What Is a ‘Woman’ in Women, Peace and Security?

The claim that women are essential to international peace and security seems simultaneously true and normatively unproblematic. After all, feminists know that gender-blind peace is no peace at all. Still, the complex implications of the claim both in theory and in practice show not only empirical nuance but normative intricacy. We focus on one such complexity: the figurations of ‘woman’ in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. We highlight three figurations—woman as proxy for civilian, woman as proxy for peacemaker and woman as proxy for state/nation—to argue that the backlash discourse, which has been discussed in detail in the Introduction to this volume, should scrutinize, among others, positioning of women within the agenda.