NEW BOOKS

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1. Catherine Wanner (ed.) (2024) Dispossession. Routledge: New York. Series Title: Anthropology of Now, Series Editor: Jack David Eller.
   This edited collection offers insights into the ways people caught in war must adapt to survive in changing circumstances. These experiences are tied together, Wanner argues, through various processes of dispossession, whether of land, culture, economic resources, or national identity itself. Of particular note is Tamara Martsenyuk’s chapter on ‘Women and Gender Equality in the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ (pp. 208 - 224), which explores the rapid changes in social acceptance of and demand for female military recruits in the Ukrainian Armed Forces since 2022.
   Available as an open access PDF.

2. A. Mihr and Chiara Pierobon (eds.) (2024) Polarization, Shifting Borders and Liquid Governance: Studies on Transformation and Development in the OSCE Region.
   
   ‍Pierobon’s own chapter within her edited volume assesses how European states' Feminist Foreign Policies have fared under threat of war from Russia. “Shaping German Feminist Foreign Policy in Times of Conflict in Ukraine” (pages 285 - 300).
   Available as an open access PDF.
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3. ‍Kemedjio, C., Lynch, C. (eds) (2024) Who Gives to Whom? Reframing Africa in the Humanitarian Imaginary. Culture and Religion in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
   
   ‍Carrie Reiling offers a chapter entitled “How West African Women “Save” the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda”, in which she argues that it is local women’s organisations who give value to UN and governmental peacebuilding and humanitarian agendas, such as Women, Peace & Security (WPS), rather than the reverse.
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4. Teresa Hiergeist, Stefanie Schäfer (eds.) (2024) Ladies in Arms Women, Guns, and Feminisms in Contemporary Popular Culture, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld.
   Available as an open access PDF.
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   Drawing on a range of academic fields, from film studies to musicology, the contributors to this fascinating and highly readable collection examine portrayals of women and weaponry in contemporary culture. The subjects of analysis range across time periods, as well as geographic location, including an 18th Century French revolutionary, Chilean resistance fighters, and 21st Century hip hop artists' portrayals of gang warfare. Taken together, they raise pertinent questions about when and how we choose to remember, fictionalise or invent stories of female violence and what this says about gender expectations more widely in 2024.
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5. Vjosa Musliu & Itziar Mujika Chao (eds.) (2024) Feminist Encounters in Statebuilding: The Role of Women in Making the State in Kosovo. Routledge.
   
   ‍This edited volume draws together the stories and experiences of women living through conflict and reconstruction in Kosovo. From female combatants and women activists erased from collective memory to the gendered expectations of the newly independent state, the authors demonstrate how women’s lives underpin and reflect the fate of their war-torn homeland.

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KEY REPORTS

1. Charles T. Hunt (2024) Specialized Police Teams in UN Peace Operations: A Survey of Progress and Challenge
   
   ‍An analysis of Specialised Police Teams within UN Peace Operations, including how they can make “outsized contributions to cross-cutting agendas such as women, peace, and security”. Hunt comments specifically on the need to increase female officer inclusion in these specialised teams to diversify perspectives and improve public engagement.
   
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2. Miriam Mona Mukalazi (2024) Security Radar 2023: Spotlight on the Gender Knowledge Gap in Security Policies
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   This study of public attitudes in France, Germany and Poland, found that women disproportionally give the response 'I don't know' to questions focused on security issues. Mukalazi terms this imbalance in responses between men and women the 'Security Knowledge Gap' and she uses this report to examine the factors which may cause the disparity and to propose some approaches for change.
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3. ‍Ornella Moderan (2023) Mainstreaming of Women’s Needs and Participation in Security Sector Reform Processes in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Peace and Security
   
   ‍Although Moderan highlights some inspiring and hope-filled examples of women doing excellent work in the security sectors of these 3 countries, the outlook remains bleak. High levels of stigmatisation and deeply-entrenched societal barriers to women's participation and protection continue to slow change and inhibit improvements.

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OPEN ACCESS ARTICLES

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1. Katharine A M Wright, Annika Bergman Rosamond (2024) “Sweden, NATO and gendered silences on Feminist Foreign Policy”, in International Affairs, vol. 100, issue 2, March, pp 580-607. 
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   ‍In this analysis Wright and Rosamond assess the various narratives promoted by NATO and Sweden surrounding their respective Women, Peace and Security strategies. Ultimately, they find that even when a country like Sweden has defined its security persona around Feminist Foreign Policy, this is no guarantee that gender-sensitive security policies will be maintained in the face of an immediate threat to the nation - such as that posed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
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2. Heidi Hudson & Diana Højlund Madsen (2024) "The Politics of Space and Relationality: Localization and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Uganda", in Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.
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   It takes until well into the second half of this article for the authors to finally push past the tangled web of esoteric concepts and jargon-filled theory that dominates the first 10 pages. A perseverant reader is rewarded in the later part of the piece with some interesting details of various community practices in Uganda which the authors identify as women's active contributions to violence reduction and the wider aims of WPS. Had more article space and analytical attention been devoted to these daily practices by real Ugandans, this article could have offered a much stronger contribution to gender-sensitive security studies.
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3. Amnon Aran & Klaus Brummer (2024) “Feminist foreign policy in Israel and Germany? The Women, Peace, and Security agenda, development policy, and female representation” in European Journal of International Security.‍
   
   How does a country's outwardly-projected identity in the international arena affect its ability to adopt Feminist Foreign Policy? This is the core question posed by Aran and Brummer in their latest article for the European Journal of International Security. Through a close analysis of published security policy, international development policy, and women's presence in key governmental appointments, the authors demonstrate that this is indeed the case, though explicitly feminist policy agendas are also directly influenced by party politics and institutional autonomy.
   
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4. Nataliia Lomonosova & Anna Provan (2024) "Build Back Better for Everyone: A Feminist Perspective on Reconstruction and Recovery of Ukraine". Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy CFFP & Friedrich Ebert Stiftung
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   This policy brief draws on extensive interviews, workshops and other collaborations with Ukrainian feminist organisations in 2023 and offers a road map for successful economic reconstruction in the Ukrainian context.
   Available in English and Ukrainian.
   
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5. Sujit Lahiry (2024) “Gender-human security interface: critical perspectives with special reference to India”, Discover Global Society. Vol. 2. Springer Link.
   
   Lahiry offers an introduction to the concepts of human security and gender in the Indian socio-political context, ultimately concluding that "gender security is essentially entwined with the seven aspects of human security—i.e., economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security and political security".
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6. ‍Luissa Vahedi, Sabine Lee, Stephanie Etienne, Sandrine Lusamba & Susan A. Bartels (2024) “Peacekeepers and Local Women and Girls: A Comparative Mixed Methods Analysis of Local Perspectives from Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo”, International Peacekeeping. Routledge.
   
   This mixed methods study uses the innovative survey design tool SenseMaker® to collect data on perceptions of peacekeepers among Congolese and Haitian women. The survey tool allows them to gather far more nuanced data than traditional survey methods and indicates how advances in research tools may impact on our understandings of conflict zones and our ability to accurately communicate the experiences of large groups without reliance on anecdotal evidence of one or two study participants.
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7. ‍Míla O'Sullivan, Women, Peace and Security as deterrence? NATO and Russia's war against Ukraine, International Affairs, Volume 100, Issue 2, March 2024, pp. 549–568.
   
   O'Sullivan's article asks if it is possible to move beyond the traditional idea of military deterrence in favour of a more holistic vision. Since she defines Russia's invasion of Ukraine as "both a gendered conflict at NATO's borders and a contestation of democratic values, including gender equality", she argues that a stong NATO commitment to WPS policy and practice could act as a deterrent to 'anti-gender', illiberal, and misogynistic regimes.
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8. ‍Miriam Mona Mukalazi, Fennet Habte (2024) “Challenging eurocentrism in European feminist foreign policies”, EUIdeas, March.
   
   In a timely think piece for the website EU Ideas, Mukalazi and Habte draw attention to various Western assumptions that go unquestioned in current versions of Feminist Foreign Policy. Picking out inconsistencies in Germany's international actions and policies, the authors demonstrate how a lip-service to Feminist Foreign Policy agenda within development aid without parallel implementation across governmental policy results in limited effectiveness and, fundamentally, hypocrisy.
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9. Maryruth Belsey Priebe (2024) “Women Parliamentarians’ Impact in Indo-Pacific Gender-Responsive and Climate-Compatible Security Policy Making”, Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs: US Air Force Journal.
   
   ‍Priebe's analysis of highlights some important discrepancies between climate and gender policies internationally. Notably, Priebe finds that 53% of Nationally Determined Contributions (climate policy plans) account for gender factors, while only 26% of WPS National Action Plans mention climate considerations. This has serious consequences for peace and security given the major role of climate change-triggered resource scarcity in conflict.
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10. Mariame Tata Fofana & Amenan Elise Euphemie Kouadio (2024) “Femmes dans la gendarmerie de Daloa : entre intégration formelle, barrières invisibles et stratégies de résilience" Collection Pluraxes/Monde: Editions Francophones Universitaires d’Afrique .
    
    This article examines the experiences and challenges of women in the gendarmerie police force of Cote d'Ivoire. As in other nations around the world, stereotypes and institutional barriers persist in the force, inhibiting women's professional progression. Interviews with female officers reveal the many and varied ways in which women in the force adopt "resistance strategies" to overcome the barriers of their hostile working environment.
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Literature Review compiled by Alice MacLeod.