Key messages

• Women, Peace and Security policy to date has not sufficiently incorporated the lessons of intersectionality.

• Gender-just peace processes require the Women, Peace and Security agenda and peacebuilding to complicate gender in policymaking.

• Intersectionality, as derived from Black feminist theory, goes beyond including those marginalised by ‘difference’.

• Incorporating intersectionality prevents a single-axis approach, which is greatly needed in responses to conflict-affected communities.

Introduction

In this article, we use intersectionality – as theory and method – to examine the United Nations’ (UN’s) Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. We argue that a different WPS agenda – one that does not atomise and exclude categories of identity and realms of experience in its efforts towards peace, justice and human security – is both possible and needed. In analysing WPS resolutions and the text of WPS national action plans (NAPs), we show the limited extent to which the lessons of intersectionality have so far been integrated. We therefore argue that peacebuilding policy and practice ought to incorporate intersectionality in its view of both power and identities, as well as in its organising frameworks, and thereby take into consideration how intersecting systems of power affect lived experiences for groups and individuals, their access to justice, and their ability to exercise agency.

A consistent point of contention in WPS scholarship has been the productive implications of WPS policy in terms of who is included or excluded, and what experiences are flattened or marginalised, thus drawing on the lessons of intersectionality, both implicitly and explicitly (Jauhola, 2016; Martin de Almagro, 2018a; Smith, 2019a; 2019b; Haastrup and Hagen, 2020; Stavrevska and Smith, 2020; Zürn, 2020; Giri, 2021; Yoshida and Céspedes-Báez, 2021). In its focus on ‘women’, the WPS agenda prioritises a binary and colonial understanding of gender¹ in its analysis and subsequent policy, and has often segregated and isolated ‘women’ conceptually from their communities, thus missing their embeddedness in particular places and contexts (Martin de Almagro and Ryan, 2019; Rodriguez Castro, 2020; Giri, 2021).

In developing our arguments, we understand that there are inherent tensions in bringing intersectionality to the WPS agenda. There are theoretical tensions between intersectionality – a framework that decentres gender and argues against mutual exclusivity in research and policy – on the one hand, and conceptualising women as a distinct social group, exclusive of other identity categories and structural inequalities, on the other (Ní Aoláin and Rooney, 2007: 341). The adoption and development of the WPS agenda is in no small part thanks to the labour of diverse women’s and feminist movements fighting for peace, (gender) justice and equality (Hill et al, 2003; Cohn et al, 2004). Articulating their experiences of discrimination and violence based on gender was and remains fundamental to this cause. As the policy agenda has developed, however, especially within institutional halls of power, it has attracted criticisms that the implementation of WPS has cemented structural inequalities, accepted only flattened representations of experience and sidestepped questions of violence and discrimination along intersecting identity categorisations (Gibbings, 2011; Hudson, 2016; Haastrup and Hagen, 2020). In short, ‘woman’ has been brought into focus but a flattened, homogenised and homogenising version.

A related question, then, is whether the WPS agenda could be a channel through which intersectional approaches to and understanding of peace and peacebuilding can be brought into practice. Independently, both intersectionality and the WPS agenda have generated significant amounts of scholarship across disciplines, particularly among feminist and critical race theorists; however, the two do not necessarily overlay easily. In the following section, we outline our understanding of intersectionality, its history in Black feminist thought and how we have applied it as a theory and method to the study of WPS, which, in turn, deals with issues that have been core to intersectionality: access to justice, political participation, agency and the prevention of violence, both direct and structural.

We then conduct a content analysis of the use of intersectionality in WPS policy documents, namely, the UN Security Council’s WPS resolutions and WPS NAPs, adopted up to 2021. In the final section, we look at the implications of the discursive constructions used in WPS policy documents and how women’s and other groups have been included in the shaping of WPS policy. We conclude on how intersectional considerations can make a different WPS agenda possible.

Intersectionality as theory and method

Intersectionality is rooted in Black feminist thought, centring Black women in feminist theory and, importantly, emphasising that intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism (Combahee River Collective, 1977). Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1989; 1991) work is most often credited with ushering the term ‘intersectionality’ into the academic lexicon. Crenshaw critiqued the treating of gender and race (as well as class, religion, sexual orientation and so on) as mutually exclusive, single-axis categories in anti-discrimination legislation in the US. Echoing the Combahee River Collective, Crenshaw also highlighted Black women’s marginalisation from social justice movements of the time – with sexism present in anti-racist movements, and with racism present in women’s movements. Intersectionality demonstrates that ‘race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive categories but as reciprocally constructing phenomena that shape complex social inequalities’ (Hill Collins, 2015: 2). For research, this means that sex, class or race (or otherwise) cannot be examined independently, and, moreover, that these categories cannot be simply ‘added’ together to either: (1) capture a full range of experience; or (2) develop policy, theory or advocacy frameworks that aim to protect or empower.

As intersectionality has travelled across both disciplines and continents (Mügge et al, 2018), it has generated significant scholarship on what it is and what it does in research practices and outcomes (McCall, 2005; Hancock, 2007). As Hancock (2007: 63–4, emphases in original) explains, intersectionality ‘refers to both a normative theoretical argument and an approach to conducting empirical research that emphasizes the interaction of categories of difference’. ‘Categories’ and ‘categories of difference’ are primary organising frameworks in conceptualising intersectionality and its epistemological operation. These categories are understood as mutually constitutive, rather than exclusive, and indeed intersectionality helps conceptualise violence and discrimination that touches on more than one predefined category (Hill Collins, 2015: 16). At its core, intersectionality does not simply identify and then ‘add’ different social categories to one another, but provides a lens and tool to expose, first, how these categories interrelate and, second, how this interrelation shapes and creates experience that is more than the sum of its parts (Bowleg, 2008). Subsequently, in both developing and examining policy, intersectionality ‘requires a comprehensive diagnosis of the problem’ (Hancock, 2007: 71). As a critical praxis, intersectionality can ‘critique social injustices that characterize complex social inequalities, imagine alternatives, and/or propose viable action strategies for change’ (Hill Collins, 2015: 17).

Bringing these tools to the WPS agenda, then, means more than adding different identity categories to existing frameworks, but rather acknowledging their mutual constitution and how these shape contributions to and processes of peace, peacebuilding and conflict resolution (see Al-Ali and Pratt, 2016; Zürn, 2020; Giri, 2021). To give one example, this might mean not only diagnosing conflict-related sexual violence as a consequence of sex and gender discrimination, but also understanding it as a manifestation of structural inequalities relating to class, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and so on, as well as contextualising it within histories of colonial power (Aroussi, 2017: 493–4). Who experiences such violence, when and by whom, and how conflict-related sexual violence connects with that which happens before and continues after ‘conflict periods’ are questions that have never been seriously tackled by WPS policy and practice. While there is increasing acknowledgement that some women are ‘more vulnerable’ to conflict-related violence and that it occurs on a continuum, this does not go as far as intersectionality would suggest we do²: to acknowledge that this violence is a manifestation of historical and contemporary racist and patriarchal oppression, and addressing it also entails addressing the structural issues and inequalities that produce conflict.

WPS resolutions and their translation to policy by international institutions have given a narrowed scope within which ‘women’ (essentialised) can operate.³ Throughout WPS resolutions, and indeed in many national implementations such as NAPs, ‘women’ and ‘men’, wherever they are mentioned, are presented as essentialised, that is, a ‘unitary, “essential” women’s experience can be isolated and described independently of race, class, sexual orientation, and other realities of experience’ (Harris, 1990: 5858). As Angela Harris (1990: 586) contends, while it is necessary for some categorisation to occur to develop law and policy, ‘we [should] make our categories explicitly tentative, relational, and unstable’. In the WPS agenda, the process of essentialisation can obscure how WPS policy and practice are, in fact, animated by race and class in a mutually constitutive manner in ways that perpetuate rather than subvert systems of discrimination (Martin de Almagro, 2018a; Smith, 2019b; Haastrup and Hagen, 2020). To that end, an intersectional WPS agenda would pay attention not simply to race and class as identities attached to bodies, but also to how practices of intervention are premised on global racial and other hierarchies that have long historical roots.

In this article, we use intersectionality as a theory and method in our content analysis of the ten WPS resolutions and of NAPs as the primary way of operationalising the agenda at the strategic level.⁴ The first step was a basic word search through the WPS resolutions of intersect^* and associated words such as interrelate^* and interconnect^*. Following this textual analysis, and given that the results are relatively limited, we analysed how different categories of women and girls (as well as men and boys) were constructed and framed in WPS resolutions.

Applying the same process as outlined earlier, we analysed a total of 98 NAPs adopted up to 2021, though only the latest version from those countries that have produced more than one available NAP. The NAPs were sourced and analysed by cross-referencing those contained in the PeaceWomen (2021) database and Caitlyn Hamilton and Laura Shepherd’s (2020) database. In some cases, the analysed NAPs were documents currently in force, while in other cases, it was the last NAP from the country available in the database, even where it may no longer be active.⁵ In our examination of NAPs, we also conducted proxy word searches and content analysis to assess: (1) whether the NAPs provided a definition of gender that acknowledged its co-constitution with race, class, ethnicity and so on; (2) whether the NAPs offered categorisations of different groups of women; and (3) whether these framings were translated into action points/implementation plans. The results of this analysis are presented later in Table 2 and are discussed further in the following sections.

Intersectionality in WPS resolutions

In an initial textual analysis, intersect^* or interconnect^* do not appear in the ten UN Security Council resolutions that constitute the WPS agenda to date. Interrelate^* appears once, in S/RES/2467 (preamble), in reference to the ‘continuum of interrelated and recurring forms of violence against women and girls’, which is exacerbated by conflict. Given this, to examine intersectionality in the WPS agenda, we turned to a content analysis of how the resolutions demarcate and categorise women, and how these categories and demarcations are placed in relation to each other. These findings are summarised in Table 1 and explained in the following.

Different groups of women are categorised within the resolutions, generally in relation to their vulnerability to violence or, to a lesser extent, their exclusion from peace processes. For example, S/RES/2106 (preamble) and S/RES/2467 (para 16) mention ‘groups that are particularly vulnerable or may be specifically targeted’ for sexual violence; S/RES/1820 (para 10), S/RES/1889 (preamble) and S/RES/2467 (para 31) note that refugee and displaced persons are particularly vulnerable to rape and sexual violence; S/RES/1820 (preamble) identifies that sexual violence is used to instil fear in particular ‘ethnic groups’; S/RES/1888 (para 13) and S/RES/1960 (preamble) recognise the needs of sexual violence victims in rural areas; and S/RES/1960 (preamble) and S/RES/2106 (para 19) are the only resolutions to reference the specific needs of persons with disabilities.

Increased vulnerability in relation to forced displacement is specifically mentioned in S/RES/2122 (preamble) and in relation to forceful abduction in S/RES/2106 (para 17). S/RES/2122 (para 7[a]) is the first to make mention of ‘socially and/or economically excluded groups of women’ when requesting that special envoys and special representatives to UN missions engage women’s organisations and women leaders. Categorisation in reference to representation and participation in peace processes is relatively scant. S/RES/1889 (preamble) references the participation of refugee and internally displaced persons in peace processes. In addition to these examples, S/RES/1325 (para 8[b]) is the only resolution to reference Indigenous processes, asking those involved in negotiating and implementing peace agreements to adopt measures that ‘support local women’s peace initiatives and [I]ndigenous processes for conflict resolution’ when working with women’s organisations and leaders.

The aforementioned examples demonstrate how the resolutions seek to categorise some groups of women and that they do so through different levels of ‘vulnerability’. Women and girls are generally already always assumed to be vulnerable (Cohn, 2014; El-Bushra, 2017: 10), but in trying to account for different sets of experiences, the WPS resolutions frame some women and girls as more vulnerable than others. For example, S/RES/1820 (preamble) recognises that women and girls are targeted by the use of sexual violence to instil fear in, humiliate and/or dominate different communities and ethnic groups, while in encouraging a survivor-centred approach, S/RES/2467 (para 16) especially emphasises ‘groups that are particularly vulnerable or may be specifically targeted, and notably in the context of their health, education and participation’. These references acknowledge how race, religion, ethnicity or otherwise may compound vulnerability to sexual violence in conflict (Stavrevska, 2019).

These mentions notwithstanding, the resolutions fail to grasp or acknowledge the historical and political structures within which conflicts unfold and gendered violence (direct and structural) occurs. Focusing on vulnerability is an indirect and limited recognition of power structures, and ‘communicates that … by virtue of their membership in some group, some demographic category, certain people are … inherently vulnerable’ (Cohn, 2014: 61). While war is especially devastating to those already vulnerable, vulnerability is neither confined to nor universal among women (El-Bushra, 2017: 10). Moreover, such an approach makes vulnerability ‘ontological, rather than existential’ (Cohn, 2014: 61), and closes the possibility of seeing vulnerability as externally produced. Focusing on vulnerabilities ignores what María José Méndez (2018: 9) labels the ‘intersectionality of the structures of subordination’, meaning that it is a depoliticised version of intersectionality devoid of the structures and institutions of power that produce insecurity and the connections between them.

Additionally, the focus on vulnerability, particularly in relation to sexual violence, without considering other forms of gendered harm and other forms of violence can have a detrimental impact on women living in conflict-affected societies. This prioritisation of sexual harm, as Sahla Aroussi (2017: 488) shows in the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, ‘has delivered neither justice nor security for victims’. The narrow focus of the WPS resolutions ignores the other types of violence that impact women, with environmental destruction being but one example (Yoshida and Céspedes-Báez, 2021), and, relatedly, the visions for peace of women who live with that violence. As Fany Kuiru Castro, leader of the Uitoto people, has explained in discussing Indigenous visions of peace, “for the Indigenous women from Amazonia, peace is territories rid of violence, of armed groups, mining, clean rivers without mercury…. Peace is harmony in the territory, living well [buen vivir], living fully, in a good environment.”⁶

This has significant implications for thinking through intersectionality in the WPS agenda. Black, Indigenous and critical feminists have used intersectionality to demonstrate how not only experiences of violence, but also subsequent access to justice and the ability to live in peace and harmony, are marred by the structures of colonialism, patriarchy and neoliberal capitalism (Méndez, 2018; see also Kuokkanen and Sweet, 2020). It is these structures of power and hierarchy, as well as histories of occupation and oppression, that produce othered and marginalised bodies and attendant ‘vulnerabilities’. Locating vulnerability as something inherent to being female encourages paternalist protection (Cohn, 2014: 62) rather than working to make structural, political and cultural changes that could neutralise historical and contemporary inequalities, and/or empower individuals and collectives.

Intersectionality in WPS NAPs

‘Intersectionality’ as a term has appeared in WPS NAPs since 2016. The words ‘intersectionality’, ‘intersectional’ and/or ‘intersecting’ have featured in the latest NAPs from Canada (Global Affairs Canada, 2017a), Finland (Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, 2018), Germany (Federal Foreign Office, 2021), Ireland (Government of Ireland, 2019), Italy (Inter-ministerial Committee for Human Rights, 2020), Mexico (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2021), the Netherlands (NAP 1325 Partnership in the Netherlands, 2020), the Philippines (Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, 2017), South Africa (Department of International Relations and Cooperation Office, 2020) and Sweden (Government Offices of Sweden, 2016).

In addition to these uses of ‘intersect^*’, our content analysis also revealed: how some NAPs offer a mediated definition of ‘gender’, one that understands it as intersecting with and/or co-constituted by other structures and identities⁷; how some NAPs offer a categorisation of different groups of women or gender identities, highlighting that these are not homogeneous groups⁸; and that some NAPs translated these into their implementation frameworks, action points and/or metrics for monitoring and evaluation.⁹ Table 2 summarises these findings.¹⁰ The aim here is not to hierarchise these NAPs, and given the number of NAPs analysed, it is not possible to provide a comparative case analysis. Several other factors would need to be taken into consideration if so, in particular, that each NAP emerges from a wide range of contexts and countries, with each differently impacted by conflict, with some that face intervention while others intervene, and with varied engagements with regional and international bodies and donors. Rather, the purpose here is to examine whether and how intersectionality or intersectional concerns have appeared in NAPs as representations of WPS policy, and, in turn, the implications of this for the productive capacities of WPS discourse.

Among those that mention ‘intersectionality’ and ‘intersectional’, Finland’s NAP includes a definition of the concept in explaining the basis of the NAP (Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, 2018: 19), while the Netherland’s NAP defines the term in its glossary (NAP 1325 Partnership in the Netherlands, 2020: 71) the same way that Canada’s NAP does in reference to ‘multiple and intersecting discrimination’ (Global Affairs Canada, 2017a: 19). Two recent NAPs highlight intersectionality as one of their key principles: the use of an intersectional lens in listening and responding to ‘the needs of women, girls and gender non-conforming persons’ voices’ is among the guiding principles in South Africa’s NAP (Department of International Relations and Cooperation Office, 2020: 60); and the implementation of Germany’s NAP is informed by ‘[a]n approach that considers compound discrimination and an intersectional perspective’ (Federal Foreign Office, 2021: 16). The Philippines’s NAP, in discussing the new features of the third generation of WPS NAP, mentions the aim to support initiatives where ‘women empower other women’ and recognise ‘the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity, and religion’ (Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, 2017: 9).

In those NAPs that do mention it, ‘intersect^*’ appears in different sections of the NAPs: sometimes as a ‘guiding principle’ in the introduction; other times embedded within the pillars for action of the NAP. For example, Ireland’s NAP has a paragraph on an ‘intersectional approach’ in the section about women’s meaningful participation (Government of Ireland, 2019: 16–17), while the Netherlands’ NAP mentions the use of ‘an intersectional gender analysis’ in promoting gender-responsive conflict prevention, their protection efforts being guided by a ‘a survivor-centred, holistic and intersectional approach’ (NAP 1325 Partnership in the Netherlands, 2020: 23, 26), and paying attention to intersectionality in mainstreaming WPS in all national and international peace and security processes. Similarly, Italy’s NAP commits the country to increasing efforts to ‘prevent and protect against all forms of discrimination … [i]ncluding multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination’ (Inter-ministerial Committee for Human Rights, 2020: 16). In the case of Italy, this action is accompanied by specific indicators and responsible stakeholders.

Germany’s NAP also includes a ‘special consideration of intersectionality and compound discrimination’ as part of the crisis prevention measure in order to promote ‘an understanding of gender that is based on gender equality, encourag[e] positive images of masculinity and eliminat[e] asymmetric power relationships between the genders, to include people of diverse sexual orientation and non-binary gender identities’ (Federal Foreign Office, 2021: 42). Mexico’s NAP, grounded in its 2020 feminist foreign policy, is another example of intersectionality being included in the planned actions, along with indicators and responsible stakeholders, related to prevention, entailing activities to ‘train and integrate specialised police units in the prevention, investigation and prosecution of crimes of violence against women in order to establish comprehensive actions aimed at guaranteeing the life, security and human rights of women and girls with a gender and intersectional perspective’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2021: 19 [translation: Elena Stavrevska]).

Canada’s NAP goes slightly further. In outlining the barriers to achieving peace, it notes that ‘women and girls face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination’ (Global Affairs Canada, 2017a: 4). It further acknowledges the intersecting discrimination and violence faced by Indigenous women and girls, which is ‘based on gender, race, socioeconomic status and other identity factors’ (Global Affairs Canada, 2017a: 4). Outlining Canada’s vision for WPS in the international context, the NAP recognises that ‘inequalities exist along intersectional lines’ (Global Affairs Canada, 2017a: 4), and it is firmly grounded in what Canada frames as its broader feminist approach to foreign policy.¹¹ While there are still issues, the NAP acknowledges that Canada was founded through the oppression, exclusion and killing of Indigenous peoples (Global Affairs Canada, 2017a: 5). While not explicitly linked to its use of intersectionality, it does hint at a more holistic understanding of WPS that challenges traditional inside–outside, peace–war, us–other binaries that animate security policymaking (Väyrynen, 2004; Enloe, 2014).¹²

As mentioned earlier, some NAPs define gender in relation to other identities and/or define multiple categories of women and vulnerable groups, even if not using the term ‘intersectionality’, as shown in Table 2. Guatemala’s 2017 NAP provides a useful case in point, as it perhaps goes furthest in this direction. It explicitly defines gender equality as ‘the ownership and full enjoyment and exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and men, without discrimination based on their social origin, ethnicity, nationality, religion, political opinion, age or marital status, among others’ (Inter-agency Roundtable on Women, Peace and Security, 2017: 59). It also defines multiple categories of women and specifically acknowledges the rights of Indigenous women, recognising ‘their particular vulnerability and defenselessness in the face of double discrimination as women and as [I]ndigenous people, with the aggravating circumstance of a social situation of particular poverty and exploitation’ (Inter-agency Roundtable on Women, Peace and Security, 2017: 58). This NAP notes the historical exclusion and racism that Indigenous peoples in Guatemala have faced, as well as the work Indigenous women have done in defending the rights of Indigenous peoples and of women (Inter-agency Roundtable on Women, Peace and Security, 2017). The Guatemalan NAP stresses the existence of different identities in the country, stating that as a ‘pluricultural, multilingual and multiethnic country’, all actions derived from the NAP should ‘correspond to the different realities of the people, considering local customs and practices for the implementation of strategies and promoting cultural and ancestral wealth and wisdom of the different peoples’ (Inter-agency Roundtable on Women, Peace and Security, 2017: 60). In other words, the Guatemalan NAP argues for context-based approaches in collaboration with local peoples, which can be led by intersectional considerations. As this and other NAPs included in Table 2 exemplify, a significant intersectional understanding of gendered power and inequality can be found in some documents even when the term ‘intersectionality’ does not appear itself.

Another example is the Bougainville NAP, which foresees the inclusion of differently positioned women in their ‘Policy for women’s empowerment, peace, and security’ by recognising the ‘ongoing need to support the involvement of a plurality of women’s voices and to build the capacity of women’s advocates and representative bodies so they can fully and effectively participate in consultations at all levels and in all regions around land, agriculture and land development projects’, and further emphasising that ‘[i]t is also a principle under International Law that Indigenous peoples have prior, free and informed consent to resource development projects, and this necessitates the consent of women as a component of the Indigenous population’ (Office of the Bougainville Executive Council, 2016). This points to the NAPs providing an opening for intersectional considerations to be included in the participation pillar and different women’s agency to be recognised, not limiting the intersectional approach solely in relation to vulnerabilities in the protection and prevention pillars.

Even where NAPs use ‘intersect^*’ or acknowledge intersectional concerns in the ways we outline earlier, the grounding of NAPs in the WPS pillars (which is understandable given that they are implementations of the WPS agenda) significantly shapes NAP frameworks and action points. Outcomes and indicators in NAPs remain centred on increasing women’s participation in security sectors, training and services to prevent sexual violence in war, and engaging women’s organisations in Track 2 and 3 peace processes.¹³ Outcomes and indicators therefore carry over the militarisation of security that has been problematised within the WPS agenda and eschew a ‘feminist politics of peace’ that would ‘define security in the terms proposed by women’s peace activists’ (Shepherd, 2016: 333). Therefore, while the move to diversify understandings of ‘women’ seems to be increasing, with 30 of the 98 analysed NAPs being included in Table 2, the ability to translate this into meaningful, context-specific indicators and practices has not kept pace.

Our content analysis of NAPs further noted a number of documents where the language from of the WPS resolutions had been carried over almost verbatim. This is particularly the case with S/RES/1325 (para 8[b]), calling for measures to be adopted to ‘support local women’s peace initiatives and [I]ndigenous processes for conflict resolution’. In that direction, The Gambia’s NAP, for example, includes the adoption of ‘affirmative measures to involve more women in peace initiatives and [I]ndigenous conflict resolution processes’ as one of its strategic issues when it comes to prevention (Republic of The Gambia, 2012: 6). This demonstrates the weight of the language of the WPS resolutions and the possibilities and limitations that come with it.

Even though not all NAPs include action points on how to put these conceptualisations into practice when implementing the NAP, the preceding examples highlight the importance of taking into consideration intersectionality in a meaningful way in WPS policy and practice, as they can then also serve as tools for different groups in conflict-affected societies to advocate for security, well-being and justice. Where WPS processes circumscribe who or what ‘counts’ – as they often do (see Shepherd, 2017) – they reinforce inequalities and exclusions, as lack of recognition imposes an invisibility on some experiences and subsequent possible protections/remedies in law and policy.

Is a different WPS possible? Incorporating political intersectionality

Moving from the text of resolutions and NAPs, an intersectional approach encourages us to look at the engagement of different actors in developing these documents and policies, as well as in WPS more broadly. In this section, we turn to what Crenshaw has termed ‘political intersectionality’, which refers to how transformative social movements have reproduced political and representational exclusions. As already noted, WPS resolutions and NAPs utilise intersectionality to highlight, for the most part, the relative vulnerability of different groupings of women in conflict and post-conflict settings. This means that women’s existing peacebuilding labour and processes of alliance building appear in much more limited form in WPS policy and discourse. This section, then, deals with the implications of the discursive constructions we extrapolated earlier, examining how women’s and other interest groups gain access to institutional peacebuilding via WPS (see Basu, 2016).

In reviewing the use of intersectionality where it is explicitly referenced in the documents we cited earlier, the concept is used to reiterate that women and men, or boys and girls, are not homogeneous groups; however, difference is always highlighted within these already-existing predefined groupings (women/men/boys/girls). Such an approach to intersectionality disconnects women from men, or boys from girls, in ways that are inconsistent with the definitions of intersectionality and, in particular, political intersectionality. For example, hooks (1981) and Crenshaw (1989) write about how Black women had, and wanted to keep, an alliance with Black men struggling for civil rights, though patriarchy existed in these movements and often pushed Black women and their concerns to the periphery. In WPS specifically, women peacebuilders build and draw on diverse allegiances to gain traction in different circles (Martin de Almagro, 2018b; Smith, 2019a: 138–57). To understand and seek to implement intersectionality as only ‘inter-group difference’ leaves intact sex-based groupings that limit the possibility of seeing complex and intertwining threats to individual and collective security. Moreover, and linking with the previous discussion on vulnerabilities, it keeps the focus on marginalisation and vulnerability, rather than on existing labour, alliances and movement building.

As intersectionality work shows, categorisation based on sex-based difference does not provide a sufficient platform, or sufficient protection, for all women, or all men. Intersectionality work has shown how categorisation and subsequent policy based only on sex-based comparison/difference works in favour of those whose race/age/sexuality/ethnicity concerns are already appeased. As Méndez (2018: 10–11) explains: ‘[t]he move to intersect these categories [sex and race] is to show what they exclude. What becomes visible is not the presence of women of color, but their absence, since these categories depend on their exclusion.’ This critique also aligns with those that problematise liberalism and liberal approaches to anti-discrimination legislation (Thornton, 1991). In WPS, then, to categorise differently vulnerable women only in relation to ‘women/gender’ makes it difficult to account for their interests and needs that may fall outside gender concerns, and makes visible that marginalisation only where it intersects with ‘gender’.

Even though WPS resolutions and NAPs call for greater inclusion of women’s organisations and civil society groups, this inclusion is foregrounded on particular understandings of what constitutes gender or women’s issues. In peacekeeping and peacebuilding practices, for example, women’s organisations are engaged to work on specific, marginalised, policy areas (Shepherd, 2017; Smith, 2019b). Women’s organisations are not consulted on military, economic or political issues, for example, but are instead engaged as experts on ‘gender’ and ‘gender issues’, which are considered of less priority within the peacebuilding matrix generally (Smith, 2019b). This is an active rather than a passive process, with women’s organisations asked to drop or reframe some programming priorities, and shift their engagement into depoliticised, underfunded and deprioritised institutional locations.

Inclusive peace processes must be led by the experiences and knowledges of those impacted by the types of violence that are sought to be redressed. In thinking about how a different WPS might be possible, then, a starting point would be to remove the institutional impetus to ‘arrive’ in conflict-affected spaces with a pre-existing WPS agenda and/or gender priorities and targets, and instead reformulate WPS into a platform designed by those affected by violence and subsequently utilised to impact decision-making that will shape economic, political and social potentials after war.

The issue of recognising existing activism and activities for peace, women’s rights and environmental justice by human rights and land defenders is especially pertinent. Women’s human rights defenders face significant threats to their safety and are being killed for their work (Dwyer, 2020; GAPs et al, 2021: 26–9; Peace Track Initiative, 2021). While all rights and land defenders face threats, women’s human rights and land defenders face gendered threats to their security, such as threats to life, as well as online gender-based violence and sexual violence (Dwyer, 2020). Despite this, and despite the significant work they undertake, women’s human rights defenders are regularly excluded from peace processes and garner less visibility within WPS resolutions (Dwyer, 2020).¹⁵ Women human rights defenders do however appear as a category in some of the NAPs discussed earlier and are framed as a particularly vulnerable group.

Additionally, an intersectional WPS provides scope to adopt a feminist understanding of violence, acknowledging the interconnectedness of the global structures that have paved the way for that violence, and to address its root causes as well as its consequences. In that sense, despite WPS policy being ‘part of a liberal peacebuilding framework that is racialised, patriarchal, classist, heteronormative and Western-centric at its core’ (Martin de Almagro, 2018a: 412), some NAPs, even without using the term, have shown the possibility of including an understanding of intersectionality in WPS that is rooted in lived experiences, recognises the structures that inform those experiences, moves beyond conceptualising the agenda solely in relation to vulnerability and creates space for the agency of a plurality of groups and individuals to be exercised.

Conclusion

Is a different WPS possible? Our analysis suggests that it is but that WPS remains an imperfect platform, within a racialised, classist, colonial and patriarchal framework, to currently advocate for or from intersectional experiences that may or may not prioritise what are seen as ‘gender’ and/or ‘women’s issues’. An intersectional lens, however, reveals more than a multiplicity of experiences or identities; it also reveals the interlocking power of states and institutions – the ‘larger ideological structures in which subjects, problems, and solutions [are] framed’ (Cho et al, 2013: 791). Intersectionality in WPS requires that the policy that emanates from the agenda be aware of both how power sustains itself within institutions and perpetuates exclusion (Hill Collins, 2017).

We also note here that the analysis presented in this article is not exhaustive, and we see it as a basis for further research. In remaining hopeful, we see the significant, laborious and underfunded work undertaken by men, women and queer and non-binary people of all ages to achieve peace and security for themselves and their communities, to protect the environment, and to hold states and institutions to account, whether or not these are acknowledged as WPS work or priorities. An intersectional approach allows for this fluidity and flexibility – to have ‘tentative’ categories – and it is here that a different, more tentative and yet responsive and intersectional WPS might be possible.

Funding

This article is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 786494).

Author contributions

The authors have contributed equally. Their names appear in alphabetical order.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.