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Representation for representation’s sake

Sangeetha Navaratnam-Blair- Policy, Advocacy and Communications Manager (GAPS)

In 2024, around 1.5 billion people in over 60 countries will be voting in significant elections. Much of the world’s population will be looking on cautiously at the US election – an election that impacts so many people beyond the borders of the US and one which offers the potential of the first woman of colour US President, specifically one with Jamaican and Indian heritage. With this, discussions on representation naturally arise. This is also a hot topic in the world of Women, Peace and Security (WPS), with the ‘1 for 8 Billion’ campaign group calling for the next Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) to be a woman.

Women’s participation is a core pillar of the WPS agenda. The specific language of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 states the need for ‘increased participation of women at all levels of decision-making, including in national, regional and international institutions’ and specifies, among other areas, the need for women’s participation ‘in peace operations, as soldiers, police, and civilians’. This is a call for the representation of women in high-level positions, in all countries and international bodies, as well as in specific state institutions throughout society. Participation in this framework aims to contribute to and intertwine with the other pillars of Resolution 1325 of prevention, protection, and relief and recovery. 

However, we must question how this has been implemented. Is there a focus on representation for representation’s sake? As a sector we must ask ourselves what the purpose of representation is and whether it always offers a radical shift in power dynamics and a push towards gender equality. Women deserve to be at the table – we make up half of the population – but does the mere presence of a woman at the table result in more peaceful policies and outcomes? Are women inherently more peaceful? 

Women participating in processes that impact them 

GAPS recognises the greater sustainability of peace agreements and improved community cohesion that results from women’s participation, but we also emphasise the need to view this as a secondary, ‘bonus’ outcome to the goal of truly meaningful participation: women deserve to be part of peacebuilding as part of the realisation of their rights. This not only needs to happen with women at high-level elected political positions, but also women working on peace and development in their own communities. 

As discussed in GAPS’s Pillars for Peace,…it is important not to further this instrumentalist approach to gender and call for women’s participation for its own sake. Women should be consulted, be recognised, make decisions about and participate in processes that they have a stake in and which impacts upon them. As a result of gendered societal norms, women are often responsible for people throughout the whole community, in particular those who are most vulnerable to the impacts of conflict. Therefore they hold specialised knowledge and are specifically well placed to provide this expertise to the peacebuilding space.  

In addition to the contextual insights that these women carry, there is also an underappreciated wider expertise on conflict and peacebuilding that must be recognised and utilised by those working on conflict prevention and reconstruction programming. These women are, however, ignored and dismissed by decision makers, and when they are consulted, their insights are not escalated up to high-level decision making. Of the 18 peace agreements reached in 2022, only one was signed or witnessed by a local women’s rights organisation – this was reflected in the two-thirds of the agreements that did not include any provisions related to women, girls or gender.

The number of women participating in UN-led peace processes is very low and decreasing year on year. Though equal participation is a key aspect of gender equality and gender inequality is a driver of conflict, efforts to redress this are seen as a low priority by power brokers when it comes to responding to war. 

Tick box exercise 

All of this endorses the need for a pillar on women’s participation, and in particular reiterates the need for the voices and participation of the women most impacted by conflict, in all their diversities. However, for many in the WPS sector and the international community at large, this ends up as a tick box exercise – with simply having a woman at the table the ultimate end goal. The objective of ‘gender mainstreaming’ has become popular in international institutions such as the UN, through their application processes and reporting systems. This has often allowed decision makers to be content that they are addressing the topics of gender without being gender transformative. 

True gender transformation is crucial to reshape the existing power dynamics and structures that cause gender inequality and other intersecting forms of oppression and violence. But to achieve so-called ‘gender mainstreaming’, decision makers seek the views of elite women who have various intersecting privileges such as living in a capital city, being white, able-bodied, straight, married and middle-aged, who already hold positions of power and access to high-level spaces. These women are often from established organisations, with politics aligned with the status quo.  

Readers may be aware of the ‘woman drone pilot’ comic by Sam Wallman, which portrays the incongruence of celebrating the ascension of women into positions of power where they order and implement violent and militaristic policies. There are important critiques of this specific piece and its prevalence on social media, but it does illustrate the limitations of women’s representation. Specifically, it asks the audience: is a woman in charge an inherently progressive move if that woman is going to enact the same violence and conflict that her male predecessors have? 

We must ask ourselves this same question when it comes to calling for improved women’s participation in the WPS space, in peacebuilding, conflict resolution and more – indeed in all foreign and defence policy of global superpowers and donor states. We cannot simply ask for ‘representation’ in positions of leadership and in event panels and deem that a success. Women are just as capable of causing harm and furthering conflict as men are, just as men are subject to harms enacted against them in conflict.  

Women who do achieve positions of power at times even defend patriarchal positions and push regressive policies, such as anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Complex dynamics within populations of women can mean that those who are chosen or able to reach high positions recreate unequal power structures. This pattern is sometimes seen in instances of people from minoritised groups who have reached senior positions in politics, potentially due to their acceptance of the status quo and alignment with regressive government policies, specifically because they are not champions of progressive politics.

A woman in charge vs. meaningful participation 

Herein lies the damage of representation for representation’s sake and of tokenising women: progress is not achieved automatically when a woman is in charge. As succinctly, and repeatedly, stated in a speech by Professor Dr Ruha Benjamin to students at Spelman College earlier this year: “Black faces in high spaces are not going to save us.” While her words have a specific intention with her specific audience (Dr Ruha Benjamin’s speech was delivered during Spelman College’s Founder Day Convocation 2024, to students and faculty at Spelman College which is a historically Black, women’s college in the USA) we can translate this into our context and say that women in high spaces will not inherently save all women.  

What are we striving for by promoting the WPS agenda? The answer may be: a more peaceful and equal world where conflict is less prevalent, women do not face a disproportionate impact from conflict, and gender is not a barrier to full and meaningful participation. Therefore, the decision makers within WPS need to push for policies that facilitate these outcomes, for all women – especially those who are marginalised and disproportionately impacted by conflict. We must strive for a positive impact that truly advances women’s perspectives in peacebuilding. Sometimes this is through meaningful participation, but it is not a panacea.  

The WPS sector must have additional policy asks alongside calls for more women in decision-making spaces. All leaders, regardless of gender, must push for action on gender inequality and injustice and must not replicate existing power structures that lead to conflict or gender inequality. 

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