Nalani Tyrrell and Joan Johnson-Freese

Washington is littered with strategies covering everything from cyber, nuclear, and space to a national strategy to promote the health of honey bees. Some strategies get more attention than others, with a nexus to the National Security Strategy a fast track to prominence. Will the NSS get serious about women, peace and security?

Inclusive diversity means every individual’s voice is welcome and their talents are fully utilized.

In 2019, the United States released a National Strategy on Women, Peace & Security as a follow up to the 2017 bipartisan passage of the Women, Peace and Security Act. That Act and subsequent strategies at the national and organizational levels are aimed at implementing  the Women, Peace, and Security framework codified in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000. Women, Peace, and Security provides a framework for inclusive diversity and gendered perspectives in security considerations and decision-making. Inclusive diversity means every individual’s voice is welcome and their talents are fully utilized. Gendered perspectives are about the need to consider how policies and actions affect girls, boys, women and men.

Because many individuals, including security practitioners, have never heard of it or they believe it deals only with such women’s issues as education, health care, child care, and food security rather than hard security issues like war, the implementation of the Women, Peace, and Security framework has been slow. As COVID-19 has shown, there is no such thing as women’s issues. All Americans—men, women, boys and girls—have been affected by school closings, job losses, lack of child care availability and grocery store shortages. Women’s concerns are everyone’s concerns and while COVID-19 is not a war in the traditional sense, it is a significant strategic challenge and a fight of a different variety. Wars and pandemics can become  gendered human activities. During COVID 19, women lost four times more jobs than men, with three-quarters of all U.S. health care workers being women, and 70% of hard-hit nursing home residents being women.

Given that the Biden administration is the most diverse in U.S. history, the time is right to get serious about Women, Peace, and Security implementation.

A 2018 study found considerable foot-dragging from the military and other agencies charged with Women, Peace, and Security implementation. Given that the Biden administration is the most diverse in U.S. history, the time is right to get serious about Women, Peace, and Security implementation. This will require everyone understanding the advantages that implementation offers, for buy-in, and gender mainstreaming within security communities.

A Thin Margin of Excellence

The argument supporting diversity in the business world has become overwhelming. Inclusive diversity yields undeniable benefits based on the different perspectives, modes of problem-solving and communication, and information that minorities bring. Higher profit margins can overcome cultural resistance and push some of the old guard aside. However, in security circles, there are no such profit and loss columns—only entrenched policies and practices that support both status quo personnel choices and modes of communication and problem-solving.

Women offer the thin margin of excellence that makes all the difference.

The latest substantive pushback to Women, Peace and Security in security circles, particularly the military, is that the Women, Peace and Security framework is relevant primarily to counterinsurgency campaigns—winning hearts and minds. The Pentagon, however, sees itself  instead now facing a Great Power Competition—the US versus China and Russia—as evidenced in everything from War College curricula to the creation of a Space Force. A 2020 article on Great Power Competition published by the Modern War Institute used an analogy with the National Football League to highlight that Great Power Competition is actually about the rise in parity among competitors. The “edge” the United States has over competitors has become smaller. Consequently “wins” are often by very thin margins. America cannot afford to discount or squander any advantage it might have at a time of Great Power competition, and must use Women, Peace, and Security implementation to capitalize on advantages offered by 50% of the population.

Recognizing that women are already security assets, not just passive bystanders, is part of the Women, Peace, and Security framework.

What can women offer in an era of Great Power Competition? Women offer the thin margin of excellence that makes all the difference. In an 2020 interview, former CIA operative Gina Helt noted, "In some cultures, being female can be an advantage and a bit disarming… Patriarchal cultures don't expect women to know anything about their [foreign] culture, politics, or history… I found men overseas were more willing to talk to me, to talk to a woman who took the opportunity to learn about them—it was really disarming." Nada Bakos recounts her career as a CIA counterterrorism analyst in her 2019 book The Targeter. Bakos highlights conventionally feminine qualities such as attention to detail, understanding the intricacies of patterns and relationships, a heightened perception of risk to outmaneuvering, and listening skills to discern motivations and vulnerabilities of others that are an alternative, more accurate, and a more effective means of getting things done. Recognizing that women are already security assets, not just passive bystanders, is part of the Women, Peace, and Security framework.

…women working in fields including space, nuclear strategy, cyber and disinformation provide insights potentially unrecognized or overlooked, and help dispel worn-put assumptions.

The importance of considering gendered perspectives is not relevant only to intelligence and human security issues. Joana Cook points out in her 2020 book A Woman’s Place: US Counterterrorism Since 9/11 how assumptions of “dangerous men” and “helpless women” initially inhibited American ability to formulate appropriate and effective counterterrorism policies. While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are or may soon be behind the United States, domestic terrorism is rising, and there are important lessons that can be learned from dealings abroad. Removing or making it harder to access extremist venues of communication among themselves and larger audiences on the internet, and designating groups as terrorists to criminalize those who associate with them are tactics that have been used before to tamp down terrorist activities and can be used again. Further, women working in fields including space, nuclear strategy, cyber and disinformation provide insights potentially unrecognized or overlooked, and help dispel worn-out assumptions.

As women who have worked in the space security field for decades, it has been women who regularly raise diplomacy into male-dominated strategy discussions that too often focus on hardware and warfighting plans, neither of which will address the number one security threat in space—debris. How policy and actions affect women in these areas is regularly also overlooked. The ramifications to democracy of women attracting both more followers and more threats and trolls on social media, for example, has been largely neglected by analysts and the security community.

The United States has a Great Power Competition advantage it can exploit. At the annual Security Council open debate in 2020, Russia with support from China “challenged the broad consensus on the Women, Peace, and Security agenda and positioned itself as a power supporting the traditional role of women.” Ironically, China is already experiencing a security issue caused by not recognizing the relationship between gender and security. China’s one-child policy and policy to raise the education level of its population resulted in fewer girl children, families favoring male children through sex-selective abortions and femicide, and more girls opting for education rather than early marriage. Both have resulted in a population imbalance of surplus males with few options for marriage and families. They call these men “bare branches” and being less tied to society, more susceptible to violent and destabilizing lifestyles.

Structural gender discrimination also remains a problem in both Russia and China. As of 2020, 11% of China’s civil service jobs are still advertised as men only. Russia too has a long list of men only jobs. Policies and practices that discriminate against women will create issues regarding both filling workforce positions and fully utilizing all available workforce talent. Both Russia and China are backsliding into traditional patriarchal ways. The United States, has laws, strategies, implementation plans and for gender mainstreaming, it just needs to do it.

Moving Beyond the Old Guard

The Central Intelligence Agency, as an example, has made notable progress in some areas, specifically women in leadership positions, yet it is still a long way from being able to declare it has successfully achieved inclusive diversity. Created in 1947 and dominated by Ivy League gentlemen, CIA recruitment, retention and advancements focused then and now more on pedigree than character, integrity, and life-experiences as relevant to addressing the challenges facing the agency and the nation. This shortcoming creates a glaring vulnerability in an international, adversarial landscape that rarely features white, Christian males—even though white, Christian males comprise most of the workforce at the organization.

Unfortunately, the Old Guard—conservative, older, status-quo oriented and most often white male members of a group—is entrenched in most security-related organizations, including intelligence. To date, CIA efforts at diversity appear more focused on demographic boxing-checking than true inclusive diversity. If inclusive diversity is the goal, and reports, studies, commissions, and the agency itself say that it is, then the agency must match action to rhetoric regarding the breadth of its diversity issue, diversity bottlenecks, and change policies and procedures that perpetuate the old guard.

On January 4, 2021, the CIA introduced a revamped recruitment website aimed at not only drawing in qualified Americans to the storied agency but placing a particular emphasis on targeting more women and minority applicants. The campaign followed a series of studies, all reaching the same conclusion: American intelligence agencies generally lack diversity. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence Annual Demographic Report 2019 reported that minorities made up only 26.9% of the United States Intelligence community workforce, but touting that statistic as a success—an increase from the previous year’s 26.5%.

Diversity comes in many varieties: sex, race, ethnicity, religion, gender identification, and sexual-orientation among them. In 2019, three women held top positions at the CIA: Gina Haspel as the agency’s first director, Elizabeth Kimber as deputy director of operations, and Cynthia “Didi” Rapp in the top analyst position. It should be noted, though, that it was Haspel who promoted Kimber and Rapp. Haspel promoted women to top positions, but that doesn’t mean she changed the organizational culture or removed all the institutionalized mid-level roadblocks that have affected women and other minorities. To use military jargon, it is most common for “ducks to pick ducks.”

Conclusion

Douglas London wrote about his 30-year experience with religion-based bias after leaving the agency in 2019. Though he acknowledges positive change over the years, he says the depth of change appears thin: “The self-congratulatory comments I’ve seen on social media of late from former CIA colleagues affirming the agency’s positive diversity record comes largely from those who rose to their heights in the discriminatory system that facilitated their success. The ‘star chamber’ of cronyism, steeped in common backgrounds and experiences of the service’s leadership, remains well-entrenched.”

Representative Terri Sewell chaired a hearing on diversity and inclusion in the intelligence community before the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in May 2019. During that meeting, Representative Sewell noted the lack of emphasis on diversity from top intelligence leaders. While invitations were extended to the senior-most intelligence agency leaders, none appeared. “Visions starts from the top. Commitment starts from the top,” Sewell reprimanded. She noted that intelligence directors participated in diversity hearings in years past, and was “disappointed” that none appeared to discuss the topic in 2019. Good intentions have so far proven not enough to diversify the intelligence community. Committed leadership to programs and policies is also necessary.

Leadership at all security related organizations must—perhaps for the first time—read and commit to implementation of the Women, Peace and Security framework for entrenched policies and practices to change.

During the May 2019 House Intelligence hearing, more transparent strategies in granting security clearances, clear feedback from promotion boards, and more blind hiring practices were raised by intelligence community representatives for implementation within the intelligence community. Those procedures, and committed leadership at every level, will further promote inclusive diversity in the intelligence community. The military should make similarly appropriate efforts as well, as cogently pointed out by a female member of the Air Force cyber warriors team, else risk an even bigger shortage of cyber specialists than already expected.

Leadership at all security related organizations must—perhaps for the first time—read and commit to implementation of the Women, Peace and Security framework for entrenched policies and practices to change. They must understand and assure their subordinates do as well, that implementation of the Women, Peace and Security framework is not a “nice thing to do” but a 21st century security imperative. Including it in the National Security Strategy is a good way to assure that happens.

Nalani Tyrrell is an officer in the United States Army. The positions stated do not represent the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Joan Johnson-Freese is a professor at the Naval War College and teaches Women, Peace and Security at Harvard Extension and Summer Schools. She is the author of Women, Peace & Security: An Introduction. The positions stated do not represent the views of the Naval War College, the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: Tampa, Florida, 2021 (Senior Airman Ashley Perdue).