In UN peace operations, women are around 10 percent of uniformed personnel, despite sustained policy commitments under the Women, Peace and Security agenda and the UN Uniformed Gender Parity Strategy.
Monash University study: scale, funding and methodology
New research from Monash University’s Global Peace and Security research hub — funded by Global Affairs Canada as part of the Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace Operations — maps how caring responsibilities shape participation across defence, policing and peace operations. Titled “Advancing the Meaningful Participation of Women in UN Peace Operations by Supporting Personnel with Caring Responsibilities,” the project drew on a global survey and interviews with 553 uniformed personnel and stakeholders across 63 countries, including peacekeepers deployed to missions in South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Operational consequences: recruitment, deployment, retention and leadership
The research finds a systemic problem. Caring responsibilities are not merely a personal inconvenience but an institutional design failure with direct operational consequences. Nearly half of women surveyed said caring responsibilities had negatively affected their career progression (47 percent). Other reported impacts include reduced training opportunities (38 percent), decreased deployment opportunities (39 percent) and leaving or changing roles within the security sector (45 percent).
Organisations that cannot accommodate personnel with caring responsibilities, the study warns, “lose experienced staff, narrow their talent pools and undermine long-term capability.” The report emphasizes that excluding experienced personnel weakens missions and contributes to harmful workplace cultures, burnout and safeguarding risks.
Barriers and the skills they mask
The barriers are multiple and mutually reinforcing. Long hours and inflexible schedules clash with school drop-offs and childcare closures; workplace cultures that prize constant availability penalise those who cannot be constantly present; and maternal bias creates assumptions that mothers are less committed, less deployable and less capable. Women with caring responsibilities are often denied deployment opportunities or presumed uninterested in deploying, and when they do deploy they may be judged harshly for family separation.
At the same time, the research underscores that caring responsibilities produce operationally relevant capabilities. Personnel managing care often develop crisis management, negotiation, empathy and adaptive leadership — skills the project links directly to improved community engagement, trust-building and civilian protection outcomes in peace operations.
Practical tools and early implementation
The project moved beyond diagnosis to delivery. It produced a comprehensive organisational toolkit of 15 evidence-based tools for defence and police institutions, including care audits, bias-interruption tools for selection panels, deployment checklists, family care plan templates and a communications strategy. Policy briefs and a compilation of global good practice accompany the toolkit, with examples drawn from Britain, Canada, Norway, Uruguay and Ghana.
Those country examples already include flexible working arrangements, shared parental leave, subsidised childcare and carer’s passports. The findings also informed the development of a free online course, Family Responsibilities and Care, launched by the Peace Operations Training Institute to train peacekeepers and uniformed personnel globally on balancing care with work and building more inclusive cultures.
What this means for the United Nations, troop and police contributing countries, and armed forces and police
- The United Nations: UN personnel briefed on the findings earlier this month described the research as long overdue and committed to advocating for institutional change; the research is already informing reforms within the UN system and international peacekeeping training.
- Troop and police contributing countries: the project offers actionable policy recommendations — including workplace culture change, investment in care infrastructure, and flexible working arrangements — that countries can adopt to retain experienced personnel and widen recruitment pools.
- Armed forces and police: the organisational toolkit and global good-practice examples give defence and policing organisations concrete mechanisms (deployment checklists, bias-interruption tools, family care plans) to adapt deployment and career-progression decisions and reduce maternal and gender bias.
One female military officer put the strategic risk plainly: “If we only have people in security institutions whose lives [have] been untouched by family responsibilities, not only do we have an incredibly [small] recruiting pool, but we have an incredibly limited viewpoint of the world and we will make bad decisions.”
The message of the research is unequivocal: supporting personnel with caring responsibilities is not a concession but a strategic investment in capability, retention, leadership and mission effectiveness. The central question is no longer whether caring responsibilities affect operational capability but whether institutions are willing to adapt to that reality.
Read the original piece: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/security-institutions-need-to-take-care-seriously/
