Norwegian Male Officers and Their View of the WPS Agenda: An Optic for Understanding Backlash?

Bæk and Skjelsbæk provide insights into how the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) norms are understood, used and shaped by male officers in the Norwegian Armed Forces. The chapter suggests that there is a particular form of backlash inadvertently articulated by these officers, based on relevance rather than rejection, resistance and assault. The WPS agenda is simply not relevant or meaningful to them in many of their everyday work practices. The relationship between the WPS norms and other military norm sets remains frictional and partly unresolved. The WPS agenda seems to be perceived as a ‘natural’ part of Norwegian identity by several interviewees. Upholding the aims and ambitions of the agenda is mostly seen as important in overseas environments dominated by traditional gender norms and interaction with the ‘other’.