Training the troops on gender: the making of a transnational practice

Over the past two decades, the international Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has established a commitment to increase the participation of women in matters of peace and security, to ensure the protection of women's rights, and to include gender perspectives in conflict prevention. The WPS agenda foresees a number of measures to make peacekeeping more gender-responsive, including training uniformed peacekeepers on gender. These policy commitments date back to the year 2000, and have instigated the development of training materials and the institutionalization of training at regional and national levels. This article examines these training mandates, asking: What is the scope and nature of gender training for peacekeepers? How is gender understood to operate in peacekeeping? A review of international and national policy commitments demonstrates that training uniformed peacekeepers on gender has become a significant transnational practice. An examination of these mandates and training guidance reveals that training discourse establishes a normative understanding of gender that is focused primarily on vulnerability to sexual violence, and that frames gender as a question of skills and capacities rather than political investments or moral values. However, differences in localization demonstrate that gender training could be and sometimes is understood more expansively.