What You Will Find in this Guide

A team of analysts at New America brought experience in journalism, security policy, media analysis, and messaging to take an extensive look at how the U.S. national security community and elite influencers understand the WPS agenda and perceive its core intellectual constructs. Our research included polling, in-depth interviews, and media analysis. 

This toolkit marshals that research to help us better understand which messages cut through the noise, which slide through the cracks, and why.

1. Lost in Translation

In Lost in Translation, we share nine hidden assumptions that often shape and misshape security policy. A few examples: 

• Many experts believed that the word “gender” is synonymous with “women,” and that gender-blindness when formulating policy is a virtue. 
• They felt that bringing a woman or two into a policy conversation was enough to make sure they had checked the “women’s issues” box. 

2. Dissecting the Story

In Dissecting the Story, we analyze how common policymaker assumptions and frames can appear in the media and map the most common ways that women are represented in a peace and security context. 

• For three months in fall 2016, we catalogued search results for terms such as “Iraq + women” or “Afghanistan + women + peace” in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal to discover patterns in reporting on gender and conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and South Sudan. 
• Women were under-represented as political actors in our sampling of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, with media outlets intermittently representing women as politicians, social activists, protestors, or members of women’s advocacy groups. Only 5 percent of articles in our sampling of the Washington Post, for example, featured women as activists, union leaders, protesters, politicians, or members of women’s advocacy groups, and none of the articles in this sampling featured women as peacekeepers. 
• Across all publications in our sampling, South Sudanese women were represented almost exclusively in terms of sexual violence. 

3. Changing the Conversation

In Changing the Conversation, we suggest a series of best practices for dialogue with and within the U.S. national security establishment.  

• Our policymaker interviews suggested that terminology such as “Women, Peace and Security,” “Inclusive security,” and “Gender mainstreaming” was little-known and often misunderstood.  Don’t rely on this shorthand. Rather, communicate exactly what you want in a particular context, such as: “analyzing how policies affect people of different genders differently.” 
• “Participation/empowerment.” The idea of empowerment—although it is standard-issue in the development policy world—is less well understood among security analysts or the general public. Participation and empowerment themselves are not first-tier goals for security agencies and thus will be less compelling even when understood—unless connected to stability and security outcomes that are the job of security interlocutors.

4. Conclusion of Curiosity

Finally,  in Conclusion of Curiosity, we identify questions that require more research and dialogue both inside and outside the community.

Download – What You Will Find in This Guide