Feminist scholars of International Relations (IR) ask how international politics shapes and sustains gender inequalities - and how these inequalities can be overcome. The Women, Peace and Security agenda is the most prominent international framework for promoting gender equality in the realm of international security. Feminist IR researchers critically examine both the contents of this agenda, as well as how states and international organizations translate its principles into practice. In this context, my PhD research explores how NATO - a key global security actor - implements the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Specifically, I analyze how NATO produces and reproduces knowledge about gender in order to be able to implement this agenda.
In the first part of this project, I examine the gender knowledge that informs NATO’s gender-related policies through document analysis and interviews with NATO's gender advisors. My findings provide insights into the 'common sense’ thinking about gender within NATO and about how different, sometimes competing understandings of gender are negotiated. My second chapter examines how new feminist-informed expertise enters the organization through a growing knowledge network. The final part of this dissertation places gender knowledge production in NATO against the backdrop of anti-gender campaigns, especially those emanating from the current U.S. administration. I problematize the tightening of epistemic boundaries regarding what can be said and known about gender inequality and research which strategies NATO's femocrats use to navigate this climate.
This project contributes to our understanding of how a meaningful gender equality transformation in international security can be realized, as well as to the debate around whether military organizations can be credible actors of such transformation.