Gender Equality in Un Peacekeeping: Fact or Fiction?

This book investigates to what extent UNSCR 1325/WPS agenda has functioned in practice, to advance women’s equality and empowerment in the peacekeeping context and beyond.

The book examines whether widespread implementation of UNSCR 1325 and the broader WPS agenda via gender mainstreaming in UN operations has translated into increased gender equality in peacekeeping operations, the broader UN institutional context and, by extension, the host countries in which missions are situated, via norm dissemination. The book investigates this via a review of the implementation of UNSCR1325 in the operations chosen as research sites over three snapshot years. The book undertakes a comparative analysis that scrutinizes if, how and under what conditions gender mainstreaming has succeeded as a strategy to advance gender equality by analyzing the factors/conditions that have led to successful gender mainstreaming across the operational context, and those that have impeded this outcome. The book concludes that, despite rhetorical commitments to women’s equality in peacekeeping since the passage of UNSCR 1325, progress on the ground has remained minimal, and that the operational environment continues to be discriminatory against women. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, women do not participate as equal partners in peacekeeping and continue to have less access to resources and decision-making power, overall. The book interrogates that by exploring the spaces available within law, policy and practice of the UN to pursue the human rights agenda of gender equality and considers whether UNSCR 1325 has enlarged those spaces. It also points to the irony of internal UN structures failing to adequately adapt to their own gender mainstreaming mandates, while those same structures have delivered some gender equality mandates successes externally, at local levels.

This book will be of interest to students of peacekeeping, gender studies, and International Relations.

Sally Anne Corcoran served the UN from 1994 to 2011 in the human rights, political, legal and gender areas. An Irish Research Council Scholar, she received her PhD in Law from the University of Galway in 2022. She is an international expert and advisor on Gender and Human Rights policies.