Power and resistance in the field of female UN peacekeepers deployment

About 20 years ago, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 (October 2000) that was supposed to be a turning point in terms of recognizing women’s specific experiences in violent conflict and making room for them in peacekeeping, conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction. Many European countries have been and remain very supportive of what came to be known as the “Women, peace and security” agenda. However, headways towards the implementation of the objectives are still piecemeal. Drawing on the literature on international norms and how norms can be appropriated and/or resisted, this paper intends to understand the complex and multidimensional reasons behind the slow pace of change, especially with regard to the deployment of female peacekeepers in UN missions. After an overview of the rationale behind the willingness to deploy more female peacekeepers, the paper will offer a quantitative analysis of evolutions as to show which (European) countries are doing most in that field. It will then investigate the political and socio-cultural factors that are usually identified as obstacles. This would lay the ground for the questioning of often Western and European-promoted recipes for increasing the number of female UN peacekeepers. Focusing notably on the French-speaking actors (in both the Global North and South), the paper will shed new light on differing understandings of, discourses on, and practices around the norm and to ponder whether the promotion of women’s participation in peacekeeping entails subtle forms of power being exerted on both troop contributing countries and their female blue helmets