“Peace and Security for All”

Violent conflicts and wars have many and complex causes. Yet cause analyses generally overlook a significant factor: the gender dynamic. A look at the power relations between women and men, however, can be the key to early detection and analysis of the emergence and trajectory of crises and wars as well as to effective strategies for their resolution.

Since the mid-1980s feminist research and politics have pointed to the close connection between gender relations and war. With this paper we would like to take up their analyses and embed them in the context of current concepts of security, foreign, and peace policy. In the process, we look at the central areas and issues of the current official security policy and their manifestation at the national, European, and international level; we assess the development of concepts of security based on human rights and analyze the relationship between civil and military conflict management in foreign and security policy. We focus on the different ways specific interests define “security” in society and politics, in peace and gender studies, and in security and military strategic planning. We also analyze the various concepts of security as well as currently used notions from the standpoint of whether and to what extent they incorporate the gender perspective. In addition, we portray the different approaches for including women and for demanding gender equality, and evaluate them from a feminist perspective, not least of all in order to come a little closer to our postulated goal of “Peace and Security for All.”

“Peace and Security for All” is our vision. For some this goal may seem unrealistic and out of touch with reality. All the same, we insist on this normative demand. “Security for All” – for us this is both a demand and the starting point for our deliberations.

We have all agreed that our goal with this paper is to contribute toward integrating the gender perspective into a peace-oriented security policy, and to draw more women into the debates on security policy.

We do not claim to present a comprehensive feminist analysis on current German and international peace and security policy or to have developed far-reaching strategies for conflict management from a feminist perspective. This was beyond our scope. For one, the one-and-a-half-year period designated for this project, which was taken on by an honorary body – the Working Group “Gender in Peace and Security Policy – was too short; second, too many deficits in knowledge still exist in these areas; and third, the working approaches and perspectives of the experts participating in the working group are too different.

The aim of this paper is to stimulate more thinking and map out a few coordinates for international discussions on peace and gender policy. We would also like to identify existing gaps in scholarship and research and thus encourage others to pursue more extensive studies in these areas.

This paper is the expression of an intense working process within a heterogeneous group. The different approaches opened up space for productive discussions, which in turn led us to question our own positions and to clear up mutual reservations. We share the goal of striving for gender-equitable and self-determined lives in nonviolent and nonoppressive contexts. Yet we differ in our views of the means and paths to achieve this goal. Thus the realization grew that an ethically-based pacifist stance must sometimes give way if certain constellations of violence call for immediate action. Nevertheless, the normative demand of peace and conflict studies commits us to the search for political strategies to overcome agencies of violence and to develop constructive, preventive strategies to deal with violent conflict.

Owing to the heterogeneous composition of our group, this paper has many contradictions and incongruities. We therefore call on others to take up and further develop these topics. At the same time, this paper is the outcome of our discussion culture, which has enriched every participant. During the discussion phase we conducted workshops and panel discussions. A first version of our paper was presented for debate at the international conference of the Heinrich Böll Foundation “Femme Globale” in September 2005. We specifically asked experts from other regions of the world to comment on the paper and invited them to participate in our debate. Some of their criticisms has been used to rework the paper; otherwise their comments are documented in notes in the appendix. We would especially like to thank Dr. Claudia von Braunmuehl, Gigi Francisco, Richa Singh, Asha Hagi Elmi, and Zamaret Hershco for their invaluable comments and insights.

A criticism often voiced in this debate, namely that this paper is Eurocentric, is justified. We are painfully aware that the paper, despite our consideration of these criticisms, still presents a Eurocentric perspective in many respects and that we Europeans still work from a limited perspective. We regret that we were unable to portray in this paper with the appropriate level of sophistication the way current international conflicts have emerged from the background of colonialism and neocolonialism. We were also unable to focus in depth on the strategies and perspectives of female actors in the South. However, we would be very pleased to see others correct these shortcomings.

Read the complete paper (PDF, 69 pages, 282 KB)