Reflections on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda

The journal Kvinder, Køn & Forskning has just published a Special Issue on Gender, Conflict and Violence, co-edited by Bodil Folke Frederiksen, Connie Carøe Chistiansen & Leila Stockmarr. Senior Researcher Robin May Schott has contributed with an article “’Making Friends with the Beast?’ Reflections on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.”

In her article she assesses the contributions of UN Resolution 1325, which marks a revolutionary transformation of rhetoric regarding issues of women, peace, and security. In the last dozen years, there has been a proliferation of debates about Res. 1325. Should the limitations of the resolution be understood as failures in implementation? Or should the concepts of women, gender, and violence which frame the resolution be critically challenged?

Schott argues that there is a ‘theory gap’ between researchers’ understanding of gender and violence and the way these terms are used in this security agenda. She argues that it is crucial to understand concepts of gender and violence as dynamic processes. Doing so enables one to move away from a framework of interpretation that treats violence as acts committed against individuals because of their sexuality and gender, and towards a broader understanding of how violence is productive of gendered subjectivities and bodies, as well as how violence is immanent in gendered norms. In doing so, one challenges the asymmetry in understandings of gender and violence in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, while developing the ambiguity implicit in these relations, which allows for more complex understandings of the dynamics of gender and violence.

Robin May Schott, “’Making Friends with the Beast?’ Reflections on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda”, in Kvinder, Køn & Forskning. 22.2. pp. 16-28.