Advancing Women, Peace, and Security through Security Cooperation in NATO

This series—featuring scholars from the Futures Lab, the International Security Program, and across CSIS—explores emerging challenges and opportunities that NATO is likely to confront after its 75th anniversary.

In the future, NATO may advance its women, peace, and security agenda by mandating gender considerations in security cooperation, encouraging female participation in capacity-building activities, and ensuring operational effectiveness and resilience across the alliance.

Women make up more than 50 percent of society, play crucial roles in security endeavors, and significantly influence public opinion within the security sector. The U.S. security cooperation enterprise is well suited to make immediate and tangible impacts on the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda by utilizing existing funding authorities and security cooperation parameters.

UN Security Council Resolution 1325, enacted in October 2000, and subsequent resolutions guide NATO’s WPS initiatives. Despite active efforts and routine conferences, women still represent a small percentage of uniformed personnel in NATO (approximately 13 percent) and a slightly higher 23.6 percent in leadership (including civilian) roles. By incorporating straightforward WPS requirements in security cooperation programs, these numbers can reach even higher.

Critics of the WPS agenda routinely offer outdated arguments on the agenda’s negative impacts on military effectiveness and operational readiness, stating that WPS efforts distract defense organizations from their core military functions and capabilities. However, evidence suggests otherwise. Diverse teams, including diverse military units, enhance problem solving, creativity, and decisionmaking. These outdated arguments discourage security cooperation practitioners from recognizing how gender and gender-based violence (GBV) is used in hybrid warfare, despite ample evidence seen in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Ukraine. Adversaries continue to use gender as a hybrid threat in order to degrade morale, create societal divisions, and undermine national resilience.

To date, WPS efforts have mainly focused on establishing policy frameworks, developing national action plans (which have been abandoned by several allies), creating mandatory training requirements, and establishing gender advisers to assist with operational planning efforts. These endeavors will likely impact WPS initiatives in the long term but will do little to enhance the program in the immediate future. Unfortunately, without concrete evidence of how failing to address gender considerations tangibly impacts military operations and national security, the male-dominated security sphere will likely dismiss any efforts toward deep-rooted and radical integration.

As one of the leading security cooperation exporters, the United States should consider the following to enhance WPS initiatives:

1. Mandate gender considerations in the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act Section 333/332 training and equipment lists, where applicable. Signaling to partners and allies that WPS initiatives need to be a part of any evolution within a security force is important; however, it should be a part of their defense planning. Providing considerations for a total-society approach is a part of defense and security development and can be incorporated into security cooperation program requests. A general “best practice” is that roughly 10 percent of a program’s funding should be dedicated to institutional capacity building (ICB) support. In addition to this, the program should also allocate a percentage of the overall budget to WPS initiatives. This shows how a country is planning to meet WPS initiatives within their society and in line with their capabilities and forecasting. In addition, the Office of the Secretary of Defense should consider establishing a dedicated percentage of the program’s overall funding to advancing WPS initiatives, either through training or equipping. Serious advancements in WPS could be made by simply dedicating 1 percent of an initiative’s total funding to WPS initiatives. NATO’s Defence and Related Security Capacity Building (DCB) initiative currently supports Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Iraq, Jordan, Mauritania, Moldova, Tunisia, and select UN programs. None of these programs specifically outline a WPS initiative; however, programs in Iraq and Moldova do have WPS ties to other programs (gender advisers and military advisers). Adding in a requirement for WPS-specific program lines, as low as 1 percent of the total funding, would strengthen initiatives across all DCB countries.
2. Identify opportunities to include WPS initiatives in NATO’s Defence Planning Process and ally-specific capability targets. It is no secret that many allies lack robust conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence (CR-SGBV) and domestic violence support services. This capability gap was first highlighted by Russia and Belarus during the 2021 migrant crisis in Eastern Europe, where many governments were ill prepared for the challenges of mass migration. The gap was highlighted yet again with Russia’s renewed aggression in Ukraine in February 2022. The UN High Commission for Refugees estimates that nearly 5 million people have fled Ukraine as a result of the full-scale war, and psychological trauma serves as a key barrier to integration. These recent events add to lessons that should have been learned in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq, and elsewhere. Governments and ministries of defense can no longer ignore victims of CR-SGBV. NATO should consider appropriating WPS capability targets for like-minded allies, which would signify WPS as a priority within the alliance and promote the development of WPS-related capabilities by NATO allies. Creating domestic and expeditionary capacity to care for victims of GBV and CR-SGBV would increase NATO’s ability to counter hybrid threats while adding significantly to peacekeeping operations around the world.
3. Encourage female participation in ICB activities in order to show the value of balanced gender representation in security organizations and increase networking and mentorship opportunities. These opportunities are for men and women in the security fields. Regional centers, such as the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, are mandated to achieve a female participation rate of at least 30 percent in center-wide activities. This mandate should be extended to a partner nation’s entire ICB effort, with compliance monitored in combatant command assessment, monitoring, and evaluation reviews. More importantly, ICB providers, such as regional centers and the Institute for Security Governance, should strive to achieve gender parity among speakers, moderators, and leadership. Achieving an appropriate gender balance among content providers and leadership would encourage the visibility of women security professionals and increase access for men and women to all security experts. NATO’s commitment to WPS is crucial to enhancing operational effectiveness and whole-of-society resilience. The whole-of-society approach is a key linchpin in NATO’s resilience, civil preparedness, and Article 3 commitments when addressing vulnerabilities within a changing security environment. Nearly by definition, a whole-of-society approach is not possible without drastic WPS progress. Gender equality, peace, and security are all inextricably linked, each requiring the others, and thereby requiring an aggressive commitment by all member nations through increased representation in NATO missions and domestic policies.

Courtney Clarksen is an active-duty military officer with more than two decades of experience in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia studies and military faculty at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. Tyler McAnally is an active-duty military officer focused on security cooperation and European affairs. Kathleen J. McInnis is a senior fellow and director of the Smart Women, Smart Power Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.