Barriers to the Engagement of Women in UN Peace Operations

Women’s meaningful participation in peace operations is critical to building sustainable peace. Yet, women continue to be marginalised, especially in senior roles, because of organisational, practical, work culture, and gender normative barriers.

Today’s peace operations have their origin in the early peacekeeping missions of the United Nations (UN) after World War II. They are intended to keep the peace in the immediate aftermath of armed conflict, often after a peace agreement and typically with the consent of the host country. Today, many organisations beyond the UN are engaged in peace operations (notably the African Union (AU), North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), European Union (EU), and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)). Peace operations also now involve civilian staff members, police, and corrections officers, and not just military personnel.

The UN Department of Peace Operations still has the largest peace operations globally (11 operations across the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Africa) and deploys the most personnel (over 76,000 peacekeepers from over 120 countries). Among these, the vast majority are uniformed personnel (over 62,000), of which almost 54,000 are military troops and just over 6,000 are police (just under 9,000 are civilian personnel and UN Volunteers).

Women’s Participation in UN Peace Operations

In UN peace operations, women are significantly underrepresented, especially among uniformed personnel and particularly troops where women comprise 7.4 percent (as of February 2024). There have been some recent advancements with the proportion of women amoung troops doubling over the last six years (from 3.7 percent in February 2018). This is most likely due to concerted efforts by the UN and key stakeholders, including through the UN’s Uniformed Gender Parity Strategy (2018-2028) and the Government of Canada’s Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace Operations. Nonetheless, representation remains very low.

Barriers to Women’s Participation

A significant factor in the underrepresentation of women in peace operations is their underrepresentation in the security sector institutions of Troop and Police Contributing Countries (T/PCCs). Reasons vary between countries but are often related to cultural norms and gender normative assumptions around who has the requisite knowledge, skills, and capabilities to work in security sector institutions, especially in combat roles in the military or frontline public order roles in the police (it is these capabilities that largely comprise peace operations).

Other barriers to women’s participation include gender bias in T/PCC security sector institutions, which results in deployment opportunities or information about them being restricted to male personnel. Gender bias and gender-based discrimination, harassment, and violence can also lead to uniformed women choosing not to be deployed or self-demobilising from security sector institutions.

A key—but often overlooked—barrier to the underrepresentation of women in peace operations is the lack of policies, structures, and processes to enable the recruitment, retention, promotion, training, and deployment of personnel with families or other caring responsibilities. Because care work is seen as a private matter, security sector institutions and UN peace operations do little to support the needs of people with caring responsibilities. For women, given the highly gendered nature of care work, this often leads to not deploying on peace operations and even their departure from security sector institutions. Men and people of diverse gender identities also suffer, but often in different ways, when organisations and missions are inattentive to the needs of personnel with caring responsibilities.

Women with children and other caring responsibilities are also marginalised from security sector institutions and deployments on peace operations because of workplace cultures and gender normative assumptions about motherhood, care, and security work. For example, there is a persisting assumption that women with children have less capacity and will not prioritise operational requirements.

Other barriers to participation in peace operations have been identified in the Measuring Opportunities for Women in Peace Operations (MOWIP) Methodology, developed by the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF), Cornell University, and others, with the support of Canada’s Elsie Initiative. These include deployment criteria and selection, accommodation, and infrastructure on peace operations that may not be designed to meet women’s needs, and potentially negative experiences on peace operations that can influence women’s decisions to deploy. The latter may include sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Women’s Participation as Critical to Successful Peace Operations

Women’s underrepresentation persists despite an increasing awareness of the importance of women’s meaningful participation in peace operations. This is underpinned by the UN Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, comprised of 10 UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs), beginning with UNSCR 1325 (2000). These resolutions recognise that women’s “equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security,” including in decision-making roles, can “significantly contribute to the maintenance and promotion of international peace and security.” Likewise, feminist International Relations scholarship has demonstrated that women’s meaningful participation in peace operations is critical to building sustainable peace.

Aside from reasons of equity, women’s meaningful participation is important for several reasons. Firstly, peace operations that are representative of the diverse communities they operate in are more likely to enjoy public confidence and trust. This is critical for operational success.

Secondly, the meaningful participation of women in peace operations can also better ensure the specific experiences and needs of women in conflict-affected environments are known and attended to: more inclusive operations are more likely to be responsive to a diversity of needs and, therefore, more likely to be successful.

Thirdly, women’s participation diversifies the skills, knowledges, networks, and capabilities that operations can draw from to improve operational effectiveness.

Finally, women’s participation can help advance gender equality. This is important not least because of evidence that suggests gender equality and peace are mutually supportive. Where peace operations are male dominated, it becomes harder to advocate for gender equality in places affected by conflict without the credibility of the mission suffering.

UNSCR 2538 (2020)–the first resolution in the WPS agenda to focus exclusively on women peacekeepers–also recognises “the indispensable role of women in increasing the overall performance and effectiveness of peacekeeping operations.” At a time when there is growing concern about escalating conflict deaths and conflict recurrence rates, it is imperative that the effectiveness of peace operations is improved. One clear way to do this is to address the barriers to the participation of women.

Dr Eleanor Gordon is Interim Director of the Monash Global Peace and Security centre (Monash GPS) at Monash University. She has 25 years of experience working and conducting research on inclusive ways to build security and justice after armed conflict, including over 10 years in UN peace operations in managerial and advisory roles.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.