This second contribution to our symposium on Governing the Feminist Peace comes from Nicole George at the University of Queensland. Nicole is Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, where she is also Director of Research. Nicole’s research focuses on the gendered politics of conflict and peacebuilding, violence, security and participation. Since the early 2000s, she has conducted research in the Pacific Islands region focusing on gender politics, gendered security and post conflict transition in Fiji, New Caledonia, Bougainville and Solomon Islands.

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In their new book, Governing the Feminist Peace (Columbia University Press, 2024). Paul Kirby and Laura Shepherd draw on the concept of a policy ecology to frame their powerful account of the institutionalisation of the WPS agenda. This approach allows them to tell a story of Women, Peace and Security (WPS) policy evolution that is characterised by competing interests and sites of influence. In addition to their analysis of the form and impact of the 10 UN Security Council resolutions on WPS since 2000, the  policy ecology methodology is deployed by Kirby and Shepherd to explain the proposed inclusions that were subsequently written out of WPS resolutions, the varying ways in which states have localised WPS through National Action Plans and the critique that has responded to WPS policy frames and implementation from within advocacy and academic circles.  

Governing the Feminist Peace, provides a  detailed, and powerful account of the ways that the feminist agenda for peace has been broadened and constrained through institutionalisation at international and national scales of policymaking. Chapter 4 maps the agenda as it is formally articulated in relevant policy documents produced by the UN itself, and within National Action Plan policy. It shows that the policy agenda is dynamic and responsive; one that has evolved, over time, to recognise   LGBTQI issues, the impacts of colonialism, the politics of race, and the standing of men and boys (75). This chapter also demonstrates how the agenda has been expanded to take in new considerations beyond those that were considered in the foundational resolution of 2000, including clauses on climate change, sexual and reproductive rights, the status of refugees and internally displaced peoples, or terrorism and political extremism (77). 

On the other hand, the challenges of institutionalisation are made clear through investigation of what Kirby and Shepherd refer to as  the “hegemonies” and “abolitions” that can also be traced within the WPS policy ecology (217). For example, the mapping exercise in Chapter 4 also shows, that although “new” issues of concern may be mentioned in WPS policy documents in the period from 2000-2020,  these  do not displace or challenge the prominence of references to sexual violence which remain consistent in policy documents throughout the period in question and equal in number to all other “new” issues mentioned in WPS policy documents.  This finding echoes a long-standing feminist critique of the ways the protection agenda has been used to reinforce the trope of gendered vulnerability and victimhood in conflict that concurrently diminishes women’s agency and capacities for leadership (e.g. Reilly 2018).

In later chapters, Kirby and Shepherd further document the lack of recognition given to indigenous knowledges within WPS policy as it has evolved since 2000, despite the fact that Indigenous peace processes are mentioned in the foundational UNSCR 1325.  The authors also contrast the ways in which feminist advocacy promoting disarmament or challenging the militarist underpinnings of defence alliances have become downplayed as NATO itself advances an “active embrace of the WPS agenda” (162). Contradictions also emerge.  For example the authors observe how WPS principles have been mobilised in the manner of “imperial feminism” to justify or legitimise the protection of women in Global South settings while “violence against women in the West is minimised, ignored and/or individualised” (169).  Further, the authors later observe the irony of a situation whereby WPS policy can define  violence against women as a global “security problem” yet also be harnessed to initiatives that reinforce and justify the  gendered “parameters of military expenditure and reasons of state” that have long been lamented by women peace activists (196).

While these arguments are powerful, as the chapters progressed, I also reflected on the ways in which they are resonate with research conducted by other feminist policy ecologists, who have studied the fortunes of gender policy reform in national and international politics.  I am referring here to feminist institutionalist scholarship that, since the early 2000s, has investigated how gender reforms are progressed in policy and the ways in which these reforms are nested within broader institutional contexts that produce their own gender logics (Mackay 2014, 549). In this light, I wondered if the story of hegemony and exclusion that Kirby and Shepherd draw out in their WPS analysis is simply an inevitable reality. 

Feminist institutionalists have shown how existing institutional environments operate to shape actors’ assessments of policy “appropriateness” and the practical implications this has for processes of policy implementation (Mackay 2014, Chappell 2006, 233).  Like Kirby and Shepherd, neo-institutionalists’ frame the policy terrain of political institutions as a “complex ecology” (March and Olsen 1989, 170). This framing opens the way for examining how particular policies (or reforms) interplay with other systems rules, both formal and informal (or practiced) and the consequent acceptability or contestation of a given policy reform that is introduced into that domain.  Feminist Institutionalists have applied a gender lens to this framing to demonstrate how contestation to reform that challenges the gender inequitable status quo emerges.  They have shown that the substance of gender reform policy can, in practice, be made to drift in ways that do not perhaps reflect the original policy intent but which do converge in ways that are consistent with the broader institutional environment (Lowndes and Roberts 2009, see also George 2018 where this concept is applied to WPS analysis).  In other cases they have shown how informal gender discriminatory practices persist even where they are contrary to the provisions of formally institutionalised policy reforms because those practices are assessed by institutional actors to be more appropriate than the newly introduced regulation (Mackay 2014).

The lessons from the policy ecology research that has been undertaken by Kirby and Shepherd point to the challenges of progressing a feminist policy ambition in international and national bureaucratic settings that have, since their inception, been shaped by masculine interests and ambitions, what we might call masculinised logics of appropriateness (Chappell 2006, 233). If we take this idea as our starting point, it is perhaps no surprise that at least four of the 10 WPS follow-up resolutions are explicitly focussed on the prevention of sexual violence. These resolutions are acceptable to the UNSC because this issue both reproduces and reinforces a prevailing logic of (racialised) masculinist protection that is shared by some of the most powerful members of the UN Security Council members. 

On the other hand, the political contention and thwarted progress that has surrounded efforts to advance women’s access to sexual and reproductive health support when they are exposed to this violence, shows where and how these same security council members define the limits of WPS policy appropriateness.  While the work of Jamie Hagan and Toni Haastrup is notable (2021), similar logics might also be invoked to explain the insistence of heteronormative and racialised exclusion in other parts of the WPS ecology, for example within the domains of WPS advocacy and research. 

The story of incremental change that some feminist institutionalists identify as a reason for optimism (Lowndes 2020) is not strongly foregrounded in Kirby and Shepherd’s analysis in Governing the Feminist Peace. Notwithstanding the significance of the authors critique, I wondered if incremental change might be considered in ways that offer a counterpoint to the author’s concluding exhortation to forget WPS ?

I chose to read the final chapter of the book promoting this sentiment to “Forget WPS” as recommendation for caution but not as a reason for wholesale pessimism.  While my own scholarship on the fortunes of WPS policy in the Pacific Islands region has regularly inclined me to despair when I have observed the profound gap between policy and practice in this area (2019; 2024) I have also always been inspired by the organic nature of women’s peace advocacy when conflict occurs within Pacific Island settings and the creative energy and ingenuity my interlocutors bring to this work.  I observed this again at close quarters when I was unexpectedly caught up in the recent unrest that rocked New Caledonia in May last year.  Regardless of French government efforts to impose a rigid security response to the unrest that included curfews, surveillance and intimidation, women around me found ways to connect and to support each other and to advance a dialogue of solidarity and peace that crossed highly politicised lines of division. This reminded me that no matter the confines of policy, women’s creativity insists and issues practical challenges to those that seek to “govern” the feminist peace through hegemony and exclusion. 

 I certainly gained new insights from reading Kirby and Shepherd’s study and was grateful for the detailed efforts made to map and analyse where and how the WPS agendas has been both stretched and constrained in formal UN policy and in WPS National Action Plans.  The fact that the authors themselves frequently note the dynamism of the agenda and the plurality of actors involved in the constitution of the policy ecology gave me hope that the story is not finalised. Perhaps we should not be despondent about contestation within this policy ecology and simply accept its inevitability.  Feminist institutionalists have shown this to be so in all efforts to progress gender policy reform.  Nonetheless incremental change is also possible because the WPS has opened the door to policy domains that might otherwise be closed. Put another way, if nothing else the WPS ecology in all its imperfection, provides us with a platform from which to demand more.  If we “forget WPS” too comprehensively then those advocating restrictive logics of appropriateness are conceded more ground than they deserve. Promoting more  progressive and inclusive revitalisations of WPS tomorrow can only be built from the WPS ground that we hold today. 

References

Chappell, Louise. 2006. “Comparing Political Institutions: Revealing the Gendered “Logic of Appropriateness.”” Politics & Gender 2(2): 223-235.

George, Nicole. 2016. “Institutionalising Women, Peace and Security in the Pacific Islands: Gendering the ‘Architecture of Entitlements’?” International Political Science Review 37(3): 375-389.

George, Nicole. 2019. Gender, security and Australia’s 2018 Pacific Pivot: stalled impetus and shallow roots. Australian Journal of International Affairs, 73(3), 213–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2019.1584155

George, Nicole. 2024. “Our Cry as Women Leaders”: Crisis Response Intervention, Customary Governance, and the Masculinization of Peace in Solomon Islands. Pacific Affairs 97(4): DOI: 10.5509/2024974-art6.

Haastrup, T., & Hagen, J. J. (2021). Racial hierarchies of knowledge production in the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Critical Studies on Security, 9(1), 27–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2021.1904192

Lowndes, Vivien. 2020. “How are political institutions gendered?” Political Studies 68(3): 543–564.

Lowndes, Vivien and Roberts, Mark. 2009. Why Institutions matter: The New Institutionalism in Political Science. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mackay, Fiona. 2014. “Nested Newness, Institutional Innovation, and the Gendered Limits of Change.” Politics & Gender 10(4): 549-571.

March, James G, and Johan P. Olson. 1989. Rediscovering Institutions. London and New York: The Free Press.

Reilly, N. (2018). How Ending Impunity for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Overwhelmed the UN Women, Peace, and Security Agenda: A Discursive Genealogy. Violence Against Women, 24(6), 631-649. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801217716340