Locating Feminist Progress in Professional Military Education

Vanessa Brown

doi:10.7202/1076198ar

Abstract

A continuing debate in feminist scholarship on gender, security, and the military has been whether militaries can facilitate feminist progress and be forces for good. Feminists committed to working outside of militaries note that gender perspectives have often been used to advance the military’s goals of winning wars rather than commitments to feminist social transformation of military institutions and societies. However, influences from international normative frameworks on Women, Peace and Security; Canada’s feminist foreign policy; and an emphasis on diversity and inclusion within Canada’s Defence Policy have presented the Canadian Armed Forces with a solid platform from which it has begun to make change. The central tenets of this broad feminist platform have begun to permeate Canadian Professional Military Education (PME) through the collective efforts of educators, staff, and military students at Canada’s defence colleges. Drawing on a review of policy and programmes as well as a qualitative analysis of interviews with educators, staff, and military students, the article demonstrates that feminist transformational change by military members is possible by exploring its nascent reality. The article highlights the challenges and benefits of incorporating feminist perspectives in Canadian PME and demonstrates how and under what conditions military graduates with this education have begun to apply gender and cultural learning to make local feminist interventions both within and outside their institution. Ultimately, this research shows that collective efforts toward localized and incremental changes by military members are paving the way for meaningful feminist progress within the military.

Highlights

A continuing debate in feminist scholarship on gender, security, and the military has been whether militaries can facilitate feminist progress and be forces for good
I posit that military members can be important agents for change when: they become aware of and work to con front masculinist institutional norms and oppressive intersectional social orders (Razack 2004; Taber 2015); they commit to a process of “regendering” to redefine the soldierly identity as inclusive of femininities, mas culinities, women, men, and nonbinary people, as well as racialized, sexual, and linguistic diversity (Duncanson and Woodward 2016); they reframe pro fessionalism around principles of recognition, equality, empathy, care, and respect (Ibid.); and they examine and work to address inequalities within the military, domestically and internationally
I employed multiple methods to conduct this research. e initial stages of research included information col lection on policy guiding the integration of gender and cultural perspectives in Professional Military Education (PME) and a review of cur riculum, learning outcomes, evaluation/assessment guides, and syllabi to uncover the extent to which gender and cultural perspectives have been integrated into Joint Command and Staff Programme (JCSP). e following stages comprised Critical Discourse Analysis (Dijk 1993) of the semistructured interviews I conducted in the form of focus groups and individual interviews (DeschauxBeaume 2012)

Summary

Methods

My methodological approach intentionally aimed to advance gender equality and antiracism in the process of conducting research. Drawing from a review of primary literature as well as qualitative indepth interviews and focus groups, my investigation was guided by the following questions: To what extent have gender and cultural perspectives been integrated into JCSP curriculum? Is sampling method may have resulted in capturing bias for the integration of gender and cultural perspectives in curriculum, among individual interview participants. Focus groups were conducted with volunteers from Mil itary Faculty (n=8), military Curriculum and Training Developers (n=7), Information Resource Centre staff (n=6), and civilian Academic Faculty (n=4). Ese followup interviews aimed to assess if and how graduates applied learning about gender and cultural perspectives such as genderbased and intersectional analysis and content on diversity, equity, and inclusion to their daily work in the military, and if this learning facilitated efforts toward culture change desired by the institution (Chief of Defence Staff 2016b). In 2016, the Chief of the Defence Staff issued a directive for the military “to integrate...GBA+ into its opera tional planning, conduct of missions, and across its in stitutions” (Chief of Defence Staff 2016b, s. 10). e directive asserts that in an effort to mainstream GBA+ across the Canadian military “the initial focus will be the integration of these considerations into the design and delivery of operational effect” by “incorporating GBA+ into CAF training and education” (Ibid., s.13)

Policy Review Findings

Ethnographic Findings

Conclusion