The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda, to include
U.S. strategic guidance and U.N. Security Council Resolutions,
has put the need to integrate gender perspectives into military
institutions and operations at the forefront of discussions by
the military gender community of experts, practitioners and
military personnel.
The 2011 and 2016 U.S. National Action plans both stated
that DOD needed to “Ensure all relevant U.S. personnel and
contractors receive appropriate training on Women, Peace, and
Security issues, including instruction on the value of inclusive
participation in conflict prevention, peace processes, and secu-
rity initiatives, international human rights law and international
humanitarian law, protection of civilians, prevention of Sexual
and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), prevention of sexual ex-
ploitation and abuse (SEA), and combat¬ing trafficking in per-
sons (TIP).” 1 Seven of the UN Security Council Resolutions
on WPS also state the need for training. The twin challenges of
developing new curricula and teaching materials on gender and
on WPS, and integrating gender dimensions across all military
education and training is a dilemma presented to trainers and
educators.
This dilemma is not one only the U.S. faces, but is a concern of
the WPS/gender community around the world. The Nordic
Center for Gender in Military Operations (NCGM) was desig-
nated as the NATO Department Head for Gender Training in
2013. The Center delivers courses for Key Leaders, Command-
ing Officers, Gender Advisors and Gender Trainers. Since the
courses are conducted in Sweden where only a few can attend
each year, the SSR and Education and Development Working
Groups of the Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense
Academies and Security Studies Institutes (PfPC) conducted
a series of workshops on gender training and education. These
activities demonstrated there is a need to strengthen both the
capacity of educators to integrate gender in their work and
the capacity of military gender experts to deliver educational
content. Workshop participants expressed the need for more
materials and resources to support the building of faculty and
gender experts’ on the integration of gender in military educa-
tion. The final product of the workshops was a handbook titled
“Teaching Gender in the Military” published in 2016. 2
Until recently, much of the training on gender within the U.S.
military has been externally delivered and/or ad-hoc. There
certainly has been a significant need to institutionalize and
improve gender-related training and education within the
U.S. military, but this is difficult to do without requirements
or resources. With the passing of the WPS Act of 2017, 3 the
requirement for training within the strategy no longer makes
it an option. The Act states “The Secretary of Defense shall
ensure that relevant personnel receive training, as appropriate,
in the following areas: (1) Training in conflict prevention, peace
processes, mitigation, resolution, and security initiatives that
specifically addresses the importance of meaningful partici-
pation by women. (2) Gender considerations and meaningful
participation by women, including training regarding—(A)
international human rights law and international humanitarian
law, as relevant; and (B) protecting civilians from violence, ex-
ploitation, and trafficking in persons. (3) Effective strategies and
best practices for ensuring meaningful participation by women. 4
The development of the curricula and teaching materials on
gender and on WPS remains a challenge due to limited resourc-
es, but through fortunate circumstances of people in the right
place at the right time, this effort is slowly coming to fruition.
In addition to the Teaching Gender in the Military Handbook,
the PfP Consortium was instrumental in the development
of the first computer based online training course on Gender
Awareness. This course titled “Improving Operational Effective-
ness by Integrating Gender Perspective” was initially based only
on the NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT) Joint
Advanced Distributed Learning ( JADL) Management System.
However, the course is now hosted on Joint Knowledge Online
Office ( JKO), allowing easier access for U.S. military personnel,
any civilian with a common access card, foreign military mem-
bers, and anyone else that could be sponsored by a government
member. JKO recently updated this course making it more in-
teractive for students. JKO also hosts the updated “Role of the
Gender Advisor” course. The ability to access this course allows
members being assigned this role an initial place to learn more
about this position prior to attending an in-residence program.
Based upon attendance at and access to the in-residence course
materials presented in the Australian Defence Force Gender
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