Gender and Global Security

This chapter interrogates the gendered dimensions of security, examining how dominant security ideologies and militarized practices rest on gendered divisions of violence productive of the crisis of insecurity. It identifies three interrelated components: the underlying assumptions of gendered security ideologies, their differential impacts on various social groups in multiple geographical locations, and the systemic consequences that entrench direct and structural violence. It critiques how international institutions and state actors often instrumentalize gender, constructing women as natural victims and peacebuilders, without providing material support or political power, thereby reinforcing gendered divisions of violence. By excavating women’s and men’s roles in militaries, political violence, and peace processes, it illustrates how militarization, including under the guise of peacekeeping, humanitarianism, or cybersecurity, perpetuates colonial and patriarchal structures. In the contemporary moment, it observes the remasculinization of US security policy under the second Trump administration, marked by hyper-nationalism, imperial ambition, and the erosion of human rights and gender equity. The retreat from multilateralism and human security is framed as part of a broader neoauthoritarian project that privileges elite masculinist interests. Nevertheless, the chapter affirms the potential of feminist worldviews to challenge war and all forms of violence, advocating for solidarity-based, inclusive approaches for gender-just security.