A call to NATO: Let’s fight gender inequality

NATO troops commit violence against women. Germany sent home a tank platoon from Lithuania over sexual assault claims. As NATO draws down troops in Kosovo, it leaves behind a booming sex slavery industry of thousands of women and girls tortured and abused. In the United States, the largest NATO member state, one in four servicewomen reports sexual assault, and more than half report sexual harassment.

NATO’s crimes come from the alliance’s failure to fight gender inequality. Gender inequality is a question of power. In NATO, men still overwhelmingly hold this power. They dominate the organization with 93 percent in military operations (2016), 83 percent in senior leadership positions (2019), and 74 percent in civilian staff posts (2019). Gender equality is the key to ending NATO troops’ violence against women. 

Gender equality will improve organizational performance. It will reinforce NATO’s core political values and preserve organizational effectiveness through enhanced female retention rates. It will strengthen alliance cohesion, cooperation, and continued relevance. It is also important as an end in itself: Gender equality is a human right, a moral imperative, and a sign of social progress.

Current NATO policy does not remove the underlying barriers inhibiting gender equality. It merely shifts quantitative targets by aiming to increase the number of women in the International Staff and in managerial positions. It reinforces gender stereotypes by using them to justify women’s participation. This also limits women’s roles to feminine stereotypes, including logistics, medical, and administrative tasks.

To achieve gender equality, NATO must strengthen and expand strategic partnerships. NATO must cooperate with partners, including the EU, to promote gender equality through training, interoperability, reforms, and education. NATO must also demonstrate leadership by acting as a role model championing gender equality. Partners help build consensus within NATO committees around gender equality initiatives and put gender on the North Atlantic Council’s agenda.

NATO must implement gender mainstreaming. Mandatory pre-deployment and in-mission training must teach, and then change, how gender constructs behavior. Gender mainstreaming requires assessing the implications of NATO’s policies on people of all genders. For example, NATO considers it natural to send its personnel on months-long deployments overseas. Women are typically the primary caregivers in their families, so it is difficult for them to leave their dependents. Instead of arguing that men are better suited for the job, NATO should mitigate the drawbacks of gendered roles by providing caretaking facilities and adjusting deployment durations. NATO must stop legitimizing masculine ideals and transform gendered structures to achieve gender equality.

NATO must support gender-inclusive force generation and recruitment standards within allies. The alliance must develop and promote task-based physical tests that are directly linked to the skills needed for a specific type of position. It is time to measure what is required to get the job done rather than what ‘men’ think criteria should be. A better match between skill sets and tasks will improve operational effectiveness and expand women’s participation. Tasks may be performed in various ways to succeed. For example, the U.S. Marine Corps had a trial with women to change the tires on an eight-wheel armored car. When following the tech order, they failed; when devising their plan, they succeeded.

Finding a consensus among the varying interpretations of what gender means to different allies has been challenging. Some NATO allies, such as Turkey, have also been reluctant to support gender equality. However, NATO has been a strong champion for gender equality and women’s empowerment. It has adopted several policy documents, mechanisms, and political guidelines such as the NATO/EAPC Policy and Action Plan and BI Strategic Command Directive (BI-SCD) 40-1 to harmonize gender definitions, awareness, and initiatives across the alliance.

Saying “men are naturally the better soldiers” is wrong. Characteristics, such as being strong, bold, and protective are not inherent to men; they are socially attributed to men. They can be learned and unlearned; they are fluid and not fixed. They are not linked to gender. Anyone can be a good soldier. 

It is time to transform NATO’s troops from perpetrators of sexual assault into champions for gender equality. It is time to redistribute the power in the alliance from men to all genders through strategic partnerships, gender mainstreaming and gender analyses, and gender-inclusive force generation and recruitment standards. It is time for NATO to join the fight against gender inequality.