Mainstreaming Gender Effectively in the Security Sector in the MENA Region
ARK gender advisor discusses lessons from the field.
Let’s be honest: working to integrate gender considerations in the security sector is challenging. Security institutions tend to be hierarchical, patriarchal, and cloistered. This is particularly true in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region with the low participation of women in the sector and a strong disinclination to make any changes that could be viewed as western meddling or control, based on the region’s history. As a woman born and raised in the region, and who has spent the past six years working to support gender integration in various institutions throughout the MENA region, I want to share some key considerations to think about and lessons learned based on my experience.
But first, some key terminology to guide us and an argument for gender as an increasingly important consideration for a comprehensive approach to security sector reform in the development field. When I talk about the integration of gender considerations, I specifically mean the process in which gender norms and gender inequalities are considered from the design of organizations’ gender strategies to the implementation of those strategies. One such consideration is how to account for women’s and men’s experiences to support the security and safety of society. This is becoming an imperative for implementers as donors require a focus on gender in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1325, aimed to support the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. The WPS agenda seeks to foster an inclusive approach to security, considering the needs of women and girls and empowering women to be on the frontline protecting the public. Besides this cynical explanation (getting that money!), as the following will describe, the WPS agenda enables security institutions to be more effective and representative of the societies they serve and protect. This agenda, therefore, is one we should all get behind and support.
Assess desire and capacity to change before agreeing on a project work plan that identifies the objectives of the support. To do so, make sure to discuss with the security agency the changes that it would like to achieve in terms of promoting gender equality. Collaborate in creating the project’s theory of change to ensure local ownership and sustainability of change. To get buy-in for project implementation, the goals must be driven by security officers and they must take ownership of the interventions as opposed to it being seen as a “foreign agenda”. Once a desire for change is identified, ensure the “material” is available to build lasting change. For example, are there available funds in the budget for the agency to invest in gender integration? How many women are employed, and how many women are in senior ranking positions? Does the agency have a national gender strategy it would like to implement?
Set realistic goals when considering gender integration with a security agency based on the agency’s capacity to change and its institutional structure. All security agencies in the MENA region have low participation of women (some as low as 1%). Those who are not familiar with projects in the security agencies might be too ambitious in setting goals. It is our responsibility as practitioners to set goals that are achievable yet ambitious based on our knowledge of the agency we are working with and the intended outcome. Hence, the project team needs to invest time and develop a needs assessment to ascertain a baseline. For example, if the percentage of women employed by an agency is 1% and the agency is keen to increase the number to 30% in a year, this is likely impossible to achieve as there are institutional, educational, social, and cultural restrictions on women to participate in a field that is seen as “manly”. These obstacles are not going to be addressed in a year and therefore it is not realistic (or helpful) to set an unrealistically high target. It is important however to clarify what the project is expected to achieve with the donor and the beneficiaries.
Take time to understand the environment of the agency you are working with and determine the best ways to approach sensitive topics, such as gender. Security agencies around the world tend to operate in a hierarchical matter. When working with a security agency in the Middle East, ensure to take the time to understand who is influencing how the agency is managed, potential gender champions, and teams that can be mentored to support gender integration. Assess the accepted gender-sensitive approach to dealing with men and women in that organization. In Arab culture, there is a certain level of formality when dealing with the opposite sex. It is crucial to understand these dynamics before any engagement to ensure that you are honoring cultural sensitivity. Gender and gender mainstreaming can be conceived as infringing on cultural taboos in the MENA region. Therefore, with thorough contextual understanding, development practitioners can mitigate these risks.
Be consistent when engaging with senior officials to address key gender challenges and when integrating gender in HR policies and undertaking capacity building opportunities to ensure the sustainability of interventions. To address gender inequality, structural measures must be taken to ensure that the organization is mindful of gender needs while operating and for those considerations to be sustainable after project closeout. Senior officials must support the gender agenda and be advocates of change for the integration to be accepted by everyone. Moreover, strong gender integrative responses from senior leadership will encourage junior officials to follow suit.
Use gender training as a platform to raise awareness and reach out to other security organizations and senior officials. This is critical in demonstrating that gender integration is not a women’s issue but rather an inclusivity issue, and security agencies work better at protecting the public if they have a holistic understanding of protection needs. Gender trainings can serve as an effective method to provide a safe space for people to discuss gender roles, gender equality, and gender justice concepts. In the training, incorporate group exercises that can spark discussions on men and women’s roles in society to enable participants to discuss social norms.
Make sure the training is in Arabic and use simple language. I cannot emphasize this enough as participants might not have heard of gender concepts, or if they have, they might have a negative view of it as a “western” ideology that is not welcomed in their societies. Because gender is such a politicized and polarized field, especially in the MENA region, using a shared language and cultural understanding will help reduce people immediately rejecting the concept. Don’t expect the participants to be gender advocates by the end of the training but if you make some participants question the biased or misogynistic ideas they held as true, consider it a big success, particularly with majority male participants.
Ensure that you have a gender-equal team that comprises men and women who are knowledgeable about gender integration. I found from experience that security officials tend to listen to those who have similar gendered experience. This means male officials tend to be subconsciously inclined to pay more attention to a man their age or older and similarly for female officials. Gender experts consider security institutions “hyper-masculine organizations” due to the institutionally patriarchal approaches. This is doubly true for security agencies in the Middle East, as not only the institution itself is patriarchal but so too are the societies they serve. Hence, it is essential to include men in the project team to be champions and support cross-gender engagement with senior male officials.
Utilize stories of gender equality advocates in the region in raising awareness about the importance of having a gender-sensitive approach to security work. The act of promoting gender equality is not a novel concept in the MENA. In my work, I sometimes use stories of the prophet Mohammad and other religious leaders and how they respected men and women equally and encouraged women to participate fully in the public sphere. I can understand that for some, they might not prefer this approach in their gender advocacy work, but it will come up eventually – particularly in trainings and discussions – so it is best to be prepared. Sharing stories of national role models could inspire others to mirror their behavior to respect people regardless of their gender.
Use the effectiveness approach to explain why it is important to integrate gender and increase the number of women in the security sector. Gender experts recommend this ‘effectiveness approach’ when working with security agencies to raise awareness of gender equality because it focuses attention on operational effectiveness not ‘gender’. The argument is straightforward: to better serve and protect the community, the security agency should be representative of the community. Hence, it should adopt an inclusive approach at all levels that supports men's and women’s access to capacity building activities and fair career advancement opportunities. For instance, in one of our projects to support gender integration using our training delivery model, we were able to introduce a mixed training model that was successful after we shared the benefits of men and women officials training together.
Advocate for the institutionalization of gender integration. Relying on external support to provide gender technical advice can be taxing for government organizations, particularly for security agencies in the Middle East. Development practitioners, therefore, must include mentoring as part of the project activities to support the gender unit/gender officers so that they can diffuse gender mainstreaming knowledge and leadership skills after the project ends. This could be done in training of trainer activities for example as they enable participants to know how to share the knowledge gained in trainings to their team members which will sustain the dissemination of gender mainstreaming focused information.