Gendered International Organizations and the UN Civilian Peacekeeping Workforce

The concept of gendered organizations (Acker 1990) has been widely applied in sociology, business, and public administration but not in International Relations. We argue that international organizations are gendered in unique and consequential ways, which we investigate through the experiences of civilian women in UN peace operations. We adopt a three-pronged, mixed methods strategy. First, on the basis of UN official statistics, we demonstrate that civilian women are underrepresented in UN peace operations. While civilian women’s representation in UN peace operations has increased since 2017, gains have been modest and uneven across locations and staff categories. Second, we examine gender-disaggregated responses to four internal UN surveys of peace operations staff. We find that civilian women report significantly more negative perceptions of their work environment than their male counterparts. Third, we use UN documents and interviews to highlight how employees of different genders experience work-related pressures. We find that civilian women face greater challenges than their male colleagues, which are exacerbated by the risks, the expectations of mobility, and the ‘bunkerized’ environment typical for UN peace operations.