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‘Doing’ Security As Though HumansMatter: A Feminist Perspective on Gender

and the Politics of Human Security

HEIDI HUDSON*

University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

A feminist perspective can make security discourse more reflective ofits own normative assumptions. In respect of an expanded humansecurity concept, a feminist perspective highlights the dangers ofmasking differences under the rubric of the term ‘human’. A criticalfeminist perspective is geared towards addressing the politics of multiple overlapping identities. Since gender is intertwined withother identities such as race, class and nationality, the dichotomybetween universalism and cultural relativism is overcome by con-necting individual experiences in a particular location to widerregional and global structures and processes. An overview of a num-ber of feminist and security-studies schools of thought reveals theextent of universalizing tendencies and gender silences within suchdiscourses. The conceptual and political commensurability of the gender and security constructs is often overlooked. An emphasis onidentity politics may thus help to clarify the ambivalence of humansecurity as both a political project of emancipation and an analyticalframework. A case is therefore made for more fluid context-basedinterpretations of gender in human security. In this regard it is posited that alternative feminist approaches, such as those rooted inthe African context, could facilitate dialogue within and across supposedly irreconcilable standpoints.

Keywords human security • gender • identity politics • Africa •

feminism • interparadigm dialogue

Introduction

THE NEW ‘MACHISMO’ heralded by the post-9/11 global war againstterror threatens to drown out the progress made during the 1990s withregard to building a global normative consensus on the importance of

human security. Today, more than ever, human security coexists uneasilywith national security. Since the analytical potential of feminist epistemology

© 2005 PRIO, www.prio.noSAGE Publications, http://sdi.sagepub.com

Vol. 36(2): 155–174, DOI: 10.1177/0967010605054642

cannot be divorced from its political and transformative value, a critical feminist perspective on the study of security, and especially human security,is crucial to overcome certain gender silences. Feminist critiques of so-callednatural or depoliticized gender dichotomies within state-centric discourse1

delegitimize discriminatory practices and institutions as socio-historical con-structions and ‘repoliticize’ orthodox views on security by challenging therole of the state as provider of security. Gender is intrinsic to the subject matter and politics of security.

In the context of the present article, feminism refers to the area where theory and practice meet with regard to transforming the unequal powerrelationships between women and men. It is more than an intellectual enter-prise for the creation of knowledge. It also draws on the struggles of thewomen’s movement and the theorizing emanating from those experiences.In this article, gender as unit of analysis is viewed as socially learned behav-iour and expectations that distinguish between masculinity and femininity(Peterson & Runyan, 1993). Gender identity as social construction is malleable over time and place, thus allowing for the possibility of femaleemancipation (Tickner, 2002a). Thus, gender not only personifies a specificrelationship of power, but also serves as a dynamic analytical and politicaltool by means of which gender as a unit of analysis and women and men asidentity groups are used in tandem (but not interchangeably). This meansthat statements about femininity are necessarily also claims about mascu-linity, and that a challenge to our understanding of women’s security necessarily transforms our understanding of men’s security. A feminist redefinition of power in relational terms, where the survival of one dependson the well-being of the other, would not only enhance women’s security butalso that of men, who are similarly threatened by the conventional genderedapproach to security.

For the purposes of this article, I draw mainly on the postmodern stance offeminism, with an emphasis on identity and difference. However, as can begleaned from the preceding paragraph, there is also an undercurrent of critical theory in this feminist interpretation. In a puristic sense, this could beconstrued as contradicting the postmodernist underpinnings of the argu-ment. In International Relations (IR) literature, ‘critical theory’ and ‘post-modernism’ are often used synonymously. Though not altogether correct,this is understandable, since many critical theorists are also postmodernists.As Evans & Newnham (1998: 106) point out, ‘there is clearly a sense in whichall theory is critical as well as a sense in which everything which succeedsmodern is postmodern’. In my view, the critical and postmodern perspec-tives do not differ in intention, but rather in the way they go about achievingemancipation. Feminist postmodern theorists in IR do challenge the hier-

156 Security Dialogue vol. 36, no. 2, June 2005

1 I define discourse as the way actors and audiences generate and promote meanings and concepts and con-struct fields of knowledge through legitimating certain knowledge practices.

archical dichotomies, such as domestic–international and dependency–sovereignty. Their work is therefore also transformative.

Calls made recently by South African leaders to merge so-called ChapterNine institutions set up under the country’s constitution to support democ-racy (Moya, 2004) reveal the extent to which the term ‘human’ is contested.The argument to merge the functions of the Public Protector, the Com-mission on Gender Equality and the Human Rights Commission to avoidduplication exposes the dangers of presuming the universality of humanrights. This false universality reinforces the notion that affirmation of demo-cratic values through separate institutions has become superfluous in SouthAfrica’s case. However, international experience (e.g. in Canada) shows thatin the absence of separate institutions focusing on gender, women’s partici-pation in politics has stagnated. The implications of this case for human security are that – despite the broad and inclusive nature of the human security approach – the gender dimension tends to be overlooked, henceproviding only a partial understanding of security issues. A realist nationalsecurity project enforces conformity to values that are often male-defined.Feminists therefore point out that an understanding of security issues needsto be extended to include the specific security concerns of women. There is areal danger that collapsing femininity or masculinity into the term ‘human’could conceal the gendered underpinnings of security practices. The term‘human’ is presented as though it were gender-neutral, but very often it is anexpression of the masculine.

Similarly, the presentation of women as a group masks the differenceswithin that ‘group’. The security needs of Western women and women in thedeveloping world are different to the extent that no global sisterhood can beassumed. In response to such universalizing tendencies, African womenhave begun to reassert their own brands of feminism and/or womanism. Ifwe genuinely want to make sense of gender in human security in Africa, weneed to foreground the specific assumptions of uniquely African sets of feminisms and allow space for indigenous approaches to human security toevolve. Human security as a universalist tool of global governance mustacknowledge differences in the degree to which the state leads or partici-pates in the process of the protection and empowerment of individuals. Thesignificance of location or context and the politics of identity for security arethus placed under the spotlight.

In view of the above claims, the purpose of the present article is to contendthat a feminist perspective can make security discourse more reflective of its own normative assumptions and political relevance. In respect of an expanded human security concept, a feminist perspective highlights thedangers of masking differences under the rubric of the term ‘human’ andworks against theoretical smugness. By constantly asking whether there aredifferent ways of looking at the world, a critical feminist perspective is

Heidi Hudson Gender and the Politics of Human Security 157

geared towards addressing the politics of multiple overlapping identities.Since gender is intertwined with other identities such as race, class andnationality, a critical feminist perspective helps to overcome the dichotomybetween universalism and cultural relativism by connecting individualexperiences in a particular location to wider regional and global structuresand processes.

The article begins with a brief outline of the normative and politicalassumptions, silences and universalizing tendencies of a number of feministand security-studies schools of thought. The aim is to suggest that includingwomen as a category of identity within security discourse without also integrating gender as unit of analysis creates silences, which in fact reinforcethe dominance of masculinist universalisms and, at the same time, impedetheoretical progress within security studies. The subsequent section looks atthe conceptual and political commensurability of gender and security con-structs, and reminds the reader that integration does not mean uniformity. Abroken or fractured holism is the best answer to avoid complacency about so-called inclusive security frameworks. In the third section, the ambivalenceof human security as both a political project of emancipation and a policyagenda or analytical framework is examined against the backdrop of identitypolitics. A case is made for more fluid context-based interpretations ofhuman security. On the basis of the proposition that contextualized humansecurity practices and culturally relevant feminist responses to insecurity gohand in glove, the final part of the article examines the merits and demeritsof alternative feminist approaches aimed at facilitating dialogue within andacross supposedly irreconcilable standpoints.

Silences and Universalizing Tendencies in Feminismand Security Studies

Since the mid-1980s, feminist challenges to the study of IR have begun toexplore the role that gender plays in areas such as war, conflict and globalsecurity (see, among others, Elshtain, 1987; Enloe, 1996; Peterson & Runyan,1993; Peterson, 1992, 2000; Sylvester, 1996, 2002; Tickner, 1992, 2001,2002a,b,c).

There is no one feminism. Feminists disagree on what constitutes women’ssubordination and how to overcome it. Tong (1997) identifies a number offeminisms, such as liberal, Marxist, socialist, radical, psychoanalytic andpostmodern. Feminist theories could also be categorized in terms of inequal-ity, oppression and difference. Liberal feminists following the positivist andempiricist tradition of knowledge focus on removing legal obstacles towomen’s inequality. In terms of security thinking, the aim is to address


women’s invisibility. Radicals, Marxists and socialists have turned to patri-archy as the source of women’s oppression. Radical feminists seek funda-mental social transformation rather than equity. In this regard, a feministstandpoint regards gender as constitutive. Women are different from men,and therefore their contribution to political and security thinking is also different. An emphasis on a ‘female approach’ of care and responsibility tosecurity issues is therefore often used to justify this perspective. In the 1990s,postmodern and post-colonial perspectives became popular.2 By emphasiz-ing multiplicity and difference among women, postmodernism has ques-tioned radical feminism’s notion of an essentialized women’s standpoint.Postmodern feminists have persistently sought to uncover in whose interestexisting theories have been constructed (Tickner, 2002c), and have stronglyargued against so-called master narratives. Many feminists consider thepostmodernist emphasis on difference as quite liberating for women ofcolour. For Third World feminists, for instance, this emphasis on differenceallows them space for producing their own knowledge and recovering theirown identities.

Owing to the fundamental critical nature of the feminist project, its norma-tive and political commitments are quite explicit. However, the prescriptivenature of such political commitment does raise questions about the degree to which feminism in itself represents universalizing (and by implicationexclusionary) tendencies.

The liberal empiricist paradigm integrates women into the mainstreamsecurity discourse without questioning the dominant scientific assumptionsof positivist inquiry. Such an uncritical treatment of universalism reproducesexisting meanings of what constitutes humankind. The only difference is that– through the pursuit of the norm of equality (women becoming like men) –a more inclusive but hegemonic universalism is produced. Standpoint femi-nism argues that ‘men’s dominating position in social life results in partialand perverse understandings, whereas women’s subjugated position pro-vides the possibility of more complete and less perverse understandings’(Bakker, 1997: 133). This kind of essentialist thinking evokes another form ofuniversalism, namely binary universalism, ‘celebrating’ or romanticizing thevictimhood of women. The controversial contention that women are morepeaceful than men perpetuates a dichotomized universalism. In contrast,postmodern feminists emphasize fractured realities and identities and over-lapping and contextually based experiences (Bakker, 1997). In my view, theprioritization of special interests over general interest helps to minimize thedanger of collapsing gender identity and masculinity. Contextualized analy-sis forces one to move away from easy generalizations, since the nuances ofpower and identity politics must be taken into account.


2 African feminism as an example of non-Western or post-colonial feminism is discussed later in the article.

While the inextricable link between analysis and politics in the feministproject is a given, the link between analysis and politics in the sphere of human security is hugely contested. Within and across the realist,Copenhagen and critical security schools, the debate has been dominated bycontention over the analytical advantages and disadvantages of wideningthe security concept.

Some of the more traditional realist conceptualizations (for example, Walt,1991; Freedman, 1998) have warned that a redefinition of security couldundermine the core assumptions of the field of security. Traditionalists rejectwidening of the security concept as a political activity that inhibits the concept’s analytical usefulness (Eriksson, 1999). However, the image of arational and unitary state single-mindedly pursuing the goal of nationalsecurity is in itself a loaded depiction. Feminist scholars have carefullyreconstructed the gender-biased formation and functioning of the state andits war machine. Feminists have highlighted the way in which RationalMan’s claim on the exclusive right of citizenship is reinforced by his exclu-sive right to be a warrior (Grant, 1991), thus drowning out women’s role inpeace and conflict. As Peterson (1992: 31) states, ‘other forms of politicalcommunity have been rendered almost unthinkable’.

In respect of an expanded security concept, the Copenhagen School3 –through its use of the concept ‘securitization’ as an extreme version of politi-cization – has been much more explicit about acknowledging the politicalrole of security analysts than the traditionalists (Eriksson, 1999). But, far frombeing a radical epistemological reinterpretation, this school suffers from gender bias. What is perceived to be a fundamental broadening of the security debate is in fact an overstatement. Hansen (2000) shows how thedefinition of the referent object may block or severely limit the categorizationof issues as security problems. Since the thinking of the Copenhagen Schooldraws heavily on the notion of securitization and existential threats, it distinguishes between international and social security, the former dealingwith matters of collective survival and the latter with issues of social justicewithin a particular society. The school maintains that gender belongs tosocial security, because it concerns individual not collective security. Womenare in the discourse, but are relegated to the margins. With this argument, thedominant ‘malestream’ thinking on security is effectively maintained anduniversalized.4

Of the three schools, critical security studies is the most explicit about theimportance of political advocacy in security discourse.5 Since individualsface numerous threats that emanate either directly or indirectly from the


3 Notably Barry Buzan (1991) and Ole Wæver (Buzan, Wæver & De Wilde, 1998).4 In this regard, Gunhild Hoogensen & Svein Vigeland Rottem (2004) use their analysis of such work to illus-

trate how identity, in particular gender identity, serves to cement a broader understanding of security.5 See Booth (1997) and Wyn Jones (1999).

state, Booth (1997) argues that people and not states should be the referentobject of security. This school is openly prescriptive in seeking to deconstructrealism, state-centrism and militarism, replacing them with a reconstructednotion of emancipation and justice. Although there are definite epistemo-logical and methodological areas of convergence between critical securitystudies and the postmodernist critical (feminist) project, there is no guaran-tee that gender would be routinely included as a category of analysis. The discourse of emancipation and a focus on individual human beings asreferent objects do not insulate this school from the dangers of universaliz-ing tendencies.

Before examining the core assumptions and empirical context of humansecurity, as well as why and how women are often added to security dis-course without the integration of gender into the debate, it is necessary tolook more closely at the complementarity of the gender and security con-structs. For purposes of inter-paradigm and interdisciplinary dialogue,scholars need to recognize that ‘security’ is not the intellectual preserve of IR,nor ‘gender’ the exclusive unit of analysis of feminist scholarship.

Exploring the Complementarity of Gender and Security

While the constructs of gender and security are both analytically and politi-cally compatible, the issue of their relationship is complicated by the fact thatgender is not the only factor interacting with security. The interface of gender with class, ethnicity, race, nationality and sexuality leads to an intri-cate network of inequalities that change over time and differ depending onthe context. Fragmentation (difference) therefore becomes the twin of inte-gration (universalized sameness) – a necessary evil that has to be engagedwith theoretically and practically.

Integration

Conceived holistically as the end goal or ultimate human condition, the concept of security binds together all processes and levels – so much so thatBuzan (1991: 363) states that ‘attempts to treat security as if it was confinedto any single level or any single sector invite serious distortions of under-standing’. Buzan (1991) furthermore argues that security plays a mediatingrole between the extremes of (absolute) power and (absolute) peace. Thelogic of security implies high levels of interdependence; security can thusplay an instrumental role in the enhancement of values other than militaryones.

First, the integrative potential of gender as a tool of security analysis is


facilitated by the transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of feministscholarship. Second, gender as the unit of analysis promotes integrationacross levels and dimensions. A feminist perspective extends the generalarguments about the nature of society to the realm of security and remindsus that comprehensive security can only be achieved if the relations of domination and submission in all walks of life are eliminated and gender justice is achieved. While gender may not always be the most important factor, if taken as the unit of analysis in the security discourse it reveals acomplex and fluctuating mix of interlinked gendered knowledge construc-tions and practices within all the sectors of security and at all levels (e.g. gender and globalization, patriarchy and militarism, structural violence andphysical violence). Since feminists challenge the politics of boundary con-struction (e.g. the false dichotomies of public and private spheres), they areby definition against a level-of-analysis framework on the grounds that suchan approach mystifies analysis and reinforces divisions of power. Third, anemphasis on the gender implications of security promotes an awareness ofthe dynamic interplay between theory and practice as embodied by thedialectical relationship between women’s political practice in the trans-national peace and women’s movements and feminism as an academic enter-prise.

In terms of normative or political commitment, there also exists common-ality between the concepts of security (in its critical usage) and gender. Bothpossess important profile-raising qualities. Both the human security and thefeminist discourse operate according to the ethos of highlighting the impor-tance of marginalized issues, while at the same time exposing vested interests. The zero-sum power discourse of neorealism is the target of bothcritical security thinkers and radical feminists.

Fragmentation

The unavoidable tension between integration and disintegration mirrors theuniversalizing and relativizing strains underpinning the argument that abroadened human security framework faces the danger of holding up a false holism. The fact that women and men are equally – albeit differently –affected by organized violence must be highlighted, and the complex, multi-faceted and ambivalent roles played by women and men during times of warand peace must be engaged with to avoid the perpetuation of incompleteunderstandings.

The debate about security, gender and HIV and AIDS serves as illustration.For women and girls, the interrelated nature of the problem is more salient,since their susceptibility to the disease is linked to their socio-cultural, bio-logical, economic and political subordination within broader society. In thecase of South Africa, where the debate has been highly politicized, neither


the government nor the majority of civil society stakeholders have givenserious consideration to gender. Failure to link women’s rights and humanrights is a core reason for the politicization of issues of mother-to-child trans-fer and the availability of antiretroviral drugs to all pregnant women.Women’s place in the HIV and AIDS discourse in South Africa has been aclassic case of the ‘women as the vessel’ argument (Msimang, 2003), wherethe unfairness of not helping pregnant women to save their babies’ lives wasthe actual focus. Turf wars between government and nongovernmentalorganizations about who should set the agenda often overshadowed theplight of poor, young black women diagnosed with HIV and AIDS.

Complacency about the ‘wholeness’ of the human security discourse thusrisks overlooking the fact that certain human rights might be undermined forparticular power interests. Holism as an intellectual framework may presenta closure if unity or harmony is elevated at the expense of difference. Itwould be more appropriate to describe such attempts at broadening securityas a ‘fractious holism’ (Runyan, 1992) wherein interdependence does notnecessarily imply equality and stability.

Greater sensitivity towards conceptual commensurability could thus facili-tate dialogue across traditional divides. Such awareness, however, shouldalso be imbued with a sense of realism, namely that contradiction is part andparcel of this process. The dynamics of universalist and particularist tenden-cies are no better illustrated than in the human security discourse.

Human Security: From Theory to Practice?

In line with the thinking of critical security studies, a critical human securityapproach serves as a counter to the selfish pursuit of state or elite security.People become the primary referent of security. The main point is to under-stand security comprehensively and holistically in terms of the real-life,everyday experiences of human beings and their complex social and eco-nomic relations as these are embedded within global structures. It thereforebecomes imperative to view security in terms of patterns of systemic inclu-sion and exclusion of people (Thomas, 2002). The twin goals of protectionand empowerment (‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’; UnitedNations Commission on Human Security, 2003) thus represent the core principles of ensuring survival, meeting basic needs (protecting livelihood)and safeguarding the human dignity of the most vulnerable groups in society. In this way, emphasis shifts from a security dilemma of states to asurvival dilemma of people.

Although the relationship between individuals and collectivities is centralto the discourse of human security (especially in the context of globaliza-


tion), most definitions of human security do not clearly distinguish betweenhuman security for individuals and human security for groups. It is usuallyassumed that the well-being of one is dependent on the security of the other.Questions about the nature of the collectivity are nothing new, whether theyrefer to ‘the claims of obligation to fellow citizens of a political association’,‘the claims of obligation to the remainder of humanity’ (Walker, 1992: 187),or otherwise. But how one defines political community (in a statist or cosmopolitan sense) has a bearing on the extent to which alternative formu-lations of political identity are allowed to interact with the mainstream dis-course on security. Western IR theories traditionally tend to render class, cultural, racial and gender differences invisible, which leads to a situation of‘particulars masquerading as universals’ (Walker, 1992: 188). Those who control access to knowledge treat religion, race and nationality as founda-tions for ‘self-reproducing political communities’ (Hansen, 2000: 299), whilegender identity is curiously treated as separate. Yet, in practice, gender-based security threats are often inseparable from other threats. If conceptu-alized as being about individuals, gender loses its sting as an analytical tool.A gender-sensitive concept of human security must therefore link women’severyday experiences with broader regional and global political processesand structures.

Ideally, human security should first and foremost be a critical project aimedat interrogating the sources of people’s insecurity, along with the role of thestate and other global governance structures in this regard.6 Its ethos of progressive values makes it a politically effective tool, both to promote col-lective action and to be used as an analytical research concept. The humansecurity concept straddles a large number of disciplines, and it has pushedIR out of its disciplinary isolation and away from its inward-looking preoccupation with military security within the subdiscipline of securitystudies. It has also promoted the integration of binary oppositions, such asbetween the interstate and the intrastate realms. The normative-ideologicalorientation imbues the concept with fluidity, to the extent that the UnitedNations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Commission onHuman Security use it as a policy agenda and countries such as Norway andCanada have adopted the human security doctrine as a set of values inform-ing foreign policy and state interest.

But how can human security be operationalized? Criticism regardingimplementation of a vaguely conceptualized normative framework has comefrom both critical and conservative circles. Human security as a concept isoften criticized for being a security theory of everything and nothing (Paris,2001). Several authors have suggested ways of overcoming this problem (see,for instance, Knudsen, 2001; Liotta, 2002; Suhrke, 1999; Thomas & Tow,


6 See also McDonald (2002).

2002). The problem with such suggestions, however, is that narrowing inpractice often implies human security frameworks being co-opted into statistconceptualizations of risk, thus watering down the emancipatory potentialof the concept (Bellamy & McDonald, 2002).

While those who want to see human security as an alternative to state security and those who view human and state security as complementarycontinue to battle it out, it does appear as though pragmatism is beginningto win the day. The contemporary wisdom, represented by the report of theUnited Nations Commission on Human Security (2003), accepts securitybetween states as a necessary condition for the security of people, but is alsoconscious of the fact that individuals require protection from the arbitrarypower of the state. While human security requires strong and stable institu-tions, a high degree of human security may also shed legitimacy on govern-ments. Human security thus complements state security by providing amore comprehensive emphasis on human development, human rights andthe role of non-state actors.

This, in my view, is a marriage of convenience – but not necessarily one thatneeds to be rejected in a self-conscious moralistic way. For the sake of mean-ingful implementation, human security should not be reified. A paradigmshift achieved through incremental consensus-building could, in the longrun, mean a reversal of ends and means. The challenge lies in the way inwhich state security is transformed from an end to a means of promotinghuman security. Like it or not, the state remains the political actor with thelargest capacity to mobilize resources.

In order to achieve this conceptually and practically, scholars of securityshould first draw out more forcefully the tension between the universalistand particularist underpinnings of the concept and concretize analysis bymeans of contextualized case studies. Second, the politics of the struggle toeliminate injustice needs to tactically reposition itself in relation to thedemands of the politics of transition. In such a context, research on the insti-tutional design of new alliances between state and civil society in support ofthe same goals of human security would not only improve service delivery(meeting basic needs) but could also work towards redefining the nature ofsecurity politics.

Difference is often neglected for the sake of building common understand-ing regarding human security. Thus, the UNDP report of 1994 affirms theemphasis on human security as being universal, global and indivisible. As anextension of the logic that the security of states is interrelated, human secu-rity claims that the security of people in one part of the world depends on thesecurity of people elsewhere. However, evidence also points to the fact thatsecurity in one area depends on insecurity in another, as the ripple effects ofhomeland security measures after 9/11 are felt across the globe. Hence, onecan rightfully ask whether what is intended in the UNDP report is truly uni-


versal or simply Eurocentric values in disguise. Similarly, signs of binaryuniversalism (‘us versus them’) are evident in the way distinctions are madebetween chronic insecurity in marginalized regions such as Africa and a‘state of security’ in affluent societies.

Convergence of perspectives on human security in a regional context thusbecomes significant to the extent that it not only supports a global consensus-building but also, and primarily, enhances indigenous solutions to humaninsecurity. Structures such as the African Union (AU), the New Partnershipfor Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the new Peace and Security Councilare beginning to speak the same language. The African Human SecurityInitiative (AHSI) is a network of seven African nongovernmental researchorganizations that have come together to benchmark the performance ofeight African governments in promoting human security in the area of political governance (i.e. human rights, democracy and governance, civilsociety engagement, small arms and light weapons, peacekeeping and con-flict resolution, anti-corruption, and terrorism and organized crime).7 Interms of operationalization, the AHSI adopts a modified statist approach inwhich individual (local) and international security is viewed as beingdependent upon national security. The project emphasizes a traditional levels-of-analysis approach, the importance of universalist provisions ofhuman rights in international legal practice, and the role of civil society(Cilliers, 2004).

At first glance, this appears to be just another statist attempt to subvert aradical reformulation of security. However, political choice is informed notonly by morality, but also by circumstance. While the framework for humansecurity is universal or global, the operationalization is contextualized. Thechoice of a traditional option combined with an acknowledgement of individuals and communities as active participants in matters of securitymitigates the initial aversion to this framework. As Cilliers (2004: 11) states,‘the security of the individual is no longer defined exclusively within therealm of states and as a consequence of national security’. The traditionalcausal link between state and human security is thus reconceptualized. The‘special circumstances’ thesis furthermore strengthens the choice of frame-work. The fact that Africa’s security and developmental problems are largelylinked to the lack of state institutionalization (weak states) does not serve asjustification for replacing regime security with human security, but under-lines the saliency of taking a fresh look at state security in the context ofaltered notions of sovereignty. After all, the peer-review mechanism ofNEPAD is predicated upon the notion that governance requires Africanleaders to move away from archaic notions of state power.

This is a major challenge, particularly in view of the continent’s rather


7 Other components include economic governance and management, corporate governance and socio-economic governance.

ambivalent relationship with civil society. NEPAD recognizes the impor-tance of enhancing the role of women in social and economic development.Although gender training and the needs of women in relation to the rights ofchildren are mentioned, and reference is made to the 2003 Draft Protocol tothe African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women (AHSI, 2004), there is little evidence of real engagement with genderinequalities. Women’s concerns as victims of human rights abuse are addedbut not integrated, which thereby extends the notion that human security isessentially masculine in its inclusivity.

So has the argument come full circle? Are we back to endorsing an unquali-fied reification of state security? Yes, if one ignores the contextualizedresponses of women to peace and conflict on the continent and the ways inwhich ‘gender’ is conceptualized in the context of African feminisms. Yes, ifone overlooks the fact that gender is but one of many identities. I argue to thecontrary. While the proposed framework for human security in Africa is notrevolutionary, it is nevertheless significant in that it raises important pointsabout the role of identity and difference and drives home the claim that contextualized responses to human security and contextualized feministresponses to insecurity are two sides of the same coin.

Feminist Alternatives: From Relativism to Relevance

Liberal, Marxist and socialist feminist scholars oppose postmodern feminismsince it denies the liberal promise of progress as well as the theories of patri-archy, racism and capitalism. Many feminists also argue that the scepticismof postmodernists about all forms of knowledge and their refusal to speak ofwomen as an undifferentiated category encourage political fragmentation,cultural relativism and a weakening of the feminist emancipatory agenda(Tickner, 2002c). A case against an approach based upon all kinds of identitydifferences could thus be built on two arguments. First, basic human securityneeds are common to all people. A human security discourse that propagatesinterdimensional and multilevel linkages cannot technically be reserved forone group alone. What binds women from developed and developing worldperspectives together is their common victimhood. The entrenchment ofmale domination, it is argued, is hardly unique to any one culture. Second,there is a danger that if the human security discourse focuses too much onvariety across time, place and culture, it could produce multiple grand narratives, that is, new orthodoxies or universalisms condoning oppressivepractices. A theory of human security for Africa runs the risk of being sub-verted in the same way as the study of development became a study of ThirdWorld difference impeding modernization.


On the other hand, though, any unitary approach is bound to exclude certain groupings. Neither Africa as a continent nor African women as anidentity group represent a monolithic category of analysis. The plurality ofexperiences, diverse levels of development, and tension between a global-ized human rights culture and a multiplicity of ethno-religious cultures testify to the difficulty of formulating a blanket theory.

Western feminists often treat Third World women as a uniformlyoppressed group – by definition religious, family-oriented, conservative,illiterate and domestic – on whose behalf so-called enlightened feministsmust speak. Some of the political agendas of feminists also clash outrightwith Koranic injunctions regarding the role of women in society and may, infact, exacerbate African women’s insecurity through repressive forms of neo-patriarchy (Tickner, 2002a). The extent of women’s insecurity on the Africancontinent combined with the enormous challenges for the transformation of mainstream security discourse push to the foreground the question ofwhether Africans should develop their own ‘indigenous’ theory and practiceof human security. The case for this is not simple. And, furthermore, shoulda so-called African approach to security be more or less gender-sensitive thanapproaches elsewhere given the pervasive impact of traditional culturalpractices?

Charges of postmodernist cultural relativism, on the one hand, and neo-universalism in the form of a plurality of totalizing discourses, on the other,represent two extremes on a continuum. The challenge, in my view, is to findan alternative between these two extremes – an approach that is culturallyrelevant but not relativistic or deterministic. Several feminists have sug-gested alternatives to the universalism–relativism dichotomy. Yuval-Davis(cited by Tickner, 2002a), for instance, proposes the practice of ‘transversalpolitics’, a kind of coalition politics or politics of mutual support. Sylvester(2002) proposes ‘empathetic cooperation’ as a feminist methodology for mitigating the closures presented by the essentialist tendencies of standpointfeminism and the relativism of an overemphasis on difference within femi-nist postmodernism. Between these epistemologies, borders are porous, somuch so that ‘conversations’ could lead to cooperative or negotiated reinter-pretations of knowledge and power.

Fractured holism or synthesis of difference and disadvantage can beachieved through recognizing difference as a tool within a bigger process ofemancipation. An awareness of diversity is essential to an explanation ofhow and why systems of domination originate and are kept in place, but thisdoes not nullify the universal fact that forms of oppression do exist acrossspace and time. As Tickner (2001: 136) warns, ‘if feminism becomes para-lyzed by women not being able to speak for others, then it will only reinforcethe legitimacy of men’s knowledge as universal knowledge’. Thus, by notabsolutizing difference, but rather treating it as part of an emancipatory


process, it becomes possible to expose ‘the norm against which some peopleseem different and to see the ways in which institutions construct and utilizedifference to justify and enforce exclusions’ (Cock & Bernstein, 1998: 23). Acontextualized human security discourse for Africa may then be feasible if itis used to expose, for instance, North–South inequalities and the North’s tendency to equate difference with being inferior.

Group and/or individual differences are relational. Hence, differences arenever absolute and overlap with sameness. Instead of seeing ontology andepistemology as separate (relativism) or equating ontology and episte-mology (determinism), the focus should be on shifting from hierarchical torelational thinking. Marchand & Runyan (2000) highlight three interdepend-ent dimensions of relational thinking that could facilitate conversationsamong diverse theoretical viewpoints. These include understanding thepractices and structures of the world ‘out there’ (what we do); understand-ing the ideologies and paradigms we use to think about this world (how wethink); and understanding the subjective agency of the self and the collectiveidentities that we bring to this analysis (who we are). In a sense, one candescribe relational thinking as a cobweb within which several hierarchies ofpower sit uncomfortably together. When applied to the domain of humansecurity, relational thinking first allows one to move beyond abstraction, byintroducing subjectivity (individual-level understandings) to the humansecurity debate. Second, it sensitizes one to the specific gendered represen-tations of human security. Lastly, it reveals the gendered power dimensionsof human security and drives home the fact that inequalities in this areasimultaneously reflect inequality in global power relations.

In view of my qualified support of postmodernism, it is argued that itbecomes imperative to recognize the risks associated with both approachesand to engage head on with the contradictions generated as a result of co-operation among discourses. As a result of such engagement, hybrid identi-ties (Ling, 2002) are created. This mixing of subjectivities is demonstrated bythe fact that feminist criticism against Western feminism comes from manycircles: that is, not only from developing world, African or Asian women, butalso from Western women who – on the basis of religion, race or class – feelexcluded from the lily-white middle-class discourse.

Third Wave feminism of the 1990s introduced issues of multiple oppres-sions into its analyses in order to get beyond essentialist generalizationsabout women. Three aspects characterize post-colonial feminism as a schoolof thought: namely, a critique of the Western colonialist discourse of exclu-sion through false universalism; an emphasis on rich but complex multipleidentities as a result of cultural hybridity; and a cautious retention of theimportance of a unified political identity (Hughes, 2002). Theoretically, thisschool comes closest to what the author terms an authentic synthesis ofdivergent stances.


As hybrid manifestations, African feminisms8 acknowledge their connec-tions with international feminism but demarcate a specific African feminismwith specific needs and goals arising out of the concrete realities of Africanwomen’s lives. Their point of departure is to address oppressions simulta-neously, and in that context gender is but one unit of analysis that sometimeshas to subject itself to the universal bond between men and women againstracism and imperialism. One of the most prominent African feminist alter-natives is the notion of ‘womanism’, on the basis that this better accommo-dates African women’s reality and identity and the dynamics of empower-ment. The concept emphasizes cultural contextualization, the centrality ofthe family and the importance of cooperation with men (Kolawole, 2002).Through their emphasis on contextualized universalism (an oxymoron, somewould argue!), African feminisms have helped to clarify the link betweenstrategic gender needs that are feminist in nature and practical or tacticalwomen’s needs grounded in women’s everyday experiences. Women’s interests need not always coincide with gender interests. A feminist agendathat seeks to achieve such a complete shift of consciousness runs the risk ofbecoming counterproductive. In Africa, in particular, where women’s organ-izations are relatively strong and feminist movements relatively weak andwhere feminism is severely stereotyped, the scope of insecurity of womenand the continent as a whole necessitates a more flexible interaction betweenthese two causally related categories. In terms of the idea of feminist rela-tional thinking outlined above, the notion of ‘locationality’ is useful in that itconceptualizes ‘who we are and where we come from’ in a material and non-material sense as a matter of both culture, history and geography and values,ideology and spirituality. Relevance within society is the key to ensuring thatgender theory gains legitimacy within security discourse. In practice, thismeans that women must be seen as subjects or agents of change rather thanvictims (Tickner, 2001, 2002a). In lieu of emphasizing shared ontologies aswomen or victims, one should rather talk of a shared political agenda seeking to promote protection and empowerment through a range of per-spectives.

To illustrate, African women’s responses to the aim of mainstreaming gender in the peace and security discourse in Africa reflect a multi-dimensional, but not necessarily a feminist approach to implementing AU commitments. Contrary to the general feminist aversion to a levels-of-analysis approach, Juma (2003) suggests that women’s empowerment inAfrica in terms of peace and security must focus on different levels. At theinternational level, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 must be adapted tothe AU provisions and NEPAD principles of gender mainstreaming. At thecontinental level, the focus is essentially institutional, concentrating onefforts to integrate gender into the structures and processes of the Peace and


8 The journal Agenda has recently devoted three editions to the topic of African feminisms.

Security Council, the African Standby Force and the Panel of the Wise. At thestate level, a gender perspective on human security includes, among otherthings, the creation of a gender-sensitive justice system, attention to the specific health-related needs of women as a result of conflict, and increasedparticipation by women in national decisionmaking structures and post-conflict reconstruction.9

Conclusion

Broad-school security thinking has offered only a partial understanding ofhuman security through its neglect of women’s pervasive insecurity. Bydrawing on a feminist conceptualization of security in relational or collabo-rative terms, human security analysts can avoid complacency. One exampleof how human security scholars can mediate between human and state security is to integrate their critique of the silences in the security discoursewith a reconstruction of the role of the state in promoting human security inan era of globalization. As such, a critical analysis entails problematizing orbringing the state back into the analysis of security and asking how the prac-tices of the penetrated state have responded to global human security issuesrelated to gender and other forms of identity.

Reflectivist critique and conceptualization of human security by feministsand critical security analysts has done what no other theory of security (andIR) did before: it has made the discipline self-aware and forced – althoughwith obliqueness at times – the discourse outside the confines of mere problem-solving and into the realm of engaging with power. The acid test forsuch endeavours is whether they can use critical insights into issues of domination and subordination to penetrate statist discourse, not to subvertthe state but to imbue it with a sense of critical realism. Without the study ofpower and an understanding of the process of political construction, securitybecomes depoliticized and decontextualized.

It is still too early to make definitive conclusions about the African humansecurity dilemma, but it is hoped that culturally relevant versions of femi-nism will be less threatening to African men and that that will facilitategreater engagement of mainstream scholars on the continent with genderand women’s security issues. Getting the schools of security to confront thenormative underpinnings of their scholarship may facilitate the closing of


9 A report of the AHSI revealed that of the eight countries (Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria,Senegal, South Africa and Uganda) reviewed in terms of commitments to civil society engagement, onlySouth Africa and – to a lesser extent – Uganda have translated their commitments into concrete actions(M’boge & Gbaydee Doe, 2004). Commitments to the status of women have been slow to realize. Culturalinertia, ignorance and poverty first need to be overcome.

the gap between security theory and practice. In this way, security analystswould become more conscious of their role as agenda-setters and wouldbegin to take responsibility for the practical implications of their perspec-tives.

After all, the goal of inter-paradigm dialogue is not greater synergybetween alternative and mainstream discourse, but rather to create a frac-tured whole that – when synthesized – is richer and more authentic than thesum of its constituent parts. Now that is theoretical progress.

* Heidi Hudson is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science,University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Current research activitiesinclude a National Research Foundation-funded project on globalization and security inSouth Africa. Her most recent articles have focused on gender, the globalization of violence and privatized peacekeeping; contestation over HIV and AIDS, gender and security in post-apartheid South Africa; changing notions of political community; and theimpact of globalization on foreign policymaking in Africa.

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