Is maritime security gender-blind?

Abstract

Contemporary maritime security challenges such as maritime piracy, Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing and fisheries crimes, significantly affect communities and individuals. Utilising a gender lens and a more holistic approach that highlights the land-sea nexus in contemporary maritime insecurities, this article transcends existing stereotypes and prevailing assumptions surrounding the masculine character of the maritime domain, to examine how both women and men are affected in this context. The article conducts a gender analysis and mapping of women’s and men’s roles as (maritime) security providers, as well as victims and crime perpetrators through two developed case studies, namely of maritime piracy in Somalia and IUU fishing and fisheries crimes in Indonesia. Key findings of the analysis indicate that a clear relationship and established links exist between gender and maritime security studies. Both women and men have a role to play as security providers, victims and crime perpetrators in the context of contemporary maritime security challenges, but geographical spaces and maritime zone delimitations largely define the ways in which they are currently affected. It finally identifies the need to better integrate the land-sea nexus in contemporary maritime security to improve our understanding of existing challenges and inform / change prevailing cultures and stereotypes surrounding the role of gender within this context.