Women and Security

I shall speak here not as a feminist but from my own experience of working on security policy as a woman, and discussing it with other women. I should tell you at once that during such discussions, we have always been quick to agree that we need men as well!

- As long as women have to protect children before and after birth they will have a biological reason to dislike violence. (Israel proved the rule by taking children into Kibbutz foster-groups to free their mothers for military service.) As long as they have less power than men and carry arms less often they will be more likely to figure as victims of international and civil wars than as protagonists. And even the latest politically correct research suggests womenís brains may be wired in ways that make them less likely to seek or enjoy conflictual situations: Gestalt instead of linear thinking, lateral thinking to escape either-or choices, preference for non-zero sum solutions, reliance on verbal more than physical communication, "emotional intelligence" and so on.

- Nevertheless, we have to recognise that the pro-peace orientation shown by opinion polls among women of almost every nation is to some extent precisely a result of their political outsider status: they are against the use of violence by the establishment partly because they are also against, or at least not complicit with, the establishment itself. Once women get power they may behave belligerently because they imitate male behaviour, or because of their own strong combative personalities which were necessary to fight their way to the top. (One thinks of Margaret Thatcher or Golda Meir.) Also powerless women can display what one might call the vices of weakness: jealousy, possessiveness, intolerance, blind belief or insensate conservatism. (We recall women in the Balkans blocking and stoning humanitarian convoys; the women who must be feeding/covering up for violent guerrilla groups; women in the crowds stoning schoolgirls in Belfast etc.)

- There is therefore no simple equation which says: Political and social advance in the world, by further liberating women, will automatically create more peace. But turning it on its head we can say that without peace, modernization and globalisation cannot proceed in a balanced and benign way, and our chances of easing womenís suffering and remaining frustrations will be much weaker, above all in the so-called sick societies and the less developed world.

- Let me then offer some more detailed ideas on where women could fit in to the picture as part of conflict analysis, as part of conflict solution and as a resource in system-building for benign global governance.

- Conflict analysis: we should pay more attention to violation of womenís rights as a diagnostic for instability and propensity to conflict; extreme suppression may also be an early warning sign for terrorism because of the negation of maternal authority. Womenís role in situations of ethnic mixing and/or tension may betray the underlying prejudices, eg if wives in mixed marriages are regularly from the "weaker" race. Gender symptoms may betray a "sick economy" eg child and slave labour, prostitution, or trafficking in women which in turn can cripple healthy population growth. On the other side, uncontrolled population growth and lack of contraception often adds to poverty, competition for resources and hence to instability.

- Conflict solutions, if truly multi-dimensional, must (a) address and correct the kind of phenomena listed above which lock women into abused and/or abusive roles, and (b) mobilise womenís potential for building a better society and polity eg through improved education both for women and their children; greater use of women in the productive economy (experience shows the value of channelling reconstruction aid and rewards for surrendering weapons into their hands); and careful attention to gender rights when re-writing constitutions and rebuilding institutions. (NB that the rapid introduction of market economy and global economic forces alone, without legislative and cultural safeguards, may actually weaken womenís role at least in the short run.)

- What positive contributions could women bring to the handling of security dimensions in a specifically global environment? At analytical/research level, they should have a natural understanding of the comprehensive and multi-dimensional concept of security: women easily understand the impact of environmental, health, law and order etc factors and should easily accept the notion of global regulation as a solution. We could exploit their natural openness to non-zero-sum solutions, solutions which change the status quo, and integrative approaches which produce a sum greater than parts.

- In terms of personal skills, women often have the non-threatening qualities, empathy and flexibility to make good mediators and to succeed in multilateral negotiation. They have special motivation to campaign against abuses specific to women, although there has been a curious lack of women-fronted campaigns in the arms control field after Princess Diana and landmines. The growth of the equivalent of "flat hierarchies" and "knowledge based networks" in national and international diplomacy should both ease and demand womenís greater involvement.

ñ It is still open to debate whether the future will bring more women into the armed services: Yes because of the drop in male population, switch to professional/volunteer approach, and greater dependence on technology/brain than brawn: or No because the emphasis is likely to swing more to flexible, front-line intervention forces and hands-on human skills. We need to define womenís specific "added value" in crisis management interventions: which is tricky because of the importance of the local cultural environment but could at least include international staff duties, public affairs, civil-military cooperation, interpretation and intelligence. NB also the problem of the almost complete absence of women from the defence industry.

- We should and can also strengthen womenís role in "security governance", ie their representation in institutions which determine both agenda and policy at national and regional level, and which (until something better is found) will have to tackle the challenge of global security regulation as well. Token appointments or quotas are no good in this field of literally life-and-death responsibility. We have to start with young womenís career choices and give them adequate experience in national roles, before we can realistically get women into top UN peacekeeping, NATO or CESDP jobs. We should not underestimate meanwhile the importance of the "soft underbelly", where women have already found it easier to penetrate: eg jobs in the Council of Europe, OSCE, regional cooperation and arms control/export control groupings, and UN agencies relevant to human aspects of security (we have already had women heads of UNHCR, WHO).

- Last but not least, there is an important role for womenís networks (especially international) in ensuring that womenís increasing political power does not lead to competition and fresh antagonisms among nations, age groups or religions. But for this, we need to extend the process much more actively to the Islamic and developing world.