Gender Responsive Leadership in Peacekeeping

Sep 14, 2022 | UNSW Canberra
Online
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Join Jennifer Wittwer as she explores how peacekeeping remains predominantly a masculine privilege and how we can make meaningful change.

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Despite two decades of the United Nations (UN) Women, Peace and Security agenda and countless international instruments requiring an increase in women’s participation and the inclusion of a gender perspective in peace and security efforts, peacekeeping remains predominantly a masculine privilege. As of December 2021, women made up only 7.8 percent of all uniformed military, police, and justice and corrections personnel in missions; reports of sexual exploitation and abuse perpetrated by peacekeepers remain prevalent; and many peacekeepers themselves report facing sexual harassment and discrimination within the UN system.

Within peacekeeping itself, gender-responsive leadership is integral to bringing about the transformational change that’s needed to respond to and mitigate the gendered inequalities that shape peacekeeping outcomes and the patriarchal power hierarchies that lead to gender-based violence against women, one of the critical factors underpinning gender inequality. A gender-responsive leader, attuned to these inequalities, actively works towards equality for all women, men, and other genders in the workplace and in operations.

Gender-responsive leadership is about more than ‘just add women and stir’, or ‘saving women’; along with an intersectional approach, it's an opportunity to address the structural conditions and systemic issues that lead to, and compound, discrimination and inequality. Gender-responsive leadership is thus essential to the UN’s efforts to promote gender equality in UN missions and the countries where these missions are deployed and goes beyond passively supporting gender-responsive policies; instead, these leaders are drivers of meaningful change.