Gender as national interest at the UN Security Council

Abstract

The United Nations Security Council has often been identified as a key actor responsible for the uneven trajectory of the international Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. It is, however, the Council members—who also seek to advance their national interest at this intergovernmental forum—that are pivotal in the Council's deliberations and shape its policies. Yet, little attention has been paid to this aspect of deliberative politics at the Council in feminist scholarship on WPS. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature. It notes that gender has increasingly become part of foreign policy interests of UN member states, as evidenced by practices such as invocation of ‘women's rights’ and ‘gender equality’ in broader international security policy discourse. The article demonstrates that this national interest in gender has featured in WPS‐related developments at the Security Council. Using specific illustrations, it examines three sets of member states: the permanent and non‐permanent members as well as non‐members invited to take part in Council meetings. The main argument of this article relates to highlighting member states’ interests underpinning their diplomatic activities around WPS issues in the Security Council, with the aim to present a fuller understanding of political engagements with UNSCR 1325, the first WPS resolution, in its institutional home.

Gendering the practice turn in diplomacy

“…States like the US (under Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State) and Sweden have claimed that gender equality is a foreign policy priority. The UN Security Council remains ‘actively seized’ of gender equality, meaning diplomats have to learn how to negotiate over these issues (Basu, 2016a).…”

“…How do diplomats develop a feel for this particular ‘game’? How do diplomats learn to negotiate over gender as national interest (Basu, 2016a, b)? Have Ministries of Foreign Affairs developed new practices in response to gender equality being a policy priority?…”

“…Moreover, the adoption of new gender equality norms at the international level has empowered new actors and provided symbolic resources for authority claims. Some states espouse 'feminist foreign policies,' where they connect gender equality to the national interest (Basu, 2016a). These shifts in gender relations at the household, national and international level are all germane to problems of continuity and change in diplomacy.…”

The UN Security Council and the Political Economy of the WPS Resolutions

“…In this way, member states outside the Security Council have sought to limit the mandate of the infamously undemocratic Council. The response among the P5 member states has been mixed, with Russia and China generally being against expanding the scope of the council's work (Basu 2016, 267, 279). There is also, however, historical precedence for the boundaries between security and economic arenas at the UN—historian Paul Kennedy suggests that “great powers selectively employed fragmentation from the outset to prevent the Economic and Social Council … from competing with the Security Council for dominance and fostering the integration of security and economic policy” (cited in Benevenisti and Downs 2007, 598).…”

Introduction

“…international politics, fostering women's access to resources, and advancing respect for women's rights (Rothschild 2014). Invocation of gender is also evident in the foreign policy of countries that have identified it as their "unique selling point" in the international security and development realms, as evidencedmore recentlyin the employment of the "women, peace and security" agenda in some countries' quest for a coveted Security Council seat; such policy developments have been followed closely by feminist IR scholars (see Aggestam et al [2018]; Basu [2016]; Parashar and D'Costa [2017]; Richey [2001]; on Australia, see Shepherd and True [2014]). Moving forward, if we understand foreign policy as "the formulation of a state's grand strategy or worldview" and diplomacy as "the implementation of that grand strategy or worldview" (Wiseman 2015, 317; emphasis in original), a follow-up question one that was raised for the pre-conference workshopis: to what extent is "feminist foreign policy" feminist, if not realized through "feminist diplomacy"?…”