Practical
examples - Equal Opportunities
Conquering a new field
Integrating the gender dimension into international missions
"We are committed to integrating the gender dimension into our
international missions", says Major General Anders Lindström from the
Swedish Armed Forces, "and the Genderforce project is helping us to translate
this commitment into a reality." General Lindström is responsible for the
implementation of Resolution 1325 "Women, Peace and Security" which was adopted
by the United Nations in 2000. This resolution calls on all UN member countries
to ensure the equal participation of women, at all decision-making levels, in
conflict resolution and peace processes. It also urges its members to pay
special attention to the impact that armed conflict can have on women.
The Genderforce Development Partnership (DP) is working in this context and
its specific aim is to establish gender equality in Sweden's international
relief operations and peace keeping missions that are designed to assist regions
suffering from natural and human disasters or conflict. Increasing women's
participation is perceived as of crucial importance, as they bring additional
competence and experience and they can also reach out to the female population
in the mission areas and help to ensure the protection of the human rights of
these indigenous women in these difficult or dangerous situations.
Male and female domains joining forces
Initiated and led by the Swedish Armed
Forces, this EQUAL partnership has linked six organisations which are all
concerned with international relief operations and/or peace keeping missions.
Apart from the army three other male domains have joined forces: the
Swedish
Police, the
Swedish Rescue Services Agency and the
Association of Military Officers in Sweden which is a trade union. They
benefit from the gender expertise of the
Kvinna till Kvinna
Foundation, and of
Lottorna, the Swedish Women's Voluntary
Defence Organisation. The foundation is a women's NGO with long-standing
experience and reputation in supporting women in war and armed conflict areas.
Lottorna is the largest of Sweden's 23 auxiliary defence organisations and open
only to women.
The partners have committed themselves to applying the principle of gender
balancing, which means that they aim to increase the number of females at all
levels of hierarchy in the army, police and rescue services. The second
principle that is at the core of all project activities is gender mainstreaming
and this is used to take proper account of the different interests, needs and
realities of women and men when it comes to planning, preparing, implementing
and monitoring the various activities that may be part of an international
mission.
Even if the army, police and rescue services have made special efforts to
improve female access and promotion prospects, they are still a long way from
establishing a gender balance, and this is particularly true for their
international actions. For instance in the Swedish Armed Forces, there are
11.000 officers and roughly the same number of conscripts. Only 4.6 % of both
groups are female, whilst amongst the 7.880 civilian employees, 40 % are women.
Female participation in international service varies depending on the type of
mission and ranges between 4.8% in the case of Liberia and 11.4% in the mission
in Kosovo. Many of these women work in nursing and medical care and very few
have leadership responsibilities.
A strong web of interlinked activities
The radial threads in a spider's web sustain the delicate edifice and in
sub-projects of the DP, gender balancing and gender mainstreaming perform the
same crucial role. These eight sub-projects incorporate a large number of
mutually reinforcing activities that reflect the key aspects of the DP's remit
and include:
- developing strategies for gender-fair recruitment;
- supporting the authorities in organising international missions from a gender
perspective through the provision of new tools for shaping, implementing and
following-up assignments;
- providing the personnel of Swedish international missions with increasing
knowledge about UN resolution 1325 and its practical implications for leaders,
project/mission managers and educators, as well as other staff. (This, in turn,
helps to empower local women in the mission areas as the resolution mentions
offering opportunities for participating in reconstruction projects in an equal
and active manner);
- improving cooperation between military and civilian players in the mission
areas whilst integrating a gender dimension;
- training gender field advisors to enable international missions to apply
gender mainstreaming;
- awareness raising and training of managers and personnel stationed in the
field about trafficking of human beings and its consequences. (This prepares
people in positions of command to enact the established code of conduct for
mission personnel which means ensuring that soldiers or other members of staff
comply with Swedish law. This prohibits the purchasing of sexual services even
when abroad and so personnel have to be prevented from using bars and pubs which
are known to be involved in prostitution and trafficking);
- designing and implementing a Gender Coach Programme for top level
decision-makers from the organisations participating in the DP;
- improving the knowledge of instructors, particularly those from the partner
organisations, but also all other personnel going abroad about gender equality
and women's rights through providing appropriate training modules.
Most partners are involved in the full range of these activities and all of
them take the lead in one or more where they can offer a special expertise or
where they urgently need to change their practices. "Working in partnership
is benefiting everybody", states project manager Cecilia Righammar, "not
only because the partners can learn from each other, but also because of the
existing commonalities which form a solid base for cooperation and ground-breaking." Mariola Gummesson is the Head of Lottorna's
training department and represents her organisation in the DP's steering group,
whilst also being in charge of transnational cooperation. She adds that "this
project is also benefiting from a network of people whose paths have crossed
before and who stick to their gender equality commitments and thus, form a very
cooperative team."
Breaking traditional patterns of recruitment and selection
Increasing women's participation in international missions obviously requires
a thorough consideration of how people are recruited for these operations. What
are the requirements and procedures? Who are the key players in the selection
process? What are the stumbling blocks for women? One of the sub-projects used
questionnaires to determine how many people went abroad, how many had wanted to
go but were not admitted, and what they had perceived as the obstacles.
Unsurprisingly, proportionally more women than men were unsuccessful in their
applications. This was the case for both the relatively short 3 week missions of
the Rescue Services and those of the Armed Forces which last six months. Also,
the results of the survey indicated that, as Mariola Gummesson puts it, "a
lot of informal recruitment" goes on, which means that men recruit other men
from within their personal networks. The process is not at all transparent but
it appears that often security issues are used as the final argument to block
women's involvement. If the leader of a mission claims that security concerns
have priority and already has a team whose members have worked together in a
similar context, then the opportunities for female newcomers are almost
negligible.
Sometimes the way in which job requirements are formulated tends to exclude
women. Anna-Karin Hamrén, the Head of the International Department of the
Swedish Rescue Services Agency, gives an example, "some years ago the
capacity to drive a truck was advertised as the sole requirement for certain
missions and this produced almost entirely male teams. We think that analysing
job contents and reformulating requirements so that more than one skill is
included, could help to open up more functions to women and eventually lead to a
better gender balance." Anna-Karin has conceived a workshop for those who "recruit"
for missions. Over three days, the tasks that are required for a given mission
are analysed and then each workshop participant has to develop a plan for the
fulfilment of these tasks that proactively integrates a gender dimension. Her
goal is that these workshops and all other strategies and tools developed by
Genderforce should become part of the normal training and briefing procedures
for missions of the Swedish Rescue Services Agency.
Lars Hammarstedt, who is responsible for EU Affairs and International
Coordination at the Swedish Police Headquarters, is not content with the number
of female police officers nor with their participation in international service.
"Although this participation almost reflects the official figure of 21 % of
female officers in the police service, it could and should be more, and
this is why we are putting a lot of energy into the sub-project on recruitment."
Lars also feels that "working abroad does not really pay in terms of
career advancement and sometimes you can be seen as a liability when you come
back and nobody is interested in your experiences or values them. This is an
important aspect that must also be addressed by our project."
The DP will organise a conference, in May 2007, to disseminate its strategies
and practices for integrating a gender dimension into personnel policies for
international service and to stimulate further debate amongst key players.
Improved gender equality knowledge is key
Increasing gender knowledge in the partner organisations is another
cross-cutting priority for the DP. Sub-project 5, which is developing the new
profile of a gender equality field advisor, and sub-project 7, which provides
gender coaching for senior managers, both aim to increase awareness raising and
training opportunities for different contexts and levels of the organisational
hierarchy.
Gender equality field advisors
The goal of sub-project 5 is to recruit 20 people from the partner
organisations and to train them as gender equality field advisors or, in other
words, as experts who can ensure that a gender dimension is integrated into the
preparation, implementation and monitoring of international missions. The
members of the sub-project's steering group searched for suitable candidates
within their own organisations. These individuals were then approached and given
time to consider the possibility of working as a coach which most accepted, as
they already had expertise in, and a commitment to, gender equality. After a
week of introductory training, at the beginning of 2007, the participants will
be left on their own with a self-study learning pack to guide them further into
their new field of work. Later in the year, these future gender advisors will
return for additional training, which will then be much more geared to the
gender equality situation in a chosen country and to the specific tasks the
organisations are performing during their missions abroad.
The plan for the future is to offer this kind of training at least once a
year. Anna-Karin Hamrén explains, "so gradually a pool of gender advisors
will be created, a group that will build trust for this new function and,
backed by my Head of Department , in my own organisation, I
trust, that participation in these programmes will become a precondition for
leadership of international missions." Mats Norrman, the Director of
the Genderforce project, who is heading up this sub-project, is seeking to move
things even further as he feels that "promotion inside the Armed Forces
should require knowledge of gender equality and equal opportunities for all and
we should follow the example of the United Kingdom that we learned about through
our transnational exchange."
Gender coaching for the very top
The DP partners are very aware that gender mainstreaming is a top-down
approach and that without strong backing for the Genderforce objectives from the
decision-making level of each organisation, it would be impossible to bring
about lasting change. Thus, the movers and shakers of the coaching sub-project
invested time and energy in identifying leaders and key people in the army, the
police and the Association of Swedish Officers. These leaders were then offered
a personal gender coach for one year to equip them with gender knowledge at a
time, pace and location of their own choosing. The response was encouraging, as
many of these extremely busy people agreed that gender equality was definitely
on the current agenda but admitted that they lacked a solid base of knowledge
and experience. "They have neither time to attend seminars on gender equality,
nor to read books", says Mariola Gummesson "but some were quite pleased
with the prospect of finally being able to ask all the silly questions about
gender equality in the home, in building a career and in the labour market."
As a result of this outreach strategy, 12 high-level candidates were selected
and matched with individual coaches. Most of these coaches were recruited from
outside the partner organisations. They came from JÄMO, the National Equality
Gender Agency, a management consultancy, universities and even a large
enterprise like Volvo. However, there were also a few coaches with gender
expertise that had been acquired in the Armed Forces or the Police. Half of the
group were women and half men, and the clients could choose whether they
preferred a male or female coach, who could be someone from inside or outside
their organisation. In September 2006, the scheme was officially launched with
a seminar during which the "coaching couples" presented themselves and their
aims and expectations. The Head of the Regional Police in Skåne summed up why
most of the "coachees" wished to learn as he felt that "I need to undergo
personal development so that I can move from understanding the very academic
concept of gender mainstreaming to the full capacity of putting it into the
daily practice of my organisation." Four regional Chiefs of Police, one of
them a woman, the two top Executives of the Association of Military Officers and
six Generals, including the Head of Personnel in the Armed Forces, are now being
coached, at least once a month for a full year. A formative evaluation process
is monitoring this learning and the change that it is stimulating.
Mainstreaming: push and pull in balance
Transferring innovative approaches into regular policies and practices
requires both push and pull activities. Whilst the developers of new models must
push to get them adopted as part of mainstream systems, key players who are in
position to make this happen have to actively "pull" the new solutions into the
given policy area which they want to change. For projects, pushing is the only
solution in some circumstances because there is not enough interest on the part
of policy makers to pull. In the case of Genderforce, push and pull are well
balanced. This is mainly due to the fact that Sweden has a National Action Plan
for the implementation of the UN Resolution 1325, and the contribution of the
EQUAL DP is regarded as an integral part of that plan. Regular contacts with the
Department of Defence and the Department of Justice ensure that the relevant key
players are kept well informed about the development and progress of the DP's
different components and thus, can make the maximum use of the project's
achievements.
Each partner has set up an "EQUAL Implementation and Steering Group" to relay
information on current and future activities, to disseminate results and to ease
the way towards the mainstreaming and sustainability of the Genderforce concept
within its organisation. In the Swedish Police, this commitment is closely
linked to this agency's responsibility for sub-project 8, which aims to
establish a solid base of gender knowledge as part of the regular training
offered by participating organisations. Björn Anderson who is leading this
sub-project is the Superintendent of the Swedish Police Academy and also the
president of an NGO named "Men against sexual harassment" whose members are male
police employees, both uniformed and civilian. His experience within the police
force of combating the alarming degree of sexual harassment is an important
element in this developmental work. "Committing men to passing on the message
of no tolerance against sexual harassment to other men is of key importance,"
he says, "in a male dominated culture it needs courage and leadership to do
it and we try to build this up. We avoid communicating a feeling of guilt and
instead we set out clearly what the consequences and sanctions are."
By 2009, Björn expects to have a basic course in place that will cover UN
Resolution 1325, gender equality, women's rights and human rights and also a
training programme for trainers that will address the same topics. "We have
used a first version of the course in Autumn 2006 to train 20 members of
Lottorna who wish to go on international missions. The results are now
being carefully evaluated and, if necessary, the course will be improved. The
idea is to structure it in eight building blocks that learners can take flexibly.
At the same time, we will test and finalise the training of trainers so that, in
the future, all of the partners will be able to offer this education on a
permanent basis."
Another example of successful mainstreaming is the DP's gender field advisor
scheme that is already being replicated by other European Armies in the context
of the
EU mandate in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This operation is aiming
to support the United Nations' Mission (MONUC)
during, and immediately after, the process of national elections. Charlotte
Isaksson, a Gender Expert in the Swedish Army who had been in charge of the
EQUAL project is now seconded as gender advisor to the
German-led Operational Command of this EU mission and is putting into
practice the concepts that have been developed thanks to EQUAL.
Contact
Genderforce Sweden
Cecilia Righammar, Coordinator
Försvarsmakten, FÖRBE PERS
SE-10785 Stockholm
Tel.: + 46 788 77 45
Mobile: +46 (0)70-2174653
E-mail: cecilia.righammar@mil.se
Website: http://www.genderforce.se/
Link to EQUAL data base description:
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