This article explores the gendered experiences of local volunteers operating in conflicts and emergencies. Despite decades of progress to integrate gender issues into development and humanitarian research, policy, and practice, the gendered dynamics of volunteering are still little understood. To redress this, this article draws on data collected as part of the Volunteers in Conflicts and Emergencies (ViCE) Initiative, a collaboration between the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement led by the Swedish Red Cross, and the Centre for International Development at Northumbria University. Contributing original empirical findings on the intersection of gender, volunteering, and emergencies, this article offers new ways of thinking about how gender equality and women's empowerment can be advanced in humanitarian crises, as seen through the experiences of local volunteers.

In October 2017, Canada launched its Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP). While Canada’s explicit use of the words “feminist” and “feminism” may be refreshing, critical questions on the FIAP’s interpretation and application of these concepts remain. These challenges are not unique to the FIAP. Rather, the central weaknesses of the FIAP can be seen as symptomatic of several endemic challenges that persist in the current policies and practices that seek to promote gender equality in the developing world and beyond. This article presents the theoretical and conceptual lineage that has informed the FIAP, drawing from challenges present within literature on security, gender equality, and gender mainstreaming. Three main shortcomings relevant to both the literature and the FIAP are explored: first, the assumptions and essentialization of “gender” to mean “women ”; second, the frequent conflation of “gender equality” with “women’s empowerment”; and last, the paradox of gender, gender equality, and feminism being simultaneously over-politicized and depoliticized to suit prevailing policy environments, with particular implications for the global coronavirus pandemic, as well as impacts in fragile and conflict-affected states. This analysis sheds light on persistent challenges in feminist foreign policymaking and offers insights for the development of Canada’s White Paper on feminist foreign policy.

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Résumé En 2000, l’ ong (organisation non gouvernementale) cambodgienne s i rchesi (Citoyen(ne)s de Siem Reap pour la santé, l’éducation et les questions sociales) s’est intéressée de près au problème du vih /sida 2 et a pu constater que les vendeuses de bière se trouvaient particulièrement affectées par ce virus. Ces femmes, déjà exposées, par leur métier, à la violence et aux abus sexuels, étaient contraintes d’absorber des quantités d’alcool à la fois dangereuses et nocives et, sous-payées, de prendre le risque de se vendre. On leur refusait l’accès au traitement antirétroviral hautement actif ( taha 3 ). L’ ong , en appliquant la recherche-action, met en place les initiatives et programmes locaux dont les objectifs sont, d’une part, d’inciter les brasseurs internationaux à prendre toutes leurs responsabilités en matière de santé et de sécurité de ces travailleuses et, d’autre part, de mettre un terme à l’inégalité de genre, en particulier en ce qui concerne l’administration du taha 4 .