“There are no women here”. Gender Discourses in United Nations’ Peace Operations

Abstract

International Relations (IR) discipline is no longer only a man’s world. For decades, feminist IR scholars have managed to challenge the gender-blind and male-dominated discourses of security, power and conflict. However, and outside this academic bubble, in international politics more broadly, and with the United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace and Security specifically, “gender” in relation to peace and security is often interpreted in narrow perspectives. The article discuss some of the feminist IR contribution to the Women, peace and security agenda and offers an empirical take on gender discourses that exists within a peace operation context based on multiple fieldwork studies on peacekeepers and national staff working for the UN operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, MONUSCO. The author finds that gender is interpreted as a separate, women-only topic and outside the core mandated activity of state restoration and militarized protection and security. The interpretation of gender as women leads to the distorted assumption that it is irrelevant to men as “there are no women here”, as one peacekeeper put it. This gender essentialism is also reinforced by gender experts themselves in order to gain political leverage. I argue that framing women on the one hand in need for protection (victimhood) and as potential peacemakers is a sellable narrative to a masculinized Security Council as well as ‘robust’ UN peace operations.