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. 

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