all women have the same power to act within their private or public lives is not only incorrect, but a critically flawed assumption that carries negative impacts.
For example, Mia Bloom explains the conundrum of the role of women as mothers in countering violent extremism: “Much of the discussion about women and countering violent extremism has focused on their roles as mothers. Mothers are thought to be either the source of radicalization, or entry points for de-radicalization… In several cases, including Maryam Fahat to Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, mothers are the source of radical views and perpetuate the notion that the task of women in the jihad is to raise their sons to carry on their father’s tradition. On the opposite side of the spectrum…mothers […] are seen as critical agents in prevention efforts. A leading Salafi police officer from the UK, confided in me that in crisis situations, the police try to get the perpetrator’s mother on the phone especially in hostage situations, “because only the mother has an effect.”[1]
The fact that mothers play a role in both promoting and preventing violent extremism leads to obscure conclusions, and raises additional questions. How can mothers be both peaceful and violent? If they are both, where do they “fit” into the spectrum of CVE approaches? And how can the negative aspects of mothers’ influence be mitigated while empowering mothers to be positive forces for peace? These are some of the perplexing but key questions that a CVE practitioner and policy maker faces when essentializing women.
Securitizing Women
In addition to essentializing the role of women and men, securitizing women’s roles is equally problematic. Securitizing women’s roles means consulting with women’s organizations and activists on military or security matters without considering the possible negative consequences to women and women’s organizations.
For example, inviting women to one-off meetings with military or other security actors for consultations on social justice issues without considering the safety of those women can make them easy targets of extremist groups and/or corrupt state actors who are interested in undermining accountability and transparency of the State’s treatment of its citizens. By trying to include women in CVE in this way, both international and domestic security actors miss opportunities for effective and human-rights based approaches to CVE.
In contrast, security actors might consider providing protection mechanisms for women’s human rights defenders working in conflict zones. These women human rights defenders may or may not be mothers, but they are most likely challenging human rights violations by extremists and by State actors. Or, security actors may consider supporting women-headed households (instead of “mothers”) who are survivors of extremist violence by offering access to justice and legal counseling, psycho-social support and opportunities for economic empowerment.
Utilizing a gender perspective to take a step beyond identifying women and men’s roles can help reveal context-specific, socially and culturally relevant responses and solutions to violent extremism. This is because it focuses on understanding the different experiences, needs, and priorities of women, men, girls, and boys regarding their security and their life during and after conflict. Understanding the different security needs of different individuals can help prioritize the safety of individuals and communities from extremist violence, acts of terror, and from the unintended negative effects of counter-terror measures.
Removing the Blindspots: Using a Gender Perspective in CVE
Terrorism and extremist violence are highly gendered activities that typically exploit rigid stereotypes of both masculinity and femininity. It is therefore crucial to use a gender perspective to understand social constructions and misconceptions that can influence the spread of extremist violence.
In addition, using a gender perspective can improve the effectiveness of policies and programs. For example, peace-building, peacekeeping and international development policies and programs that incorporate a gender perspective and increase women’s participation have a track record of increased effectiveness. For example, studies show that women’s participation in peace negotiations increases the probability of violent conflict ceasing by 24%.[2] Similarly, evidence from peacekeeping and peace support operations shows that the integration of a gender perspective and the inclusion of women has a significant, positive impact on increasing the effectiveness of the operation.
Furthermore, international organizations, from NATO, and the UN to coalitions of sovereign states engaging in stabilization operations, note that information gathering and analysis improved when the differential impact of armed conflict on women and men is taken into account. [3] Attention to diverse experiences of both men and women in conflicts reveals comprehensive information on the area of operation. This allows actors to construct a more nuanced understanding of local socio-political dynamics, including the identities of local power brokers, division of labor, access to resources, kinship and patronage networks, community security threats, risks, interests and needs. As such, analysis of the impact of an operation on the local population—men and women, boys and girls—can increase the capacity of the mission to effectively accomplish its goals.
Paying Attention to Hyper-masculinities
Interestingly, the practices of essentializing and securitizing women’s roles can essentialize men and boys’ experiences of violent extremism. The counterpoint to a submissive and docile private life led by women is the assumption that men and boys are the key targets of violent extremists, and the key aggressors. This interpretation of social relations also assumes that men and boys are not natural allies of peace-building and that their masculinity—or their behavior as “real men”—is defined by the use of violence.
For example, in many conflicts, men and boys are routinely the primary targets of violence and the focus group for recruitment into fighting forces. In the case of ISIL, the organization targets their recruitment of young men by essentializing women and encouraging the idea that men are manly only if they have many wives and many Jihadi children.[4] Reducing women’s roles to their reproductive capabilities for both men and women reinforces the rigid gender norm of women as only child bearers, with no other identity or agency, and men as inherently violent. Reinforcing rigid gender norms in this way can reinforce hyper-masculinity. Hyper-masculinities are emphasized when men’s position of power over women is considered a natural right, and the use of violence by men is reinforced as a defining trait of manhood.
What might boys’ experiences in conflict zones reveal that would be of relevance to countering violent extremism? A 2015 study by USAID and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, Crisis In Syria: Now is the Time To Seek Male Allies for Leadership Equality, found that boys in conflict zones are particularly vulnerable to glamorizing and adopting hyper-masculine behavior in the form of violence, even on the playground.
The study found that while men and women could not agree definitively on how to empower women as political leaders to counter violent extremism, they all agreed that special attention to young boys was especially important in this conflict situation.[5] The study interviewed schoolteachers and parents focusing on the visible shift in young boys’ psyches at a school in a refugee camp. The report states, “War games and physical fights have replaced football and laughter. A father said it plainly: “there is a revolution inside of young boys.” He went on to describe his attempts not to deny his son to join the fight, but to distract him with delaying tactics. Several mothers expressed this same concern, too. One mother said that boys now want to run back to Syria and fight the Russians given the recent air strikes. Parents and community leaders struggle to support their spirits while protecting their futures.”[6]
Women’s civil society groups around the world have noticed similar trends of the rise of hyper-masculinity in their families and communities. In response they have established innovative programs to address counter radicalization by countering the ideology of hyper-masculinity in several ways. For example, in Pakistan, the PAIMAN Alumni Trust works with Talib youth and their mothers to address psychosocial and economic needs, and to provide an alternative narrative and moderate interpretations of Islam. Globally, Mother Schools, created by the Sisters Against Violent Extremist Network (SAVE) work with mothers to help them identify early warning signs of radicalization, and empower them to counter recruitment efforts. Founder, Edit Schafer notes, “Hyper-masculinity is an attraction behind violent extremism and not only for the male foot soldiers but, increasingly, for young women who are caught in fantasies of romantic engagement and even direct participation.”[7] The connection between exploiting masculine identity and violent extremist recruiting tactics is a gender-blind spot for CVE that requires further examination. UNSCR 1325 can help fill this gap.
Conclusion
To be sure, a gender perspective will not remedy all strategic blindspots in CVE. The CVE practitioner and policymaker are often confronted with a blur of challenges in addressing extremist violence that go beyond addressing gender inequality.
However, security stakeholders should reconsider restricting the examination of gender identities to the roles of women. They would benefit from the use of more analytic tools to help them develop effective, people-centered solutions. Promoting an increased understanding of the roles of men and women, boys and girls, and the inequalities that they each experience on a daily basis, illuminates the opportunities and constraints that might be available to us to transform society. These opportunities and constraints might otherwise be missed without a gender perspective.
Fortunately, UNSCR 1325 requires both the participation of women and a gender perspective in policies and programs related to international security and peace. It allows security actors to ask more questions about how identity—masculinity and femininity—can be used to promote radicalization, and how identity can be used to promote peace. In short, it is possible to avoid strategic blindness in some measure: implement the tenets of UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.
Author:
Sahana Dharmapuri is an independent gender advisor with fifteen years of experience providing policy advice and training on gender, peace, and security issues to USAID, NATO, The Swedish Armed Forces, the United States Institute for Peace, International Peace Institute, development consulting firms, and a number of NGOs. She has lectured and led trainings on gender and security issues at a wide variety of institutions including, The Swedish Armed Forces International Training Center for work in Peace Support Operations in Stockholm, USAID Missions, Harvard University, Tufts University, the United States Institute for Peace, the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, and at three of the major U.S. combat and command centers.
Her field experience includes Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Jordan, Israel and the West Bank, India, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. She received a Masters Degree in Middle East Studies and a Masters Degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1997, and her BA from The University of Chicago in Anthropology in 1992. She has published book chapters, articles, and monographs on women, peace and security issues.
Endnotes:
[1] “Charting A New Course: Women Preventing Violent Extremism, Thought for Action Kit.” United States Institute for Peace, 2015, pp. 20. Accessed on November 13, 2015, http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/files/Women-Preventing-Violent-Extremism-Charting-New-Course.pdf.
[2] Laurel Stone, “Can Women Make the World More Peaceful?” The Guardian, August 11, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2014/aug/11/women-conflict-peace-society. Accessed October 13, 2015.
[3] See for example, Olsson, Louise and Johan Tejpar (eds). 2009. “Operational Effectiveness and UN Resolution 1325: Practices and Lessons from Afghanistan.” Swedish Defense Research Agency. pgs. 115- 128, www.foi.se/ReportFiles/foir_2760.pdf. and United Nations. “Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Operations.” UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Lessons Learned Unit, New York, July 2000, http://www.peacewomen.org/assets/file/Resources/UN/dpko_mainstreaminggenderperspective_2000.pdf. The UN DPKO study examined five multi-dimensional operations, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, El Salvador, and South Africa.
[4] Bloom, Mia. 2015. “When Women are the Problem.” in “Charting A New Course: Women Preventing Violent Extremism, Thought for Action Kit.” United States Institute for Peace. pp. 20, http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/files/Women-Preventing-Violent-Extremism-Charting-New-Course.pdf
[5] Huber, Jessica. 2015. “Crisis in Syria: Now Is the Time to Seek Male Allies for Leadership Equality.” International Foundation for Electoral Systems and USAID, http://www.ifes.org/sites/default/files/ifes_2015_crisis_in_syria_now_is_the_time_to_seek_male_allies_for_leadership_equality.pdf. This report is based on field study focus groups with Syrian women and men on promoting male allies for women’s equality.
[6] Huber, Jessica. 2015. “Crisis in Syria: Now Is the Time to Seek Male Allies for Leadership Equality.” International Foundation for Electoral Systems and USAID. pp. 10.
[7] “Charting A New Course: Women Preventing Violent Extremism, Thought for Action Kit.” United States Institute for Peace, 2015, http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/files/Women-Preventing-Violent-Extremism-Charting-New-Course.pdf