Gender and the EU's Support for Security Sector Reform in Fragile Contexts

Abstract

How does the European Union (EU) include ‘gender’ within its support to security sector reform (SSR) programmes? The EU has committed to include gender perspectives by implementing the Women, Peace and Security agenda (WPS) within its foreign security practices. While researchers and practitioners recognise the importance of integrating gender issues into SSR operational effectiveness, there is limited knowledge about how this functions within the EU's security architecture. This article uses Feminist Institutionalism (FI) to understand the process of gender mainstreaming within the EU's support to SSR programmes. It does this by using two crucial theory‐testing cases of SSR programmes – Ukraine and Afghanistan. It finds that the EU's ability to promote gender inclusive approaches to SSR is limited by the structure of the EU's own assumptions and capabilities, and institutional constraints in third countries. At the same time, the cases underscore the importance of individuals as agents of change.

Imagining the European Union: Gender and Digital Diplomacy in European External Relations

“…A number of reasons can be identified for this dissonance between rhetoric and practice, including the complexity of institutional structures and lack of clarity about institutional competence (Ansorg and Haastrup, 2018). It can also be attributed to the absence of an effective feminist 'velvet' triangle to work as an external and internal coalition, composed of bureaucrats, civil society and epistemic communities, to push for the inclusion of gender in policy (Guerrina et al, 2018a;Guerrina and Wright, 2016;Woodward, 2004Woodward, , 2015.…”

EU and gender-security sector reform in Ukraine and Mali: a picture is worth dozens of policies!

“…Among the normative criteria, gender equality is an important element the EU claims needs to be achieved in Ukrainian security institutions. The prevalence of huge gender imbalances and inequalities in Ukrainian security institutions seems to represent a good case for addressing normative-gender issues via the EUAM (Ansorg and Haastrup 2018, p. 1135, Horst and Schevchuk 2019. Interestingly, the recent rising proportion of women in civilian security institution is credited not to gender equality measures, but to men's reluctance to perform the poorly paid jobs in the security sector.…”

“…In spite of the constraints already mentioned, to operationalise its normative commitment to gender equality and gender mainstreaming in third countries, EU missions use several strategies, such as "gender balancing" (promotion of equal participation of men and women in security institutions), "gender inclusion" (via creating oversight bodies with equal gender representation) and "gender mainstreaming" (assessing the gendered impact of all SSR measures) (Ansorg and Haastrup 2018, p. 6). However, these efforts have not resulted in the expected impacts overall (Ansorg and Haastrup 2018), in part because of the widespread tendency to equate "gender" with "women" (Kunz 2014, p. 604) and a lack of a strategic approach to gender mainstreaming (Olsson et al 2014). There are also practical resource constraints (Martinelli 2015, p. 2), insufficient support from Brussels and mission leaderships, and the problem of the EU's diminishing reputation as a normative actor, given their prioritisation of strictly technical approaches to security overall (Jayasundara-Smits 2016, p. 1).…”

Co-operation, Contestation and Complexity in Post-Conflict Security Sector Reform

“…They usually include helping the central state achieve a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, democratic oversight over the security sector, the protection of human rights, and transparent and accountable processes. In practice, internationally-led SSR programmes oftentimes side-line the normative agenda in favour of expediency, cost and clarity: oversight bodiesand broader efforts to promote governance, accountability and transparencyoften receive less attention and less resources than the core security sector institutions they are to hold accountable (Jackson 2018;Sedra 2018); human rights and gender equality are often reduced to a day's awareness training or a footnote in a report (Ansorg and Haastrup 2018). The statecentred focus of SSR as contained in these core texts does, however, continues to inform practice.…”