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In the current context of unprecedented and interconnected ecological and inequalities crises, many in the Global North are hitching their hopes onto Green New Deals (GNDs). This article argues that feminist analysis is crucial for exposing the flaws in GNDs, and that different kinds of feminist questioning lead to different kinds of policy responses, with very different scales of potential transformative impact. In order to transform the structures and root causes underlying the interconnected crises, it is necessary to go beyond feminist demands for the inclusion of diverse women and for gender equality and rely more on feminism as an analytical tool: a way of asking questions that denaturalize received wisdom and that make visible the ways in which gendered meanings play a formative role in shaping the concepts and paradigms that constitute knowledge of our world. HIGHLIGHTS Intersecting global crises impel the question, "what should the goal of economic life be?" Many climate "solutions" embed the same faulty ways of thinking that caused the crisis. Clean energy for the Global North spells toxic tolls for the Global South. GNDs neglect militarism, despite its key role in driving the climate crisis. GNDs remain rooted in a mindset that separates humanity from nature and will thus fail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that the effort to get the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda implemented in a series of bureaucratic institutions has pulled the agenda quite far from its original motivating intent. Indeed, going down the bureaucratic implementation rabbit hole has made it almost impossible for advocates to stay in touch with the foundational WPS question: how do you get to gender-just sustainable peace? As we approach the twentieth anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, we argue that WPS advocates need to return to that question, but in doing so, must also acknowledge the changed context. One striking change is that climate breakdown is both more acute and more apparent than in 2000, and any attempt to build gender-just sustainable peace will face serious climate-induced challenges. However, the climate crisis creates not only challenges for the WPS agenda, but also opportunities. The sustainability of peace and of the planet are inextricably linked, and we argue that the realization of the WPS agenda requires transformations to social, political, and, most importantly, economic structures that are precisely the same as the transformations needed to ward off greater climate catastrophe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we argue that a feminist political economy (FPE) approach is critical in understanding why standard policy prescriptions for postwar economic recovery fail to support the building of sustainably peaceful countries and secure lives for their citizens. Whilst many scholars criticize the IFIs' policies in war-affected countries, our FPE approach provides two overlooked but crucial insights. First, it reveals the disjunction (indeed, chasm) between a country's economic recovery from war and the IFIs' focus on the recovery of the economic system. Second, it locates the conceptual underpinnings of this chasm in the profoundly gendered assumptions of neoclassical economics. That is, we find the IFIs' failure to prioritize financing the social infrastructure that could repair war's damages, enhance human security, and support the ecosystems on which human security depends has its roots in the fundamental misconception of human reproductive, caring and subsistence labor, and of nature, as external to the economy rather than as central to the ability of the formal economy to function. We illustrate these points with a focus on one pervasive example of the IFIs' approach to postwar recovery, their encouragement of the large-scale extraction and export of natural resources. Finally, we show how adopting the work of feminist economists who emphasize care, social reproduction and the value of nature, though not without its challenges, can offer radically new visions for postwar economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about women's economic empowerment within the United Nations (UN) Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. Based on analysis of the core agenda-setting documents, it traces where two different versions of women's economic empowerment, "liberal" (including women in the formal economy) and "liberating" (women collectively mobilizing to challenge the status quo), appear in the WPS agenda. It argues that the two exist in uneasy tension in the UN's aspirations for women's economic security post-war, but that when it comes to actual activities and achievements, the liberal version dominates over the liberating version. The article argues that it is important not to overstate the divide between the two approaches, and that the seeds of a liberating approach can be found within the liberal. It is initiatives to facilitate women's economic empowerment that contain opportunities for collective action to transform the structures of the economy that WPS advocates should advocate. This would strengthen the WPS agenda and its ability to contribute to security as feminists envisage it, as encompassing freedom from want as well as freedom from fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the experiences of Gender Advisors in NATO and partner militaries, and the question of whether militaries can contribute to a feminist vision of peace and security. Gender Advisors are increasingly being adopted as a mechanism to help militaries to implement commitments under the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Based on semi-structured interviews and a workshop with individuals working as Military Gender Advisors from 2009 to 2016 in Afghanistan, Kosovo and in NATO and national military commands and headquarters, this paper explores their own perceptions of their work, its goals, shortcomings and achievements. It highlights Military Gender Advisors’ strong commitment to Women, Peace and Security aims, but the resistance their work faces within their institutions, and challenges of inadequate resourcing, preparation and contextual knowledge. Military Gender Advisors’ experiences paint a picture of NATO and partner Militaries having in some places made progress in protection and empowerment of local women, but fragile and partial. These findings speak to wider debates within feminist security studies around whether and how militaries achieve human security in peacekeeping operations, and the risks of militarization of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines statistical data on the employment of women in the British armed forces. It reviews some of the issues shaping debates about women’s military employment, in order to establish the on-going significance of the topic. It looks at patterns of female military employment across the three services, and places discussion of this in the context of observations about gendered divisions of labour in the wider UK labour market. It examines data for the gendered divisions of labour within different corps, branches and occupational groups within each of the three armed services, and looks at gender patterns across ranks. It concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for both policy and conceptual work on women’s military participation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Evidence of military involvement in sexual exploitation and aggression against civilians on peacekeeping operations has led many feminists to question the appropriateness of using soldiers to create peace. They argue that the problems stem from a particular form of military masculinity, hegemonic within western militaries, associated with practices of strength, toughness and aggressive heterosexuality. Masculinities, however, are multiple, dynamic and contradictory. As they are constructed in relation to the contexts men find themselves in, involvement in peacekeeping may itself play a role in the construction of alternative military masculinities. Examining autobiographical accounts of soldiers involved in peacekeeping in Bosnia in the 1990s, I argue that there is evidence of an alternative discourse of 'peacekeeper masculinity', but question whether it fully challenges the hegemony of the warrior model. I acknowledge that peacekeeper masculinity is also problematic because although it disrupts elements of the traditional linkages between militarism and masculinity, it still relies on a feminized and racialized 'Other'. Yet, I suggest that this is not the only way in which peacekeeper masculinity can be viewed. It can alternatively be considered part of a 'regendered military', which may be a necessary component of successful conflict resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article enquires into the connections between gender and discourses of the nuclear weapons state. Specifically, we develop an analysis of the ways in which gender operates in the White Paper published by the UK government in 2006 on its plans to renew Trident nuclear weapons (given the go-ahead by the Westminster Parliament in March 2007). We argue that the White Paper mobilizes masculine-coded language and symbols in several ways: firstly, in its mobilization of techno-strategic rationality and axioms; secondly, in its assumptions about security; and, thirdly, in its assumptions about the state as actor. Taken together, these function to construct a masculinized identity for the British nuclear state as a “responsible steward.” However, this identity is one that is not yet securely fixed and that, indeed, contains serious internal tensions that opponents of Trident (and of the nuclear state more generally) should be able to exploit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]