my question is about that emotional aspect of it. from personal experience and from listening to this ed bait in public, there seems to be a growing acceptance or realization that this is a good idea. being in the air force myself and having fought alongside female fighter pilots, it seems very natural from my perspective. but from where i see pushback is this idea of opportunity versus response bability. -- responsibility. everybody i speak to agrees that women should have the opportunity to do this. but when you use the selective service, and when you flip it and say responsibility, then the answers tend to change. so i'm wondering your opinion. is that a societal thing that we need to get past? when you ask a father, do you want your daughter to be able to serve in combat if she wants to? s

he says yes. but should she have to if the nation reinstitutes a draft. often times they say no. >> i think you're talking in general about people who haven't served. i have yet to meet a woman yet who says women shouldn't register for selective service. i think that's just unanimous. i think the women who are looking for the opportunity themselves also think that there's a responsibility. you know, in terms of society, the selective service argument is, i think, a smokescreen. i'm -- my two cents, i don't think we're going to have a draft again in this country until the aliens attack. at which point, all hands on deck, i'm just saying. i don't think there's anyone who's asking for opportunity who wouldn't also say i would take on the responsibility. for me, i do agree with a lot of things kai says.

i think that there's a bias among those of us who have served to say, we think that universal service is really important to citizenship. we think that everybody should have an equal stake in that. but i get that there are people, you know, if you do a broad opinion poll, should women be drafted, it's a different answer. i just don't know how relevant it is to reality that's just me. >> when we're talking about emotion. society has to change. if you're saying like -- it's really a three-part question there. do you want your daughter forced to go fight in combat? so a is like the way that question is even asked. it's just wrong. over the past 15 years where we have been in sustained combat operations, the longest time that the u.s. has ever been involved in a continuous militarized dispute, how many 18 to 26-year-old males who did not

volunteer for the force lie awake at night fretting over getting called to afghanistan the next day? it just didn't -- it didn't happen. it's not like -- it's not a thing. never once if you ask that father who has a son, do they think their son is going to go off and die in a war if he doesn't join the military. it's not even a thought. but we can again wrap all this emotion around like -- oh, well, our daughter is getting drawn off to war. registering for selective service is not getting drug off to war the next day. second i think tied to the first, just the way we frame the questions that we're asking. the way that we are expecting difference from men and women. and third, with the cultural change that yes, there absolutely needs to be one. if there is, it's this idea of equal opportunity is equal

responsibility. and it should be. you know, the same side of the debate, not to get too much into cultural society and gender, but you're seeing a big push more in the social sphere of equality in parenting. there needs to be equal parenting responsibilities. i think it's almost the opposite side of the same coin there, that we're kind of engaging in a society -- and this goes a lot to your questions of generation where gender roles and equality in gender roles in society is becoming something that's being talked about a lot more. i would hope, and i think everybody here on the panel would hope that this responsibility really gets wrapped up into that conversation. and that it's reframed in a way that registering for the selective service isn't getting drug off to war and you're not going to die the next day. and even if you are called up in a draft, it's not guaranteed -- nobody is putting a rifle in your hand and sending you off to fight in a trench.

that's not the way warfare is fought anymore. so we also -- with this this conversation need to evaluate what selected service is. hopefully this debate will bring up a lot of these citizenship questions again. what is your responsibility? >> i really enjoyed an article kai wrote on this recently. one of the sub headings is it's time to take the emotion out of the debate. the especially depidemiologist excited. i'm the mother of a boy. i don't frame that selective service any different for him than i would for a daughter. by my bias is from having served and feeling strongly about the responsen't of service for men and for women. but it's an emotional debate that we're ten years past it being emotional anymore. >> all right. well, ladies and gentlemen,

unfortunately we're out of time. we need to take a break. but please, i bet the panelists will probably stay around. if you have a question, please ask them. if you're looking for refreshments, there's a cafeteria down that hall way. with that, please give a round of applause.

>> welcome back. our second panel will hopefully have a little more practical application for many of the students as its focus is on fighting irregular warfare with an integrated force. the focus here is on how gender integration actually shapes the battlefield. with an ever changing threat environment, the integration of women into all military occupations provides the potential for unique skill sets to be leveraged and must be considered in future strategic planning. fighting irregular warfare with an integrated force. we have three panelists for this panel. our first one immediately on stage right is dr. mandy moore -- excuse me, mandy don hoe. she earned her doctorate at the university of denver. she specializes in international relations comparative politics, conflict resolution and peace studies in gender. mandy is an adjunct professor and internship coordinator for

the bachelor of arts program of international studies at the e joseph koble school. she will speak on women as stakeholders, the value of participation. >> our next panelist, back with us again is ms. kayleigh ann hunter. she's replacing dr. howard clark who wasn't able to be here. kai volunteered to come onboard. speaking about the same topic he was planning on, the role of the military in combatting domestic terrorist threats. and then finally -- oh, okay. sorry. our last panelist is lieutenant colonel jeanette haney.

she is in the marine corps forces reserve, a cobra pilot and a combat veteran. she's a ph.d. candidate at george washington university studying domestic terrorism and inequality. with that, ladies, please begin. i eelt be talking today about women as stakeholders. particularly from the lens of post conflict and peace building, or formal peace processes. the women of liberia mass action for peace which is a group of women both muslim and christian who are organized to end the violence in the second liberian civil war. they called for peace talks. in fact, they practically forced president charles taylor to sit

down with rebel groups. and then led by a delegation of these women, they sat in on -- or rather staged a sit-in at the peace process in acrogahna, the process that would lead to the acra comprehensive peace agreement signed august 18, 2003. . the women were not part of any formal delegation. they did not formally participate in the peace process. their role in that moment was to enforce the process itself. in fact, at one point, the women lined up around the building to keep the men from the rebel groups from climbing out of a when doe to escape participating in the process. so you begin to see the role of women in formal processes, why their attention -- why their participation is necessary.

they're stake hollers. they have a vested interest of resolution of conflict in their lives. but they don't sit at the peace table very often. another case i'll get to is in northern ireland in which women did sit at the peace table. the report of the secretary general on women, peace and security states that often women are excluded because they're not military leaders or political decision makers, or because they did not participate in the conflict as combatants. women are assumed to lack the appropriate expertise to negotiate, or they are left out owing to discrimination and stereotypical thinking. katherine o'rourke writes a peace called "walking the halls of power -- understanding women's participation in international peace and security" and she talks about five distinctive types of participation. the first is the role model

argument in which women participate as role models. hey, look, we can do it, too. the second is the justice argument. participation as representation in which it's simply argued that it is fair and just that as 50% of the population, women have a role, have a right to participate in these processes. the third is the larger dream argument. participations as deliberation in which it is argued that women's participation is process oriented, that women contribute differently to the process of peace negotiations. fourth is the expertise argument. participation as expertise. in which we need the expertise on issues that affect women's lives, the way that the conflict has been gendered roles or issues that don't generally get brought into peace processes otherwise.

i'm sorry, i skipped number four. the different agenda argument. participation as inclusion. so securing the women -- or excuse me, securing the participation of women as beneficiaries of the policies inacted in the agreements. o'rourke argues these points of participation fit on a spectrum, ranging from descriptive participation, that is representation by women in which women are physically a part of the process, and on the other end, substantive representation, or the representation of what we broadly characterize as women's issues, women's interests, on the other hand. o'rourke argues that more and more, we see the women peace and security agenda as focused on women's interests. so substantive participation, rather than on women's descriptive participation, which

women are actively participating in these roles. so i would like to introduce sort of my second case study, the northern ireland women's coalition. in 1996, elections were announced to the northern ireland peace forum. the formal peace talks that would end the three decades of violence in northern ireland known as the troubles. an sbising network of civil society women's organizations put in a phone call and said will there be women at the table? the very trite answer that they got back was sure, if they're elected. so women engaged in the process of forming a political party, the northern ire land women's coalition. now what was sfwresing about this particular peace process is that the voting for the parties that would be represented in the process occurred in sort of at two different levels. so members of political parties would run in their own districts the way we think of politics at

home today. but there would also, in what we call a top up process. it's sort of comprehensive vote in which votes would be accumulated across northern ireland so that some of these smaller minority parties would also be represented. the process wasn't designed to include women, but it certainly benefited them, as the northern ireland women's coalition ran against some of these larger well established parties, and of the ten parties that is right elected to sit at the peace talks, the northern ireland women's coalition, zsh i'll just call it the coalition for short. came in ninth out of tenth. so they had two women, a protestant woman and a catholic woman, monica mcwilliams were elected to sit at the peace talks. now, they were a challenge to what they sort of laughingingly referred to as abnormal

politics. the normal politics of northern ireland, which was very divisive and focused on the vie len. -- violence. during the peace process, the chair would assign papers, homework really, for the delegates. those who had been elected to sit. now the members of the more well established parties didn't take this homework very seriously. the women did. they met with their constituents, they met with their party members, they hired legal experts, they sought out academics in the field, they took very seriously these writing assignments. and so as a resulter the peace agreement that was signed in 1998 has a lot of the language from the coalition, because they took this process seriously earlier on this earlier stages when the rest of the parties, otherwise the men at the table, didn't. now, with the coalition, we can see all five of o'rourke's

arguments for women's participation in different ways. first of all, the coalition as role models. women were proven capable of successfully organizing, managing a women, these two elected women and their constituents in the party, became extremely news worthy. so these women not only showing

themselves as role models of what women are capable of, but also became role models for what normal politics ought to look like. they showed really the childness of the aggressive and abusive behavior these men were carrying out. the second argument, the justice argument, the coalition was representative of women, as well as a number of other constituents who really just wanted a cessation of the violence. so they weren't just being fair to representing women in this cause. they also served justice to other voices, alternative voices who had not been party to the violence, who had not been party to the conflict and who otherwise really just wanted an end to the troubles. the third argument, again from o'roark is the larger dream argument, which is participation as deliberation. women proved -- women of the coalition proved through their very process oriented, very

deliberate political party style that there was an alternative to the violence of the conflict. that there was sort of this middle way in which a party could be representative, not just of one side or the other, but of a form of politics in which communities were accessed, in which local voices were mobilized. and in which advice was sought for improving the situation of the larger community. the fourth argument, the different agenda argument, in which participation is seen as a form of inclusion, one of the proudest moments for the coalition, according to its members in the good friday agreement was the pacific forum. that was meant to be a body that would sit parallel to the new

government. it will be made up of civil society members, community actors. it would serve as a media in terms of translating local community voices and needs towards policy in the new government, as well as serving as a sort of translator of new policies and laws from the government back into the community. today, 78% of the community in voluntary sector in northern ireland is women. they make up this majority voice in a field that was developed largely as a counter-response to politics, which they saw as pure violence. so, including this civic voice was their method, their -- i was going to call it their baby,

which is accurate, i think, considering how many of them really ran on issues of motherhood and wanting peace for their children. but they considered the pacific forum this access point, so it was part of a different agenda, a counter to the sort of pushing and pulling of power that was going on with the other parties. the other thing that the coalition pushed was integrated education. in an environment today still nearly 20 years after the violence had ended in which catholic kids go to catholic schools. and protestant kids go to state-run, but otherwise protestant schools. so pushing an integrated education system was also part of this idea of a different agenda. so women's participation including alternative issues. the final argument is the expertise argument. women in the coalition were able

to engage with expertise rather than having it speak for them. they engaged with expertise in terms of seeking out legal expertise, academic advice, and contributing to the peace agreement. they spoke on behalf of the expertise, rather than as o'roark sort of cautions us, that expertise on what women's issues are, what women's interests are, has a tendency to speak for women. so the coalition flips this form of participation in giving voice to the expertise, but letting it -- speaking for it, rather than letting it speak for them. so there's still agents in that expertise. and in this process of forming a party, participating in the peace process, they became professional experts in their own right. formal peace processes bring together key stakeholders in conflict, resolving tension,

trying to end violence. stakeholders are usually characterized by their capacity of decision makers, or represents of participants in combat roles or warring parties. as such, women are weg regularly left out of such processes. yet women experience and participate in conflict differently. their participation in peace processes then, if all five of these forms are present, can be achieved and can desperately -- or excuse me. descriptively and substantively change peace processes for much more inclusive arrangements at their conclusion. so, thank you. >> thank you, mandi, and hello again. what i'm going to talk about here is to bring -- mandi very well described why you need

women at the table, and what it really does to ensure a more lasting peace. and i think that's a big part of it, the goal is really to have a lasting peace. and to bring this back to the really counterinsurgency and irregular warfare context, if you look at the data from the correlative war, or the ucdp conflict data set, which are the two biggest, if you're not data nerds in here, like collection of, formally declared wars, but military conflicts that are out there, find that the overwhelming majority of irregular warfare, which is defined as either a state fighting a non-state actor, or multiple non-state actors fighting within a state, are brought to an end by negotiated settlements. there's very rarely a formal, all-out military victory or

formal surrender that is achieved in this context. a lot of people in this room have experience with trying to figure out what the end game is and we are learning more and more through the past 15 years that some sort of negotiation, and whether you call it a ceasefire, or peace process, or state-building, whatever term you want to put on that, what you need is multiple parties with multiple stakeholders to all sit down and talk to each other, to actually get these things to finish. and if you're looking for some good analysis on this, both barbara walter and andrew kidd have some very good analysis of the data that's already out there, as to how to get different parties and disagreeing parties to actually come together. that's not as much what i'm going to focus on now, but as to what integration really means for this process and what gender

integration in the actual battle space of counterinsurgency and in the battle space of irregular warfare, means for getting the right people to come to the table, and also ensuring that women are seen as viable stakeholders, that, as mandi pointed out in the northern ireland case, where women were seen as legitimate, they were there for a legitimate reason, rather as just the a window dressing, that we brought a woman to the table. you get a much more lasting peace. and so my argument is really that bringing women into the counterinsurgency battle space matters for this process. as we briefly discussed in the q & a from the last panel, it got brought in as to really, what's the purpose of integrating women as opposed to doing what some of the other larger military powers, as in china and russia, are doing now. and i think the first thing to really highlight with this, we need to fight the wars in the

battle space where the wars are being fought. if we look at what counterinsurgency and what irregular warfare looks like on the ground, as you are fighting within and among populations. you're not having infantry troops lining up on either sides of trenching and shooting each other and whoever kills more people wins and then you surrender, any longer. you're fighting in people's towns. you're fighting in people's villages. you're fighting enemies that you're not exactly sure, you know, are enemies one day and your bread seller the next day. this is just the reality. and even if you take it outside of iraq or afghanistan and you look at conflicts that are currently going on in africa and in other parts of south asia, what you're not seeing, large infantry on infantry-type battles anymore. what you're seeing are small-scale, non-state actors, raising violence, either against

the state or against another group, and ultimately you need a way to get them to the table. the most important factor in counterinsurgency, or if you're an insurgency group, is civilian buy-in, and if you look at the data from what we've been in afghanistan with cultural support teams and ellen has probably much more antidotes on this, of them actually talking then just the raw data number that i was able to;q-ucollect. groups where women were involved, side by side with men, in the entire clear hold and build operation. so they went in, they fought alongside men to get taliban out. they then reinforced these villages and taught the women how to be stakeholders in their village. how to both ensure their own personal physical security, as well as their village's economic security. and then were very involved in

the new leadership, you know, established in these communities. you have not seen a resurgence of taliban in these communities. similarly in a few case studies in sierra leone where you had norwegian peacekeepers who were involved in the entire process. and they brought women in and they taught women how to fight physically and secure themselves economically. you did not see a resurgence of extremist violence. so what you have here is a really three-pronged phenomenon. you have one where women are setting the examples of being equals with men. where you have western forces or stabilizing forces, from a neighboring country, you have men and women fighting alongside each other from day one. you have the precedent set and the example set that there are legalitaryian expectations and

that brings women into the community, into the fight, into the discussion of what does security and what does stability mean for me when you leave. and how do we ensure the stability and security when we leave. and you legitimize women as stakeholders in their own security, as stakeholders in their economic running, and you legitimize women as political stakeholders. so that's really number one. the second thing that happens with women as integrated forces, you end up with actually violent mitigation. work done by jason lyle, who is a professor at jail university who is looking at counterinsurgency in irregular war ner in particular, shows that pure violent military tactics have an inverse strategic effect to counterinsurgency. that going into an area that you're trying to win the hearts

and minds, if you go in and just start killing people, and you go in with the goal of, we're going to take over x terrain and hold it and conquer it and essentially have that more imperialistic view of military from back in world war ii days, you end up with strategic defeats. you may get tactical victories. you may take a hill, a village, a building, however you want to say it, but you intend to enflame a population against you and against your principles. and in counter insurgency, the goal is to get the population to not support the insurgency. to do that, you need a holistic approach to your fighting

tactics. you need the complex decision-making that goes beyond just, let's destroy this building because it may be used as an enemy stronghold, to, what are the long-term consequences? and what are the long-term effects of this military action? and it has been seen in the units that had either lioness programs attached to them in iraq, or in afghanistan, that you got more of this long-term, tactical -- or this long-term thinking is brought into the tactical level. so the tactics of, how do we ensure both our own security, the security of the village, married up with the long-term strategic goals of, we need to win the hearts and minds, to simplify it, of this village. so again you see women as a constraining force for the use of excessive force and excessive

violence. additionally on the side of the constraining force, to take it just out of the iraq and afghanistan context, if you look at the data on excessive use of sexual violence, and elizabeth would and reginald put together a phenomenal data set that goes back to pre-world war ii, of all instances of rape during war, whether it was by soldiers, and again, there's documentation issues and we don't have to get into issues of data reliability, because i'm sure there tends to be more than is reported, whether it was soldiers using rape as a women during interrogation, during, you know, just when you coveranquer villa you see the presence of women in

units, peacekeeping units, in rebel groups, that the use of sexual violence as a tool diminishes quite a bit. and the use of sexual violence in war is definitely outside the scope of this panel, but very briefly, it creates a lot of cultural barriers to reintegration and most conflict settling. so i'm happy to discuss more of that in a q & a if you want, but really the bottom line, it comes down to the fact that women serve as a mitigating factor, which creates one less stumbling block to reintegration, post-combat settlement, and to re-establishing legitimate and lasting peace. and then to end on a note that dove tails off this, there's a lot of, i think, popular stories. to play off this whole idea of emotion that comes up, that is always very prevalent in this,

where you'll hear reports coming out of colombia, with women in the farc, or in turkey in iraq, with women in the pkk, or even about u.s. soldiers, how the females are the most brutal. you never want to be captured by a woman because she's going to torture you far worse than any male would, or you don't want to be killed by a woman because you're going to go to hell. and again, this really brings up a lot of cultural constructs around what men and women should do. and if you strip again and pull back some of my own research and data bringing into this, in the pkk or the farc, that women and men actually do the exact same thing. like they have a very strict, this is how you interrogate a subject, this is how you treat prisoners, and there's no

evidence that women deviate from that script. however, the perception is that if a woman is doing something like this, it must be far worse. it's more insulting as a man, that a woman could do this to me. it opens up a larger cultural conversation about whether it's a pro or con, i don't have an answer to, but i want to throw that out there, that, again, it plays to this emotion and rhetoric that you see used on both sides, that women must be so much worse because they are some sort of deviant in this role. but to pull back to the counterinsurgency side, why we see women as being so important, they are essential facilitators for bringing women as prominent stakeholders into lasting peace. and i'll turn it over to deb. >> good morning. so you have to bear with me for a minute here. as a marine officer, i felt a

lot more comfortable hearing about and thinking about the info being shared on the first panel, but this is my research area. i've taken it in a slightly different direction than what was talked about on the first panel. we heard about skill sets that women bring and capabilities and how diverse groups are well equipped to handle diverse challenges and they're all true and good things, but i'm taking it in a different direction. a little bit of background, i'm a cobra pilot. so i grew up being the only woman in my squadron and constantly hearing, i've never flown with a woman before, and it was this separation, like i was expected to be different. so in grad school, when i first started, a long time ago, i decided as a joke to look at the impacts of gender inequality on different state security questions and to my surprise, i found that there's obviously evidence out there that it exists, that women do have a different effect in leadership and gender inequality has an

effect on a variety of state security issues. and a lot of you are nodding your heads. it was surprising to me, as a cobra pilot, no, i'm just like the guys. there's nothing they can do that i can't. and took some of this emotional -- not emotional, but more as a marine, with this touchy-feely stuff out of the equation. as it turns out, i was wrong back then and i'm learning more every time. right now, what i've been looking at is the impact of gender inequality, not necessarily on face value, on its face, but the impact of gender inequality on domestic terrorism, as an enabling condition. you know, terrorism is very relevant, it has been for the last 15 years, more so than it was earlier. and we still don't fully understand the factors that cause it, what brings it about, what enables it to continue. we look at it from a supply side generally. sometimes a demand side. a lot of our programs and

policies that are set to counter terrorism and violent extremism are set up from the supply side angle. so i'm going to talk a little bit about that, but what i really like to do at the end is bring it back full circle and talk about why an integrated military is uniquely suited to addressing the enabling conditions that go into domestic terrorism, specifically in this instance, jernt inequality. talk about my initial findings in my early years of looking at this. i found valerie hudson's work to be informative. mary cappely has done great work as well. what i found later through a classmate, a naval academy -- he's made it his life's work for three specific reasons in africa. they started including women as

counterterrorism agents of a form to counter terrorism, but they're doing it on a very low-grade level. and then i started learning about violent extremism and usip's program, state has some as well, that talk about using women to counter violent extremism, and they're seeing some success. so i wanted to learn more. i found that academically there's very little support one way or the other for gender inequality for domestic terrorism threats. if you extend the security sphere, you can see where the lines get drawn, but it's far from clear. so i started looking at it, and interestingly enough, i found that, so far -- and i'm still going through the research in my dissertation, this is what my dissertation is on. but my initial results are showing a strong, significant support for the idea that women

in the political sphere, the greater the impact, or the greater the allowance of women to have an impact in the spl political sphere, the lower the rate of domestic terrorism in that country. i didn't expect to see that clear of a result early on, and it makes me all the more excited to take it down the next road, which is the second half of this. i mentioned how a lot of our counterterrorism programs rely on supply-side dynamics. they want to get at the source. what creates terrorists? what builds terrorists? how do we get women involved to stop would-be terrorists from being radicalized? and in some ways, i think we're looking at that wrong. the supply side will always exist. we'll always as women and men in this world see grievances, see people take the grievances down the path to violence and i don't know that playing whacka mole for the rest of civilization we can ever stop terrorists from being born.

what we can do is create conditions that keep them from developing and keep radicalization from growing. i don't know if any of you are familiar with mark tes ler's work from the late 1990s, but he did fascinating work on the role of feminist forms and values or the acceptance of feminist norms and values among both men and women and the impacts of those on conflict and on the use of violent conflict, and he specifically looked at the arab/israeli conflict and found that both men and women who thought women should have equal rights were less supportive of the use of violence, of the use of military force, and were more interested in finding alternative means to conflict resolution. i found that fascinatinfascinat.

it's in some ways reflected my experience as a marine and i'm hoping it will influence my research into domestic terrorism. but the role of norms and outcomes in a society that is more open to equal opportunity for men and women and to the inclusion of women of every level, both the peace process and throughout the security sphere, that society has more options at its disposal for conflict resolution. kai mentioned populace buy-in, enabling conditions of a society to foster or help prevent terrorism. chief among those in my mind and in the research i'm finding, an acceptance of violence and the normalization of violence plays a really big role in that. so by including women at a descriptive level, we also can start to effect the way cultures accept traditionally feminist norms and values, less aggression, more peaceful conflict resolution. we all know as female marines that we're not all very

nurturing and we're not all universally pacific in our nature -- part of me is laughing right now. but those things become more accepted culturally on a wider scale, as the idea that women are worthy of respect and are worthy of inclusion at the highest levels and bring something to the table as that becomes more accepted. to tie that into how an integrated military can better address the domestic terrorism threat, i have a little story from something that happened last summer. i have a 5-year-old son and two older daughters. we were at a picnic and i heard a friend of mine, who is a really good friend, been a friend for 25 years, he's got a son the same age. his son ran up and was crying about something. and he turned to his son and said, stop crying like a little girl, cut it out right now. and it took me a minute. i didn't say anything right then. i thought about it over and over again, a million times.

but as his son and my son age, which one will be more open to different outcomes? and to different methods of conflict resolution? clearly there's a lot more to that, it's a simplified version of that story. but it's just an idea of how a cultural change within the military can also impact our ability to deal with other cultures and to relate to them. in a peacekeeping environment, those factors become downright critical to success. an integrated military with women included at all levels and that affords respect to women on all levels will be a lot more accepting of traditionally feminine characteristics. whether or not all women have those characteristics and will accept different options and outcomes more. so that's kind of it in a nutshell and i look forward to your questions. >> all right, thank you. so as we open up the question and answer period again. just remind everyone that we're

still on broadcast television, so when you wait for the microphone from one of the interns, state your first name and affiliation. so, questions from the audience, please. do you see one over here? oh, i'm sorry. dr. kat fisher. >> hello. thank you. i'm dr. kat fisher. i work at ft. bragg. thank you you all very much for your comments and presentations. they're very helpful. i had one that came from the first panel, but it also came up in terms of what a lot of you spoke to, and my interest and kind of question and concern is this realm between masculinity and femininity in the military context and out of it. in the context of integration, in terms of peace process,

negotiations or military combat units, how we don't inadvertently essentialize assumed constructed notions of gender in the name of equality. because you hear it in terms of how the questions are phrased, in terms of how explanations are made, in terms of just a natural, oh, that just is. and how we can kind of deal with that, and again, i think it's not exclusive to the military role, but perhaps more pronounced in a particular kind of way. so if you can speak to that, thank you. >> i can, and i know jeanette can as well because we both spent time thinking and writing about this. and this is, i think, one of the reasons that both of us got into the course of research we did, is because in both of our personal lives where we were both the only women in our unit, like the first in our squadron to do the job that we did as cobra pilots, that we very much had this idea, that don't look at me as a woman.

i'm just another pilot. treat me just like another pilot and that's the way it is. but then, on the flip side, we get out and we get really emerged in this research and we find more and more evidence that, well, a lot of these things that were culturally associated with women, whether it's nurturing or motherhood or thinking about security issues that are more than just physical state killing security, or what are really important for lasting peace and security, so how do we really shape this tension to where it is. i think the biggest thing that integrating women does, is that it opens it up for individual worth and individuals to be looked at for what they bring to the table, rather than necessarily assuming a lot of these -- whether you want to call them essentialized or culturally constructed notions of masculinity and femininity.

and where it is very true that each of us brings very unique perspectives to whatever our profession happens to be based on how we're socialized and whether that's we're socialized as a woman, we're socialized based on our religion, we're socialized based on our race, we're socialized based on our socio-economic status. so we all, i think, carry layers of cultural socialization. and sue and ellen both spoke very well to how that actually makes forces stronger and how you need to think more diverse because of it, but i think one of the things that integrating women does here in whatever form that takes, whatever an individual, however that individual woman chooses to wrestle with her own masculinity and femininity issues and we can both speak to that very well on a personal level, but what it does, it opens the door for individual worth and individual

expectations and also then individual exceptionalism. so one of the biggest things that i've looked at and a little bit of my research on cfts in afghanistan, but more working with female rebel groups in latin america, is that the presence of women in these fighting roles then empowered other women to do things outside of the fighting roles, because they saw women fighting alongside men. so it's a very -- women fighting is a very overt break to what those gender roles actually are. if you look at the most sort of black and while essentialization of men and women, men are the protectors and women need to be protected. that's, i think, the big duality there. so when women take on that role of being the protector and do it very overtly, it's a very visual, very obvious break in that norm. and what it then does is

frequently just open the door for women who felt constrained by other norms to say, no, i can be a politician. i don't have to accept -- no, i can take responsibility for my own physical security, for my own economic security, for my own stake in what happens to my family. and so however that plays out, i think that's where this integration has its biggest effect in the long-term roles of these counterinsurgency environments where women are becoming more and more active. i don't know if you want to -- >> and i got the gist of the question, and obviously from kai, i agree with her answer, but i have a hard time hearing sometimes, so i think i got most of what you said. if i'm missing something, let me know. it's mostly this ear. anyway, i do want to add one thing. it's not just whether or not women specifically have the qualifications or the characteristics that make them uniquely women, you know, at the

aggregate sense. kai and i, as she mentioned throughout our careers, you try to make yourself just the cobra pilot, not the woman. so there's such a wide variety. but the more important thing that comes from integration within the u.s. military and internationally at every level, is that you're just bringing more choices to the table. as worthy of respect, as worthy of consideration. you're opening up that box to more options. and as the u.s. military, because of our ubiquitousness and because of how much attention is put on us in many parts of the world in our presence, we have the unique opportunity by integrating to make cultural statements as well to other countries to suffer. and that's huge. that's something we've seen in small bits in iraq and afghanistan, and i think has some fantastic potential. does that answer the question? >> yeah, thank you. >> if i can, also, we've done a

really good job, i think, of explaining the value of moving away from that essentialism. it's obvious in the way you framed your question, i think. but we've also seen really fascinating cases of the essentialized roles that women are expected to play being extremely empowering on their own. right? we've seen women as mothers be very political active -- be very politically active, participating in conflict in ways that we don't expect that are not traditional, but they're doing that by mobilizing that essential identity, that sort of prescribed role. and so i think one of the things that i sort of wrestle with in my own work is also not diminishing what those essential roles can do for us, even as we're trying to move away from them, even as we're trying to

accept their -- let me say this a different way. recognizing the potential for value without being limited, maybe, is a better way of trying to get at. there's really interesting ways in which the essentialism has worked for women. the role that the coalition played, the case i was giving earlier in northern ireland, a number of the women who participated were participating very vocally and overtly as mothers and as women acting within their traditional roles in their community. but the legacy that it left behind was really fascinating. all of these traditionally very male dominated political parties recognized there was a women's vote, that there was capacity there, and so they began bringing women into their own party leadership and getting them elected into roles following that. so even the sort of empowerment

that came from working within those essentialized roles initially, enabled a sort of break from them more broadly in the generation of political leadership that followed. so i think they're also an alternative use to how we frame that tension, i think. >> can i add one thing to that too? that reminded me of something else as well. if you're envisioning the u.s. military in northern ireland helping to broker any kind of peace agreement, but let's talk about how we view, like if you send an infantry unit over there to do some peacekeeping work, and they don't have respect for women's roles and values and what women might bring to the table, but you have a northern ireland women's coalition and you have women who are primarily acting as mothers, as activists as well, the amount of respect

that will be accorded to those women and the amount of attention they will receive will be very different, depending on the norms accepted and the levels of respect accepted within the unit that's over there. that's part of how an integrated military can play such a huge role in this. >> all right, thank you. another question? over here again. >> good morning. my question has to deal'hn withe best way to implement integration of women in a traditional society. so should it be the holistic approach where we focus on education and have women teach their children, so when they grow up, it's more of a generational approach where they'll be more liberal and open, or should it be more like a transformative occupation approach where we take over a

country and we say, now you need to have this certain amount of women inside your government? which way do you think would be the best way to do it? >> so, in what i've seen, evidence wise, so it sorta depends. and this is, i think, a question where it's very good to have a lot of dialogue between academic and practitioners, because it comes down to measuring outcomes. and the evidence would point to the first case being actually the best way to do it, education and socialization, so that you learn and it becomes more organic. so that as norms become more accepted, as more liberal norms with regards to gender roles and tolerance roles become more accepted, you organically create a society in which women are viewed more as equals. however, the way that metrics are typically measured is that

we say things like, this becomes a success when we have 30% of the parliament being women. and so there's a few problems with that. one is that it's a very artificial measure. you set sort of an arbitrary number and say, when this happens, then we have enough. the second is that you don't necessarily get and i thate using this word, but for lack of a better word, but the right women in the job. if you say, i need 30 women to do this and you pick 30 women at random, there's no guarantee that you're getting women with the skill set, the desire, the experience to perform the job well. what also then frequently ends up happening, you get a lot of co-optation by political party elites and this was a big problem that you actually saw in kuwait with the introduction of a quota system. they made a big deal, we want to

open this experience to women. we bought into this literature that having women matters. but what you did, you had the political parties saying, you, you, you, you, and you are going to represent us and you just represent us. and they're not representing their own experiences or any sort of bottom-up organic desire, they're just per pet wa uating the status quo of the ruling party, because you become puppets. and rwanda speaks to this as well, the power of organic change. you had a situation in rwanda where, because of the horrific genocide, women had to be political activists, to run the military in the post genocide. so you had women having to take

on these roles. and they had to figure it out because there was really no -- there wasn't this structure put in that we need this amount of women in here. but as a result, you see their children who are the generation that are coming up now and becoming the leaders, that they learn from observation, they learn from what sort of education, you know, these women felt was important to impart, that it becomes organic. now it's not having women in for the sake of having women in. we have individuals who have seen what women had to do, and seen what sort of security concerns need to be in play and fully internalize that. and that's what's become a more security and stabilizing force. and then the other thing that it does, i think having pure gender quotas, and the respect, there are at least as many males who

can speak for the benefits of respecting women's rights and respecting autonomy and individuality as there are women who can. and that's largely in part to socialization. and that really the gender integration comes down to being able to respect individual abilities and as jeanette said really well, putting more options on the table, and seeing that there are more ways that women can act than just this sort of essentialized version. but unfortunately, whenever we go in and do anything, as a military, in particular, like, you need results, and you need to come back with these sort of metrics that you hit a, b, and c, and now we measure them. and this is, i think, perpetually going to be a problem, when you have to have actionable goals, like you have to say, we did one, two, and three, and did a good job and it's stable enough because x percent of the women are in the parliament. we had x amount of women at the

negotiation. we hit the u.n. resolution obligation. we hit what we set out for count count count countersnugscy obligations, but it doesn't set out for the next election, or the next generation, that they're being ought actual integration or expansion opportunities. >> you can see it with the millennial generation coming in and taking over the lower level to mid-level leadership levels and their attitude of don't ask, don't tell, and gender integration are pretty different than the senior leadership's views and it's been interesting to see. but it's an example of how organic change is good, but at the same time, sometimes you need a little push to remind those in charge that there is a push, that there is something else going on out there that they might not see.

>> i will also say that social change has to come from within. we have goals and we have measures and policies to promote the kinds of change that we want, but we don't always respond the way people want us to. so the changes that we're hoping for are not always the change that we get unless we have and we've talked about this language a lot -- a buy-in. the case of rwanda is a really interesting one, because the change that was forced upon the existing population in rwanda by virtue of the genocide was not a positive one. it was not something that the survivors would have chosen or would have thought. but as a result, we do have this really amazing exemplar of women in the legislature. but that didn't necessarily

correlate with a -- or reflect a change in the existing social expectations, right? because what we're seeing is, yes, rwanda has this -- i mean, just fantastic number of women in the legislature, and yet at the same time, rwanda has a president that has consistently sought and taken and re-appropriated more and more power for himself, has sought to continue his power in the presidency at the expense of any potential change or empowerment that being a part of a legisl e legislatulegislat legislature might otherwise have conferred on this generation of women who played these, you know, for the first time, very public, very official roles. and so what it means to have that change truly taking effect and to be long-lasting is -- really has to be driven from within. and it doesn't always happen the way we want or hope that it

will. >> thank you. another question. all right, well, i have one. my question is about the role of women, in particular mothers, in counterradicalization and deradicalization issues. by way of context, last june, ceasea conducts an event in iman, jordan, with over 40 alumni from the middle east, southern europe, africa, and southeast asia. one of the topics in the conference was on radicalization in particular, how that point of radicalization with foreign fighters leaving countries of those that were there to go fight with the islamic state or daesh. and in discussions, it came out that in particular, for muslim countries, that the role of the mother, more so than any other family member, influenced either the radicalization or the

counter-radicalization of both young men and young women, family members. so in your own research, have you seen something similar, if so, are there ways that the united states and our partner nations can leverage that role in positive ways. >> yes. absolutely i've seen it. the mother schools that save has been developing have shown some levels of success. and those basically brought in community-level leaders and brought in women and taught them how to recognize the signs of growing radicalization within families and what to do if they notice it, what to do if they found it. they're still very small, very low level, and only a couple different areas, but they've had some is success. the usip, women preventing extremist violence program, has also done similar work. they've involved women as mothers interacting with local police forces or security forces to recognize signs of growing extremism. i think the small successes are encouraging. i think we have yet to figure out how to harness that on a wider scale.

that's where i'm looking with my research. because it's going to vary by culture in huge ways. women in northern ireland will by and large probably be -- find accesses easier or gathering together and discussing and meeting and becoming activists easier there than in other countries. we can all think of a few. so it varies culture to culture, but there's definitely an association there, we just need to figure out how to capitalize on that. >> you can come to isa and read my paper. but so i did a little bit of work for this paper, looking at the radicalization of immigrant communities and really the role that the mother plays there, looked at microlevel familial gender roles and i was finding that there wasn't much there. but something that i have found that hasn't really been addressed, i don't think, very well in all of these anti-radicalization programs,

especially when you see kids who live in the west. you see this really big in europe, in britain and france, who are leaving and going to daesh and that's where i think a lot of this work is really coming from. what i found and it's right now still very, like, rough kor larry data and i don't have a really robust data set, so one of the reasons i want to go to isa is to try and make it better, but in communities where children saw their mothers targeted because of their culture and because of their religious beliefs, so where there was a lot of essentially very anti-islamic sentiment, especially as muslims, you saw a very high instance of radicalization of their children. and that it became almost this reverse protective mechanism where children grow up expecting like their mother to take care

of them and it becomes this very natural bond that you grow up and your mother is the first person to really care for you, really take care of you. well, what happens when the culture into which you're supposed to come to get a better life. they were sold this idea as immigrants, we're moving to the west because it's going to be better, and now you see that culture, particularly targeting your mother, the person that is supposed to be your protector, your care-taker. you know, your sort of world, when that person, and that identity becomes targeted, there becomes almost this knee-jerk radicalization response. and this is, i think, a radicalization dynamic that hasn't really been looked at very much. but needs to be addressed, i think, on a larger scale when we talk about what is integration, is it gender integration, or are we talking about increased tolerance? and there is a lot of evidence that increased gender tolerance

leads to cultural tolerance and religious tolerance, but are we having the wrong response? and what breeds radicalization? is radicalization really a response to being othered so much that you don't feel like you have any other recourse to air your grievances, you know, the supply side. but i think this idea of the role of mothers and especially when mothers are threatened, it hits at the very much supply side and demand side. you're creating an environment where children tend to feel helpless, but they have this other option and i think some of these radicalized groups have done really well at marketing themselves. like they're great at recruiting. they're really good at reaching these children who feel very isolated. so looking at that role of how, i think, not just the role of mothers, as jeanette said, how

to spot the signs of radicalization and prevent radicalization, but as the west, what are we doing to assimilate familial units, and so that facilitation can happen, so women have the power and the ability to spot and prevent radicalization, as opposed to their targeting being the catalyst for it. >> i thought of something else too. this keeps happening. and on the same note, you're talking about the u.s. military coming in and recognizing the signs of -- or recognizing communication from women in different societies about the signs of growing radicalization. an integrated military that can understand the roles of women in those societies is better equipped to relate to that as well. but also, if we don't do a better job as a country and internationally, in harnessing the role of women in more traditional societies, terrorist groups are already doing that, and they do it fairly well.

they'll come into an area and pull all the women and say this is your duty as a mother, to push your son in this direction, to send this message. so if we don't counter that, if we don't offer a different narrative or some version of that out there, then we've lost part of the battle. >> thank you. other questions from the audience? right here in front. >> thank you. i'm jen taylor, i'm one of the external guests. i work as a consultant to dod with a clearing. and i wanted to pick up on the thread you were putting out there related to mothers and the protectivism and how do you think the migration waves we're seeing throughout europe might impact that in the decades to come? and is there any intervention that we can make in the near term that will prevent sort of the trajectory going forward?

>> so i think that's the million dollar question. and i wish i was more of an anthropologist now to trace it. but, so i think there's a few factors. one is that we don't have, i think, a really good harness on how big the migration, both the migration and the refugee problem are. because i think they are two very different issues that sometimes get sort of conflated together when we're just like, oh, there's more middle easterners heading to europe or to the u.s. before. we need to separate them out. there's the migratory group that very intentionally is saying, you know, we want to go work somewhere, we want to go live in europe to have better opportunities for x, y, or z. whether it's themselves or their families, they feel that there's a better -- the whole sort of american dream or western dream

narrative, you're going to come and have better opportunities, better education, and it's going to be a better life. so that's one set. and then on the other side, you have the refugee and the asylum seerks who because of the perpetual conflicts that have been going on, really honestly have nowhere else to go. it's not that they necessarily want to leave syria or want to leave iraq, there's just physically no place -- they don't have a home any longer. it's been gone. so i think we need to look at those two separate issues and i think one is with the migration side, it really just comes from, this is a sort of different conversation with immigration and actually you accepting that immigration makes people stronger and they bring different skills and different traits and those are important. but on what i think your question is, this refugee and asylum crisis, that it's building and building and

building, to the capacity where host countries aren't going to be able to handle it. and so what i think -- and whether these people don't necessarily want to leave their home, they want to be back there, they have roots they want to return to. and so what i think the bigger question needs to be is, what is the, like, role of the international community in ensuring that you have a fruitful lasting negotiated settlement in places like syria, or that you are able to put in programs to address the radicalization issues that are going on in iraq right now, to ensure that it doesn't become worse. so how do you get them, you know, how do you get the islamic state to the table? how do you get, in africa, how do you get boko haram to come to the table and how do you negotiate those things? because that's the first question, if that can happen.

and this brings in something that mandi can probably speak to a little bit better. but assuring the role of the asylum seekers in the negotiation process. i was able to see the transcripts of a meeting with a bunch of syrian women who are now in turkey. and these were all very -- they're university-educated women. they all had professional jobs in syria before they were forced to leave, because they just didn't -- they had no place to live or no place to work anymore. and they were talking about why the negotiations failed. and one of them finally brought up, nobody will talk to us, nobody will include us. we were economists and bankers and university professors and parliamentarians, like, we have skills. but they're so focused on who is actually fighting, that they're not reaching out to people who have, you know, as mandi like mentioned, this expertise in this set. so i think figuring that problem

out is going to help prevent this from becoming -- because you're seeing the refugee population becoming a radicalization problem as well now. because really they have nowhere else to go. and it's the way -- and again i think this goes to how good a lot of these radical groups are at actually their propaganda and their recruitment ability, they're saying, we'll offer you a solution, we'll offer you a place when we win. and that's something that they're doing that no other side is doing. no other side is saying, well, if you come join us, we'll ensure that you have a socio-economic role when this conflict is over. and unfortunately what the u.s. and other international militaries have been doing, they've been so focused on having the right side militarily win that they've neglected to really engage with who the key stakeholders should be when the conflict is terminated. >> all right, good, thank you.

questions, anyone? all right. all right, up here in front, please. doesn't seem to be any. >> hi, ambassador jones. edward jones and i spent about 33 years in the middle east. but i think you hit on something in your question that's really important, and it gets back -- first of all, before i start on this, did everyone read debra tanner's washington post editorial on women in leadership and the essential conflict there because we like, you know, we like our leaders to be forceful, strong, and occasionally angry. we like our women to be gentle, self-deprecating and not really too angry, like our mothers. we all have mothers and we love our mothers, most of us. [ laughter ] and that leads me into what i was going to say about the middle east, though. and i think anyone who spent any

amount of time here and i think the ambassador would agree with me on this, and who spent a lot of times in the houses, in the homes, and that has been the advantage of being a female officer in the foreign service, we spend a lot of time in the homes with the females as well. the question is spheres of influence. in the home, they are tremendously powerful and they make all the decisions and often jokingly refer to the men as the donkeys who do the work and bring home the money, but the mothers make all the decisions. even more importantly, what we have to realize, in these disrupted coupultures, in libya where i served, the only sphere where the government did not intrude, was inside the home. that was the only sphere where there was comfort, and also where the family honor factor is so important. and the down side of that is the

women's independence. because the women's honor is so important. we can talk later about kuwait, because i was at ambassador to qui kuwait as well. i think the kuwaiti women are the strongest, the most independent, make their choices. but nonetheless, in all these societies, the home still remains the center of gravity for everything. so now with the refugee flows, you've created all kinds of free electrons and that's really dangerous. because these women come, they can't establish the same center of gravities for these families, for these kids and that's something we need to focus on a lot. they know when their kids are misbehaving a lot of times and they get that. but we need to help them create centers again, within their cultural norms that help them to keep an eye on and keep tabs on all these free electrons. because i agree with you about

the young women, their next generation. they don't know how to cook. they were still going home. and now they're disrupted and we're not plugging into that as well. so it's really a tough situation, but it's an important one. i'm glad it came up, i'm glad you raised that question, thank you. >> i want to say one more thing on that as well. the other thing about the refugee crisis that we're not really talking about, i'd be very interested to look into and to hear about, is, how much of an impact, if any, external cultures are having on the refugees as they go? like that would be a fascinating topic. that would teach us about how we can use the military, how we can use different countries' militaries to solve problems in the world today. we're not talking about it. and obviously the level of influence will depend on the towns, the countries and the regions we're talking about, but that's something that i wish we had discussed more. >> any other panelists want to comment?

all right, i think we don't have any other questions. so let's join in a round of applause for our panelists. [ applause [ applause ] so dr. bell is going to close us out with some remarks, and if i could have the other panelists from the earlier session make their way up, because we have a parting gift for you after his remarks. [ inaudible ] parting gift. [ laughter ] a token of our appreciation. you can come slowly. just to recap, hey, first of all, i want to thank all the panelists and all the participants who came. i found it incredibly enlightening. and some of you may not realize what you learn from this and you'll find out later when you're in some tough jobs, you'll go, wow, i really needed that insight. i think it's essential that we all assess the experiences we've

had, particularly the last 15 or 20 years, understand those, but also chart a path to the future. and intellectually our own military likes to forget the lessons of -- fill in the blank -- vietnam, or the last decade of war before we're even out of it, and we haven't even grasped the way ahead. so i think even understanding what we've done is important but the way ahead is crucial, unless somehow we're going to merge into a very lucky and peaceful world, where everyone's kind of happily living together and the challenges of irregular warfare and radicalization are gone. i'm afraid we're not going to live in that world. it would be great, but we might as well prepare for the world that we're in. hey, in the world of ceasea, our goal is to take everybody out of their intellectual comfort zone and give them the schools, the ability to succeed, meet the expectations we have, even if you don't think you can when you first come here.

right, fellas? international fellas? you've achieved more than you thought possible. i thought our comments about expectations were huge and the power of diverse teams and diverse perspectives. it's important to step back, whether it's a gender question or some other question, what are the diverse perspectives that we're missing, that could give us different approaches or more creative solutions to the problem? because frankly, in some cases, what we've been doing hasn't necessarily achieved the resounding successes that we keep claiming we've had. and so this is an important way to think about it, whether again it's gender, religion, generation, ethnicity, sub cultural groups, tribes, you name it, how do we include those in a constructive way to move forward as we build the approaches that are going to endure forever? we talked about expectations matter. that's a key thing. how do leaders set the expectations, how do they set

their organizations up for success? and then how do they recognize within their organizations the official standards, the informal standards, sometimes they're different. how do they then root those out as they go forward? in the discussion of standards, which we kind of got to a little bit, but could go much deeper, from my experience, we always talked about the standards limiting, but we never looked at the aspects in the case of women, where they may have been superior. for example, i remember a subject back in the day when i was a lieutenant, that it came out and suggested that women had superior hand-eye coordination and dexterity and would make better tank gunners than men. oh, man, we didn't like that. because it kind of fit against that. well, of course then as you do your force design, one option was, we could have an automatic loader in the tank, in which case, upper body strength wasn't

that important. the other one was, oh, no, we can't have an auto loader, that's too soviet union. the technology is great. but instead you had this justification based on upper body strength, rather than the key element of the tank, i would submit, was the actual ability to put steel on target. so did i need a better loader or a better gunner? i probably wanted a better gunner. but it was interesting there, what we called standards, we sometimes had a selective approach. so step outside of your own bias. this is an important way to think about some of these issues. the next, organizational cultures, we're all part of them, whether it's a service culture, or a community culture, or a branch culture, and then leaders may try to change those organizations, but ultimately there are spoilers at the subordinate level.

people told they couldn't travel. yes, they're supportive at the policy level, at the senior level. but below that, there's some missing element. and how do you as leaders, identify that, follow through to make sure that your campaign's going to succeed? and this is all your responsibility. now, i'm reminded in this regard in andrew j., he was the superintendent at west point. sue will remember him. ellen. came in out of retirement, was a retired four-star general, had been the supreme commander of europe. came in out of retirement as a three-star general, imagine that, to take west point through some very trying times. one was the cheating scandal, a question of professionalization oppo post irregular warfare, and the

second was the integration of women in the force.