Historically, the professional structure of higher education has provided restricted employment, career, and leadership opportunities for women. This is exacerbated where there is an intersection between gender and race, culture, religion, or age. Women continue to be underrepresented in senior leadership positions across a range of disciplines, and this lack of representation of women within the professional structure of higher education itself acts as a barrier for more women reaching senior levels within institutions. More women are needed in higher positions to increase representation and visibility, and to encourage and mentor others to then aspire to follow a similar path. This critical review examines gender equity across the major career benchmarks of the academy in light of the impact of the personal contexts of women, systemic processes, and cultural barriers that hinder career progression. Research-based systemic solutions that work towards improved gender equity for women are discussed. The findings from this critical review highlight the need for global systemic change in higher education to create ethical equities in the employment, career, and leadership opportunities for women.
This article explores how advanced military technologies and data practices reshape and reassert a particular, Western-centric, narrative of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Analysing the dissemination of this narrative through popular culture, with a focus on he 2015 British thriller Eye in the Sky, I explore how the representation of IHL data practices reaffirms a humanitarian narrative of IHL. As a popular culture product – and one that is embraced by senior IHL experts and professionals – Eye in the Sky reflects and participates in the ethical, legal, and political debates about advanced military technologies, and presents mundane data practices as a system of knowledge production through which IHL exercises its jurisdiction over facts, people, time, and space. In particular, the article analyses how Eye in the Sky’s representations of IHL’s data practices strengthen and reinforce a particular IHL narrative, which is consistent with Western countries’ narrative about their existing bureaucracies of killing. Based on Interdisciplinary analysis of socio-legal studies (SLS), Science and Technology Studies (STS), and culture and media literature, this article answers the following three questions: (i) who is given the power to speak IHL (and who is not)? (ii) to whom is IHL speaking? and (iii) how do data practices shape IHL’s jurisdiction? The article concludes that Eye in the Sky speaks international law through the voices of drone-owning nations, and is directed to their mass publics, legitimising data-centred violence. At the same time, it disguises normative choices as inevitable, and erases African decision-makers, communities, and perspectives.
On August 29, 2021, the U.S. military launched its last drone strike in Afghanistan before American troops withdrew from the country. 1 The strike targeted a white Toyota Corolla near Kabul's international airport, driven by Zemari Ahmadi, believed to be carrying an ISIS bomb. As a result of the strike, the targeted vehicle was destroyed and ten people were killed. The U.S. military called it a "righteous strike," explaining that it was necessary to prevent an imminent threat to American troops at Kabul's airport. 2 However, following the findings of a New York Times investigation, 3 a high-level U.S. Air Force investigation found that the targeted vehicle did not pose any danger and that all ten casualties were civilians, seven of them children. Despite these outcomes, the investigation concluded that the strike did not violate any law, because it was a "tragic mistake" resulting from "inaccurate" interpretation of the available intelligence. 4 The investigation suggested that the wrong-and lethal-interpretation of the intelligence-which included eight hours of drone visuals-resulted from "execution errors" combined with "confirmation bias."Using cognitive insights, such as confirmation bias, to explain-and excuse-military errors resulting in civilian casualties, is a step forward, but not necessarily in the right direction. It is a step forward in the sense that it recognizes significant cognitive dynamics that limit crucial military risk assessment and fact-finding processes. But this step will not lead to better outcomes without a deeper understanding of how existing data practices-including real-time drone visuals-are susceptible to, and affected by, cognitive biases. Stronger, more effective, protections to civilians in armed conflicts require acknowledging the core role drone visuals play in generating knowledge that is often perceived as objective-despite being distorted by technical, socio-technical, and cognitive dynamics.In this presentation I aim to add these technological and behavioral elements in military knowledge production to the important discussions on compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL). Before delving into the substantive issues, it is important to clarify what I mean by "compliance." Compliance is often invoked in the context of armed conflict as a technical-legalistic term * Professor of Law, Deakin Law School; Chair, Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict, American Society og International Law (ASIL); Co-Lead, Law and Policy Theme, Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC); Affiliate Scholar, Stanford Center on International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). An earlier, pre-presentation draft of this contribution was published as Shiri Krebs, Through the Drone Looking Glass: Visualisation Technologies and Military Decision-Making, ARTICLES OF WAR (Feb. 11, 2022), at https://lieber.westpoint.edu/visualization-technologiesmilitary-decision-making.
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