READING & REFERENCES
Brand new, relevant publications.
Reviewed every quarter.
2024 First Quarter (January - March)
2023 Fourth Quarter (October - December)
2023 Third Quarter (July - September)
2023 Second Quarter (April - June)
2023 First Quarter (January - March)
2022 Fourth Quarter (October - December)
2022 Third Quarter (July - September)
2022 Second Quarter (April - June)
Key Books on Women in Security
1. The Women, Peace, and Security Agenda
2. Women in Armed Conflict
3. Women in Foreign Policy and Security Leadership
4. Historical Perspectives: Women providing security through the ages
1. Women, Peace, and Security
Christine Chinkin (2022) Women, Peace and Security and International Law, Cambridge University Press
In 2016 Christine Chinkin used her Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture at Cambridge University to examine the relationship between the WPS Agenda and international law. A recording of the lectures can be viewed here. This published version of her legal scholarship is an important contribution to the future of gender-sensitive human rights.
Soumita Basu, Paul Kirby and Laura J. Shepherd (ed.s) (2020) New Directions in Women, Peace and Security, University of Bristol Press
A core text on the WPS Agenda today, providing a good overview illustrated with a range of geographic and thematic case studies.
Laura J. Shepherd (2021) Narrating the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: Logics of Global Governance, Oxford University Press.
Shepherd examines the collected narratives surrounding the WPS Agenda as it exists today and how these might point to future developments in the field.
Sara E. Davies & Jacqui True (ed.s) (2018) The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security, Oxford University Press
This edited handbook offers the most up-to-date overview of the WPS Agenda in all its forms. Recommended reading for those new to the topic and its applications internationally.
Fionnuala Ni Aoláin, Dina Francesca Haynes & Naomi Cahn (2011) On the Frontlines: Gender, War, and the Post-Conflict Process, Oxford University Press.
The authors address the gendered effects of war and the need to integrate understandings of gender dynamics in post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation processes for successful and sustainable peacebuilding.
Aroussi, Sahla (2015) Women, Peace, and Security: Repositioning gender in peace agreements, Intersentia.
A detailed assessment of the first 15 years of the UN WPS Agenda since the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1325.
2. Women in Armed Conflict
Ayelet Harel-Shalev & Shir Daphna-Tekoah (2019) Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies: A Gendered Analysis of Women in Combat, Oxford University Press.
This innovative work uses Israeli servicewomen’s experiences to bring female soldiers’ perspectives into the contemporary discussion of armed conflict. A key recent study in this understudied area.
Sabrina Karim & Kyle Beardsley (2017) Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping: Women, Peace, and Security in Post-Conflict States, Oxford University Press.
The most detailed and wide-ranging assessment of gender representation in UN peacekeeping today. Karim and Beardsley set out a clear overview of historical developments in peacekeeping and illustrate their points with examples from a range of missions, focusing particularly on Liberia.
Fionnuala Ni Aoláin, Naomi Cahn, Dina Francesca Haynes & Nahla Valji (ed.s) (2017) The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict, Oxford University Press.
An edited volume collecting together diverse perspectives of academics and practitioners on humanitarian intervention, WPS, conflict resolution, arms trading and refugee displacement.
3. Women in Foreign Policy and Security Leadership
Bashevkin, Sylvia (2018) Women as Foreign Policy Leaders: National Security and Gender Politics in Superpower America, Oxford University Press.
Bashevkin’s study of 4 recent female US foreign ministers comprehensively debunks the myth that women are inherently pacifist and examines their diverse approaches to military and political leadership in the modern era.
Berry, Marie E. (2018) War, Women, and Power: From Violence to Mobilization in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambridge University Press.
Berry’s study of two nations haunted by recent genocidal violence reveals the ways in which the turbulence of war can influence women’s political participation and societal influence in post-conflict reconstruction.
4. Historical Perspectives: Women providing Security through the Ages
Cothran, Boyd, Judge, Joan, and Shubert, Adrian (2021) Women Warriors and National Heroes: Global Histories, Bloomsbury
This anthology is the first international comparative study of female warriors across time and space. The analysis reveals how depictions of women and war are woven together into the very fabric of contemporary nationhood with reverberations continuing into the present day.
Archer, Emerald M. (2019) Women, Warfare and Representation: American Servicewomen in the Twentieth Century
Although this study of servicewomen is centred on US experiences, Archer incorporates comparative elements to examine how women have been integrated into a range of western militaries over the course of the last 100 years.
Fell, Alison, F. (2018) Women as Veterans in Britain and France after the First World War, Cambridge University Press.
Fell offers a rare discussion of women’s self presentation as veterans of the war of 1914-1918, arguing that women used masculine-connoted military identities to enhance their influence in interwar society.
