Gender, peace and security: A field of practice

Two concomitant developments have taken place in the global governance of gender, peace and security over the past two decades. One is the institutionalisation of women’s concerns and gender perspectives through the establishment of the international Women, Peace and Security agenda. The other is the rise of a professionalised cadre of gender experts and the establishment of gender expertise as authoritative knowledge in the spheres of policy and practice. At the nexus of these developments is the emergence of the field of gender, peace and security as a field of practice. Experts in this field exercise normative authority in how they seek to operationalise global policy agendas. They also apportion, dispense and spend government funding in the implementation of this agenda. They exercise, in other words, a significant amount of power in the global governance of peace and security. This makes the questions: What are the contours of this field? How is expertise demonstrated and rewarded within it? Who ‘wields feminist power’? of interest to feminists interested in studying how power is organised in institutions, and how gender knowledge and concepts travel. This study sets out to explore these questions, and to produce an understanding of how expertise is configured in this field. Methodologically, it does by compiling an original data set of job vacancy announcements over the fiscal years 2024/5 and 2025/6. The research is ongoing, but to date this archive includes over 1,400 jobs advertised. This paper will present preliminary findings to show what kinds of jobs are available in this field, where and for whom. It will also examine how the field has changed as a result to cuts to overseas development assistance in the recent times. Overall, the findings will speak to questions of what kinds of work is enabled in this field and what kind of expertise is valued.