Gender sidestreaming: why women remain scarce in international peace and security

Over twenty years after the passing of Resolution 1325 in 2000, the participation of women as military personnel in UN peacekeeping operations remains limited. Women comprise between five and seven percent of military personnel in UN peacekeeping missions, and the UN consistently calls for more. This chapter provides a discussion of why the number of female uniformed personnel remains low despite international demands for the increased participation of women in international peace and security. (We use the term female, meaning biological females, owing to the gender essentialist nature of national militaries which do not currently permit individuals who identify in transgender or nonbinary categories to serve.) We contend that this scarcity can be traced back to national militaries where women continue to be underrepresented. We identify two main causes for the dearth of women: first, a lack of meaningful gender mainstreaming in national militaries; and second, the gendered social and professional stigmas found in military culture. To help explain this phenomenon, we unpack the military culture and draw on the concept of gender sidestreaming to explain how gender inequality is perpetuated in military organizations.