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Question 1

How might we understand the terms gender and gender security?

a) Gender security is essentially an extension of the way in which we conceptualize the international political system. The analysis of gender security relations has only been made possible by the expansion of the traditional military definition of security on which national security in anarchical international society was the exclusive province of the male.

b) Gender security is understood as the discursive analysis of the ways in which gender has been exemplified by relationships between militarism and masculinity, and of feminity and their roles as peace-makers or nurturers, based on the recognition that increasingly discursive aspects context international political life.

c) The issue of gender and security is understood as the practical conceptualization of ways in which women have a role in security related issues, for example their relative inclusion and exclusion in military conflict and militarization in general. Thusly, gender security is understood to be a response to traditional military security and the nexus between the man, the state, violence and war.

d) The study of gender and of gender security issues is an invariably complex endeavor which has eluded a uniform definition. Yet, an understanding of the relationship between gender and security can be considered in terms of two conceptual view points; between its comparative 'practical' and 'discursive' aspects: a relationship which should be understood as increasingly complex with its development and reinforcement of the relationship between gender and security broadening terms of security beyond military to include 'human security'.

Question 2

In what ways might it be argued that the way in which we define security in international political life may have implications on discursive representations of masculinity?

a) Representation of women and war are important because of the connection between war, maleness, and the modern state. It has been argued that in many cultures masculine attributes have traditionally been rewarded with social advancement or holding high or public offices assigning womanhood a passive role.

b) Whilst war and combat were treated as the highest aspiration of the male members of political, social and cultural elites, (synonymous with masculine values of strength, honor and courage, endorsed by use of misogynistic military training), in contrast women have been regarded to inhabit only the private sphere tasked with the defense of the home front.

c) Histories of the state have been constructed in terms that are highly gendered. Traditional identities of the nation and of social identities have coalesced around the narration of war. Indeed many nationalist movements have used gender images to promote their cause or identity.

d) All of the Above

Question 3

In what ways have men been practically represented in the context of the state

a) The construction of a male security state has established a relationship with holding office. The relationship between military service and electoral success has been a persisting one.

b) Just as ancient and medieval civilizations paid special dividends to citizens who had proved themselves in war it is equally true that it can still be a mark of respect to be a war veteran. In certain narratives of war it is still regarded as a badge of honor to die in combat and revered in many cultures.

c) The construction of militarism has drawn on types of masculinity which relates societal values to soldiering as a sign of their manhood, serving to endorse combat as being predominantly the domain of the male.

d) All of the above.

Question 4

In what ways have analysts questioned the role of women in security and alerted us to the idea that the experiences of women in relation to the state, state militaries and conflict differ to that of men?

a) Women have undertaken a role of particular importance in the office of military and issues of national security traditionally employed in the secret intelligence units, an employment which has served to undermine gendered views of women as essentially peaceable and nurturers and as involved with home defense.

b) The relationship between man, war and the security of the state is a "historical accident" in which construction of the male security state and its marginalization of women into a citizenship that is submissive to the militaristic values of masculinity.

c) The relationship between the bearing arms and citizenship in the West has resulted in militarized conceptions of citizenship. However, the construction of the masculine security state is in part reliant on the extent to which women accept these underlying assumptions about militaristic masculinity.

d) The construction of the male security state is constructed by the drawing of civilian masculinity which manifests in inequitable gender domination of holding of high offices those associated with the military. The problem of gender in security related apparatus is one of limited access.

Question 5

In what ways has a case been made for the practical constructions of state endorsed gender difference?

a) Biological implications of gender remain significant only to the discursive implications it has on the role of women and men in state security. Biology determines the female as weaker ensuring that men continue to dominate state security apparatus in order to protect. Women aware of practical biological differences accept and therefore are complicit in the perpetuation of the role.

b) The most intimate of human activities for women are more important than the demands of the political and religious male dominated elite. Biology determines, and woman's intimate choice exerts, considerable reproductive implications on a state's security and its ability to re-produce over the generations

c) Indiscriminate warfare is gender neutral. Biological insecurity is therefore a problem of social rather than military construct. Community values such as religion contextualize reproduction rights

d) Biological implications are of central importance to understanding how state and societies after war survive and re-repopulate. However, women are often persuaded or coerced to breed at the male state requirement.

Question 6

What might the pragmatic implications of biology be on post-conflict gender security?

a) Recent inquiry into the way in which women have been treated both in and after war has revealed a degree of ambiguity in the relationship between armed forces and civilian women. While women have often been the targets of violence by the enemy in conflict, it is also the case that they may suffer at the hands of their "protectors" which may actually strengthen the case of female soldiers to be engaged in certain types of peacekeeping work, particularly in post-conflict situations.

b) Perpetuation of violence against women in post-conflict society has devalued the claim that violence is more prevalent in militarized societies. Women were as protected in pre-war society as in post-war society by the male.

c) Case studies revealed that in certain military families the degree to which violence was dependent on the degree of psychological damage inflicted during fighting, however this was variable and dependent on the individual not on gender basis.

d) Recent inquiry into the way in which women have been treated both in and after war has revealed a degree of ambiguity in the relationship between armed forces and civilian women. While women have often been the targets of violence by the enemy in conflict, it is also the case that they may suffer at the hands of their "protectors" which may actually undermine liberal feminists' case of the "right to fight."

Question 7

In what ways has security studies literature deliberated the relationship between gender and peace in the politics of defense?

a) The linkages between "men and war" and "women and peace" are important, albeit if they serve to essentialize gender characteristics without grounding. Women as peaceable has implied that women by virtue of their gender have played little or no role in supporting and upholding the militarism of the state and women have in this one-dimensional perspective been historical observers or objects of war.

b) Women as a gender constituency have no "natural" loyalty to their state and are particularly vulnerable to the propaganda campaigns of other states. There is a pattern of women acting outside the interests of national state interests.

c) There is a strong and persistent tradition that relates peace to women: to consider those females are the bearers of children or are the potential bearers of children as having a natural disposition towards peace, and the will to nourish treating military apparatus as extensions of masculine aggression.

d) Women's history of engagement in security activities have posed little threat to national interests and aroused little concern by male dominated state apparatus. Within this social rubric females continue to be portrayed as life affirming.

Question 8

In what ways does the idea of 'victim' impact of the way in which gender security is regarded?

a) Women as 'victims' is, and continues to be an important narrative of war stories. In 1990 an estimated ninety per cent of war casualties were civilian, the majority being women and children. Women as the primary casualties of war has resulted in the continued perception of women as dependent and the act of battle and sacrifice a key male attribute for the protection of the state and the female.

b) The role of men as intrinsically heroic has been marginalized as the traumas of war, desertion, and conscription, differentiating not between the genders but within the concept of masculinity itself; those who are courageous and heroic will fight whilst those who do not take on female characteristics.

c) Traditional narratives of war and of heroism have been traditionally linked to citizenship and of man's intrinsic willingness to fight in the security interests of the nation. However, recent scholarship has neutralized the role of gender in warfare, reconsidering the role of women in the support and execution of warfare and of men in peace.

d) Increasing awareness regarding the barbaric nature of warfare and the problems of trauma in war has led to a reversal in the belief that the idea of war is a natural place for males. Analysis which has focused on intrinsic violent tendencies perpetrated by men has served to consolidate traditional linkage between men as essentially more aggressive.

Question 9

What problems has the post-Cold War security literature revealed on women, war and development and security?

a) Technological advancements have to some extent rendered the battlefield gender-neutral. "Virtual" warfare has resolved the historical tension between the citizen and the state security apparatus: if actual combat could be avoided then male and female soldiers could wage war on equal terms. However, settlement has been a Western phenomenon. The right to fight in conflict zones is a futile means to understand what it means to be a man or a women at a given place and time.

b) The technological capacity to wage war with minimal civilian costs has diminished the threat of physical and biological gender victimization The contemporary gender divide is structured on "soft" issues associated with socio-economic hardship.

c) Conflict in warfare, and the gender divide between men and women is primarily centered on the historical contract between the individual and the state and arguments that citizenship should be gender neutral and based on equality of participation in actual combat. The right to fight is the predominant means by which women can secure a role in the offices of state security, and until then militarized citizenship will be gender biased.

d) Nuclear armaments and the threat of mass destruction have rendered the battlefield gender neutral in terms of its destructive capabilities. Whilst historically conventional warfare was conducted on the battlefield in which women were particularly vulnerable to violence, and post-conflict sexual violence, technological advancements mean that the divide between the genders is diminished by indiscriminate weaponry.

Question 10

In what ways have feminist and critical security investigations of the 1980s and 1990s expanded our understanding of gender security issues?

a) Investigations into the consequences of state security policies showed that women were subject to masculine dominated war policies as the likely victims as casualties of war or as post conflict targets. Women are increasingly subject to violence as a product of social circumstance

b) Gendered consequences of security issues have not challenged international relations theory. Discursive context in which the state is constructed was recognized without undermining the state as the locus of military power and as the highest organization of human community.

c) War could have specific and gendered consequences. Conversely, recognition of those consequences has allowed us to redress the way in which women may organize themselves to protest against certain facets of nationalism challenging core certainties of international relations such as state power and security

d) The literature that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s was primarily concerned with the ways in which women had served the purposes of nationalist causes in gendered terms as the product of immutable biological characteristics leaving little room for critique.

Oxford University Press, Online Resource Centre, Chapter 05.

Chapter 05

Instructions