Transformative indicators for women, peace and security

Join us for a research seminar with Dr Laura McLeod, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Manchester. Laura will present her recent article, Transformative indicators? Gender expertise and technocratic peace, followed by a response from Senior Research Fellow Laura Wise and an open discussion.

Presented in collaboration with PeaceRep, Edinburgh Law School, the International Relations Research Group, and GENDER.ED.

The seminar will be held in person. Refreshments will be provided.

Format:

• Research presentation (Laura McLeod) – 20 mins

• Response (Laura Wise) – 10 mins

• Discussion (all) – 30 mins

Article abstract:

In the last decade, the use of indicators to track implementation of international peacebuilding and peacekeeping programmes, policies and practices has proliferated. Indicators are criticised by many scholars for their technocratic, standardised and colonialising effects. This article follows a different line of inquiry. Can indicators be transformative? Contemporary critiques place indicators as bureaucratic artefacts in a vacuum, detached and decontextualised from the nuances of human agency developing, utilising and subverting them. I conceptualise indicators as powerful gendered technologies of knowledge creation developed, used and subverted by institutional actors. Using interviews with institutional actors and United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Reports, I trace institutional stories of one indicator (out of 26) developed to capture implementation of the UN Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The indicator investigated tracks the number of senior gender experts employed within UN Peacekeeping and Special Political Missions. Stories of progress, skill, and location in the reporting of this indicator between 2010 and 2020 highlight strategies deployed and opportunities taken by feminist-change advocates within the UN to prompt a deeper implementation of the WPS agenda. While indicators hold the danger of reinforcing neoliberal norms, the failure to conceptualise the potential for developing, utilising and/or subverting the indicators smacks of hubris, limiting opportunities for meaningful transformation.

About the speaker:

Dr Laura McLeod is Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Manchester. She works broadly in the areas of gender, feminism, security and peacebuilding in post-conflict contexts. Much of her focus has been on the United Nations Security Council's Women, Peace and Security agenda, activities around it and its implementation within the United Nations and former Yugoslavia, in particular Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Host or Publisher Political Settlements Research Programme