Militarised masculinities: identifying causes, manifestations and strategies for change

By IHEID, WILPF

For this year’s iteration of the Geneva Peace Week, one of the thematic tracks investigates topics related to “Moving Beyond Securitisation: What risks and new horizons for peacebuilding”. Military recruitment is a prerequisite for military engagement and as such it is often investigated with regard to the underlying strategies employed to motivate people to join the military. Gender roles for example often get exploited for recruitment purposes. More precisely, militarised masculinities are often instrumentalized which is further supported by various private industries that have financial ties with the military.

In this podcast, our research team consisting of four IHEID master students and Dean Peacock, director of a multi-country initiative of WILPF and the MenEngage Alliance, will discuss how militarised masculinities are instrumentalized for recruitment purposes. In particular, we will look at the US as an instrumental case study in order to develop a global perspective on the projection and reproduction of militarised masculinities. Next to an intersectional analysis of military recruitment material and the arms industry’s involvement, we will discuss how other global industry actors such as Hollywood more covertly influence the general understanding of gender roles, thereby creating the image of an “ideal militarised hero”. Subsequently, we will discuss how and to what extent this hegemonic image of the ideal man is reproduced and present in a selection of focus countries that differ culturally as well as with regard to other aspects such as mandatory conscription. Lastly, we will discuss how this instrumentalisation can be and already has been addressed in various cases.

Contributions to the Geneva Peace Week 2021 Digital Series do not necessarily represent the views of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, its partners, or the partners of Geneva Peace Week.