Gender Dimensions of Security

Challenges: Strategies for the

Future
SGDI Policy Roundtable/Webinar
December 10, 2020 | 9:00 AM CET
Language: English
REPORT

Why is it important to understand the gender dimensions of security? How does

focusing on women’s roles in conflict and peace will shape the future?
The United Nations Security Council adopted the Resolution 1325 in 2000 which called
the UN member states and the UN Secretary-General to 1)increase the participation of
women in conflict resolution, including in security sector, 2) integrate gender
perspectives in the analysis of international security issues, and 3) adopt measures to
protect women from violence in conflict settings as of August 2019, a total of 82 states
have developed National Action Plans to implement and advance the women, peace, and
security (WPS) agenda. With the initiation of the WPS agenda at the UN level, various
measures are taken to advance women’s status in conflict and peace. However
implementation of these policies remains as a challenge and the agenda has faced
numerous criticism from gender researchers due to its narrow focus on women’s role as
peacemakers.

In this panel, our experts discussed the strategies to comprehensively understand the
importance of women’s role in security and to incorporate gender dimensions to conflict
and peace. We examined how this renewed focus on gender dimensions of security can
shape the future strategies of governments, international organizations and NGOs.
Dr. Çağlayan Başer examined how the presence of women in insurgent groups affects
receiving foreign support in civil war settings. Through survey experiments, she
demonstrated that people are more likely to favor supporting rebel groups with women
than those without women. Also, sponsoring gender-diverse groups is considered a
moral obligation, while all-male groups are not viewed from an ethical perspective.
Survey experiments also revealed that this support is driven by gendered expectations
that do not consider women as the primary agents of violence, which persist even after
people are presented with the information that women are perpetrators of violence. The
public tends to perceive that the group is less likely to use violence against civilians and
that supporting a gender-diverse organization would improve the sponsoring state’s
reputation in the eyes of the international community. She further tested whether this
favorable opinion toward women insurgents can shape foreign leaders’ decisions in
favor of supporting gender-diverse insurgent groups: The presence of female fighters in
a rebel group can give the leaders an option to take advantage of this positive opinion

1
Gender Dimensions of Security
Challenges: Strategies for the
Future
SGDI Policy Roundtable/Webinar
December 10, 2020 | 9:00 AM CET
Language: English
among the public, which can influence the actual decision to support the group. Using
macro-level evidence concerning the supporter states and the prevalence of female
combatants in a global sample of rebel organizations between 1989 and 2009, she
explained that democratic states are more likely to support groups with women
insurgents.
She discussed the future security implications of this trend and asserted that traditional
gender roles that dismiss women in war and security can provide unique contributions
for the sustenance of violence in conflict settings. She emphasized that gender-equal
ideology can be instrumentalized by different stakeholders to achieve political gain and
encouraged policymakers to take active responsibility to understand the complexity of
the gender and violence relationship.

Dr. Ana Sánchez Cobaleda focused on answering the question of how international
organizations dedicated to international security have implemented Resolution 1325 on
Women, Peace and Security on the 20th anniversary of its adoption. After a brief
presentation of the milestone that the WPS Agenda was - by introducing for the first
time in history the gender perspective in the United Nations Security Council -, she
addressed the way in which the UN, NATO, the EU, the AU, ECOWAS, ASEAN or the
OAS, have incorporated – when they have – this agenda in their work plans or
structures.
Her presentation highlighted that the UN and the main regional international
organizations focused on security have had variable results in terms of the
implementation of UNSCR 1325, showing that there is still leeway for action to
democratize the WPS agenda into security global governance. Keeping in mind that
from a liberal feminist standpoint, other organizations could have been included in the
study (for instance, the World Health Organization or the UN Environment Program,
insofar they address threats different from the use of force, terrorism or WMD
proliferation that are, nonetheless, linked to security in a broader way), the speaker
argued that the way to stop legitimising particular actions and functions that are
constitutive of the “hegemonic masculinity” that prevails in society is threefold: keeping
in mind the importance of gender analysis from the earliest planning phases of any
mission; guaranteeing meaningful participation of women across all fields, processes
and institutions (not just about the numbers, but about the ability of women to

2
Gender Dimensions of Security
Challenges: Strategies for the
Future
SGDI Policy Roundtable/Webinar
December 10, 2020 | 9:00 AM CET
Language: English
influence all stages throughout peace processes, etc.); and considering the gender
expertise in different transition functions in missions.

Smita Singh explored the rationale behind the prevalent gender apathy in Security
studies. Despite an expansive and diverse feminist scholarship theory on the
significance of taking gender as a critical analytical concept, why are gender issues still
peripheral in the agenda of international relations and security studies? To address this
research question, Smita divided her analysis into three parts: revisiting scholarship on
feminist security studies; scrutinizing the global phenomena, actors, institutions and
processes through feminist lens and deciphering the rationale behind and obstacles to
the prevalent gender bias in security studies and its practice. She contended that while
there has been adequate feminist theorization of the idea of security, there has been
serious gaps in the manner it is applied by practitioners. The invisibilization of women
is evident in almost all aspect of security studies and practice including military,
diplomacy, political leadership, peace processes and so on. Through a qualitative
improvement in representation of voices and presence of women at all fields that have
been largely regarded as masculinist, she emphatically made a strong pitch for adoption
of “gender lenses” to facilitate much-needed re-evaluations of the assumptions that
underpin scholarship in security studies.

PANELISTS

3
Gender Dimensions of Security
Challenges: Strategies for the
Future
SGDI Policy Roundtable/Webinar
December 10, 2020 | 9:00 AM CET
Language: English

Dr. Çağlayan Başer is a visiting scholar at New York

University Abu Dhabi. She received her Ph.D. in
Political Science from Loyola University Chicago in
2020, specializing in International Relations and
Comparative Politics. Her research contributes to the
areas of political violence, gender politics, and
domestic sources of international relations. Her
research is published in World Politics. At Loyola and
the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she
taught courses on international relations, gender and
security, racial and ethnic politics, and social justice.
She is an Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models
(EITM) Institute alum and a Women in International
Security (WIIS) Next Generation Fellow, and a Board Member and Senior Researcher at
SGDI.
_____________________

Dr. Ana Sánchez Cobaleda is a postdoctoral

researcher at ESADE's Center for Global Economy and
Geopolitics, ESADEGeo, and her current research focuses
on non-proliferation, strategic trade controls, European
security and the role of international peace and security as
a global public good. Her PhD thesis at the University of
Barcelona focused on the international-legal regime of
dual-use goods and how it relates to the non-proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Throughout her career Dr. Sánchez Cobaleda has been a

visiting researcher at the Grotius Centre for International
Legal Studies of the University of Leiden, the KU Leuven,
the University of Geneva, the University of Amsterdam,
and the Council of Europe. Previously she worked as a lawyer in the private sector and
at the UN Development Program’s Regional Centre for Latin America and the

4
Gender Dimensions of Security
Challenges: Strategies for the
Future
SGDI Policy Roundtable/Webinar
December 10, 2020 | 9:00 AM CET
Language: English
Caribbean. Since 2019 she is one of WIIS (Women in International Security) Next
Generation Fellows and she is a Board Member and Senior Researcher at SGDI.
_____________________

Ms. Smita Singh works with the Government of

India and has more than five years of teaching and
research experience in the field of Political Science
and International Relations. She is a doctoral
candidate at the Diplomacy and Disarmament
Division, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Previously, she held the position of an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Political Science in
Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of
Delhi. After completing her graduation in Political
Science, Smita completed her Masters in Politics
(with specialization in International Relations) and M.Phil from Jawaharlal Nehru
University. She has been awarded a Senior Research Fellowship in both International
Relations and Political Science from the University Grants Commission, India. She has
taught various courses at the undergraduate and post graduate levels which inter alia
includes Twentieth Century World History & International Politics; Human Rights,
Gender & Environment; Reading Gandhi; and Citizenship in a Globalizing world. Her
research interest lies in the areas of foreign policy analysis, comparative government,
strategic and nuclear policy, and gender politics. She is a Women in International
Security (WIIS) Next Generation Fellow and a Board Member and Senior Researcher at
SGDI.

MODERATOR

5
Gender Dimensions of Security
Challenges: Strategies for the
Future
SGDI Policy Roundtable/Webinar
December 10, 2020 | 9:00 AM CET
Language: English

Ms. Monica Mendez Caballero Ms Monica Mendez

Caballero, Gender, Peace and Security Adviser - Senior
researcher at Security, Gender and Development
Institute.
Experienced officer and researcher in policy design for
legitimacy-building of security institutions and gender
equality for peace and development.
Ms. Mendez holds a MAS in International and
European Security from the University of Geneva and
the GCSP, an MBA from IPADE Business School and a
BA in Political Science from ITAM.
She is also an alumna of the GCSP through its flagship
Leadership in International Security Course, as well as
the School of International Futures, the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric
Defense Studies, the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, and the
Near East South Asia Center For Strategic Studies.
Since 2019 Monica is a member of the OECD Government Foresight Community, the
WIIS (Women in International Security) Next Generation Fellows, and Amassuru:
Women in Security and Defense in Latin America and the Caribbean.