The gendered contradictions of Canadian peacekeeping

Abstract

United Nations peacekeeping continues to be tied to Canadian identity, albeit in complex and contradictory ways. This research study was motivated by Canada's Elsie Initiative and renewed rhetorical commitments to feminist foreign policy under former prime minister Justin Trudeau. It draws on in-depth interviews with Canadian servicewomen and veterans deployed on UN peacekeeping operations from the 1990s to the early 2020s. Its aim is to understand how peacekeeping continues to be tied to Canadian identity, despite Canada's decline in contributions, and how Canadian women peacekeepers make sense of their roles on missions, including their views on whether their participation improves operational effectiveness. Interview participants described peacekeeping as both meaningful and fraught. Many resisted narratives that position women as solutions to complex mission challenges, noting the burdens of visibility and stereotyping, among others. Contributing to literature on Canadian peacekeeping and its gendered underpinnings, the findings can inform future policy directions.

United Nations (UN) peacekeeping ¹ continues to be closely tied to Canadian identity, albeit in complex and contradictory ways. ² In 2017, then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to re-engage Canada in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (PKOs), a promise that also entailed increasing the meaningful participation of women through the Elsie Initiative. ³ The Elsie Initiative, run by Global Affairs Canada in partnership with UN Women, was established to recruit, train, and promote women military and police personnel for UN PKOs, as it is “the right thing to do, as well as the smart thing to do.” ⁴ The initiative, along with other key policies, was considered part of Canada's broader feminist foreign policy under Trudeau. ^{5 6} The announcement of the Elsie Initiative motivated this research study in two ways. First, it is paradoxical that peacekeeping continues to be tied to Canadian identity despite the country's participation having reached historically low levels. ⁷ Second, commonly cited justifications for increasing women's representation in peacekeeping remain grounded in arguments of operational effectiveness, where women are assumed to contribute to peacekeeping in distinct ways based on essentialized notions of sex and gender. ⁸ However, these expectations do not align with women's experiences on the ground.

This article contributes to literature on Canadian peacekeeping by drawing on empirical data with Canadian women peacekeepers to discuss the significance of peacekeeping for Canada as understood by servicewomen, and whether servicewomen consider their contributions to be different from those of male peacekeepers. The article begins with a brief overview of my methodology, followed by engagement with literature on Canada's peacekeeping history and contemporary perceptions of peacekeeping among servicewomen. Then it examines operational effectiveness arguments for women's increased inclusion, or smart peacekeeping logics, alongside an analysis of servicewomen's experiences, before concluding and offering some research and policy implications.

Methodology

This research project is based on data collected through semi-structured interviews with forty Canadian servicewomen and Veterans deployed on UN PKOs from the 1990s until the early 2020s, in missions that included Bosnia, Golan Heights, Haiti, South Sudan, the DRC, and Mali. ⁹ Many of the women I interviewed were one of few women (or even the only woman) deployed on certain missions. To protect their confidentiality, I will not be naming any locations or identifiers. Of the forty women who participated in this study, fourteen were retired and twenty-six were current Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members; fourteen worked in non-traditional occupations, including combat arms; and the remainder worked in occupations that had a greater representation of women, such as administrative, logistic, and medical occupations. The participants represented all three military elements: the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Most participants were regular force members, and a few were reserve force members. Participants represented a diverse subset of ranks, from junior non-commissioned members up to senior officers. Nearly half of the participants were mothers, and nearly half were also deployed to Afghanistan, Canada's most recent war-fighting mission. Most women were white; only four were racialized. Several identified as lesbian or queer and any were francophone. Eighteen women disclosed having experienced sexual misconduct while serving in the Canadian military; twenty-two participants did not. ¹⁰ This research was motivated by the Elsie Initiative, but it engages with servicewomen's lived experiences to make sense of gendered peacekeeping. To do so, I relied on thematic analysis, ¹¹ but my methodological commitments were premised on taking seriously women's lived experiences. ¹²

Peacekeeping in Canada

Peacekeeping is a function that militaries participate in globally and includes a range of activities undertaken by the UN to maintain international peace and security. PKOs can help facilitate democratic political elections, protect civilians, assist in Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR), protect human rights, and assist in restoring the rule of law. Other activities may include conflict prevention and mediation, peacemaking, peace enforcement, and peacebuilding. The boundaries between these activities have become increasingly blurred and UN missions are rarely limited to one type of activity. PKOs are guided by three basic principles: consent of the parties, impartiality, and non-use of force, except in self-defence and defence of the mandate. ¹³ The CAF conducts a variety of operations (surveillance of Canadian territory, emergency response, search and rescue, NATO assurance and deterrence measures) and peace support operations are tasked and directed by the Canadian Joint Operations Command at the request of the Government of Canada. ¹⁴ The nature of peacekeeping has changed over time and whereas traditional peacekeeping was created to contain and manage inter-state wars that had the potential to become global conflicts, recent missions are multidimensional and focus increasingly on violent intra-state conflict and civil wars that entail increasing peace enforcement. ¹⁵

Canada has been a leader and staunch supporter of peacekeeping since 1947, having contributed over 125,000 personnel from all elements of the Armed Forces. ¹⁶ Former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson was even labelled the father of the UN forces and earned a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Suez Crisis. ¹⁷ However, incidents like the Somalia Affair, where the Canadian Airborne Regiment killed Somalian local Shidane Arone in 1993, highlight the fraught undertones of Canadian peacekeeping, ¹⁸ despite collective memory viewing Canada's peacekeeping contribution as largely positive, ¹⁹ which perpetuates the “peacekeeping myth”. ²⁰ Canada continues to be perceived as an altruistic middle power seeking to ameliorate international peace and security. ²¹ Sandra Whitworth argues that peacekeeping has served to “increase some local people's insecurity rather than alleviate it.” In particular, she points to the central contradiction in peacekeeping: the vast majority of peacekeepers are soldiers, “people skilled in the arts of violence and the protection of nation and territory,” whereas the blue beret is supposed to be “benign, altruistic, neutral and capable of conflict resolution in any cultural setting, a warrior-prince-of-peace.” ²²

Canadian participation in UN peacekeeping has diminished significantly in the last several years, further tarnishing Canada's reputation as a peacekeeping leader. Other than Canada's deployment to Mali in 2019, the number of peacekeepers deployed under Trudeau's Liberal government was lower than under his predecessor, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. ²³ Despite Trudeau claiming that “Canada is back,” ²⁴ Canada ranks seventy-fifth among UN Troop Contributing Countries with only twenty-six personnel deployed in 2025. ²⁵

Tracking Canada's participation in peacekeeping, Walter Dorn found that in October 2024, only twenty-two individual military personnel were deployed, including only one woman. ²⁶ UN figures show that women made up 8.4 percent of uniformed peacekeepers in 2023, but only 6.4 percent of military contingents. ²⁷ Both overall and Canadian figures fall short of the UN's renewed UN Gender Parity Strategy, where the target for women in military contingents is 15 percent. ²⁸ UN figures will not increase without the commitments of national militaries, as member states are responsible for deploying personnel. In the CAF, women represent 16.6 percent of the total Regular Force and Primary Reserve members. ²⁹ Women only make up 2.7 percent of Regular Force combat occupations (infantry, armour, artillery) ³⁰ and there has been considerable attention to women's roles in combat, namely regarding their capabilities. ³¹ While literature about women in the CAF is better established, ³² significantly less is known about women's peacekeeping deployment experiences, ³³ an area where further research to improve women's meaningful participation and eliminate barriers, is needed.

Before delving into their unique gendered experiences, it is beneficial to understand how women make sense of peacekeeping as a conflicting and contradictory experience. Most research participants joined the CAF for financial reasons, secure employment, familial legacy, positive youth cadet experiences, and the opportunity to travel and experience adventure. Many of them imagined travelling out of their places of origin, including rural or isolated areas, and explained how they always imagined travelling abroad to experience new and different cultures and people. The motivations for wanting to be deployed internationally were similar: additional or tax-free pay, being “on the ground,” and using their training in the “real world.” Some participants felt that deployment was what they needed to get ahead in their careers and to legitimize their experiences and give them more credibility, although others felt that being deployed caused them to miss out on other opportunities, like career courses.

When participants were asked about why they wanted to deploy, almost none of them mentioned that they were drawn to peacekeeping in and of itself. However, when asked whether peacekeeping was different from other deployments or if they attribute any special meaning to peacekeeping, there was a wealth of conversation both lauding peacekeeping as an important task for the CAF and pointing out the contradictions within peacekeeping. A participant noted that the notion of being a peacekeeper has unique and special connotations for a military service member, especially because the military, as an extension of foreign policy, is “not always hugs and flowers.” She stated,

If you are not there to seek out and destroy an enemy, it changes the entire thing you are doing—gathering info, reconnaissance, safe and secure environment—changes the flavor of the mission immediately. … That change trickles down into everything. … You feel it almost on a cellular level, the difference between offensive and I only have the right to self-defence. For a soldier, that's a pretty fundamental shift. … I don’t like to think of myself in trained killer mentality, but we conduct offensive operations for Canadian foreign policy and live in a country that doesn’t want to attack anyone which is great.

This participant reinforces the narrative of “Canada the good,” ³⁴ a perspective shared by several participants who thought that Canada had “a responsibility to make up financial and equity gaps in the world” and to “spread Canadian values and culture to make the world a more democratic place.” They identified the responsibility to spread democratic values and work towards equity as a uniquely Canadian attribute. A participant referred to Canada's role in Mali as “a flying ambulance, we were the cavalry.” On a similar note, another participant explained that as a child she thought Canadian blue berets were “superheroes” who were “saving the whole world.” While she explained that she sees it differently now, she emphasized that she joined the CAF to do peacekeeping work, not to go into combat, and that participating in peacekeeping was one of the most meaningful things she had ever done.

Several participants also mentioned peacekeeping as a key difference between Canadian and American militaries. One participant stated, “I’m actually quite against force. I wouldn’t want to be in the American army—their stance is something different than what Canadians are about. I like the idea of peacekeeping as it's something I can morally support as well.” This participant continued to explain that the military ethos of duty, loyalty, and integrity is one that she values and upholds. Yet another participant thought that peacekeeping was something that resonated more closely with her personal beliefs when she stated, “I have a lot to offer but I’m not a warrior. I think that should be okay. The military needs people to do the job I’m doing, and we are not all warriors.” Her comment suggests that peacekeeping is, in an obvious sense, less violent than other military work, such as combat. The image of the male warrior as the apex of traditional hegemonic masculinity has historically been used to exclude women from military service, as they were not thought to fit the gendered ideal that requires physical strength and stoicism, among other masculine qualities. ³⁵ Another participant suggested that the Liberal government is invested in the peacekeeping ideal because “the Canadian public isn’t ready for us to be warfighters.” There is conflict between what it means to be a warrior and what it means to be a peacekeeper, although both are roles occupied by CAF members. Peacekeepers “should be able to both fight and build a country. They have to help and protect the local population, on one hand, and fight an enemy that may hide among the population and gets assistance from that same population, on the other hand.” ³⁶ Although the role of a peacekeeper can be contradictory and has its limitations, many study participants morally resonated with this role and its expected behaviors and traits.

In contrast, some participants found the notion of peacekeeping to be troubling. They resisted the narrative of “Canada the good ³⁷ ” and recognized that the peacekeeping project is not inherently innocent as it comes with its own forms of violence. One participant commented on the situation in South Sudan and stated that for Sudanese people, “if you lived through decades of military men raping women, burning all the crops, anyone with a uniform would look like a threat. There's no reason why a blue hat on your head would be any different.”

It is an oxymoron ³⁸ that there may be little peace to keep on many UN Missions. One participant said, “it's called peacekeeping, but bullets were flying.” Participants considered Canada's most recent peacekeeping missions as more risky than traditional peacekeeping missions as multidimensional peacekeeping has generally evolved to encompass more potentially dangerous roles. ³⁹ One participant pointed out that aeromedical evacuations in Mali were a “softer component” to a mission that is “combat-related” as it was a dangerous and volatile environment. She thought that the government uses the term peacekeeping because “it resonates with Canadians” and “there is an audience that can relate to that, to the UN… peace is good, and Canada involved in peace is good.” Multidimensional peacekeeping straddles the work of traditional peacekeeping and war fighting, making the peacekeeper identity a complex one for those who navigate balancing responsibilities for upholding so-called Canadian identity and values alongside engaging in state-building efforts.

Many participants also struggled with the administration and bureaucracy of the UN as an institution and were not convinced the UN is making a difference where they serve. One woman explained that going back to communities that have already interacted with the UN demonstrates that “nothing has changed” and “the UN is full of empty promises.” Participants were also troubled by the notion of peacekeeping and intervention as “you go to countries that don’t want you there, but you are forced to go anyways,” and “[you] have to go even if you don’t agree with the fact that people on this side of the world should not intervene on that side of the world.”

Several participants pointed out the hypocrisy of how the UN does its work. One woman, who deployed to Mali, stated, “UN leadership was all political. … Most of those who died on peacekeeping missions were from third world nations. Medevac was there for the first world nations. … All lives are not equal under the UN.” Countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America provide around 90 percent of all military and police personnel for UN peacekeeping but contribute only about 15 percent of the budget. ⁴⁰ There are power discrepancies between UN member states that offer troops and those that offer money which dictate whose lives are put on the line, and as a result, are more disposable. ⁴¹ The experiences of Canadian women peacekeepers highlights the contentiousness of peacekeeping overall. Next, I provide an overview of smart peacekeeping, or the operational effectiveness arguments justifying women's increased inclusion, and how servicewomen made sense of these logics.

Women in peacekeeping

The drive to increase women's participation in peacekeeping largely stems from United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, the first resolution making up the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. ⁴² UNSCR 1325 builds on the Beijing Declaration Platform for Action, a landmark agreement from 1995 that remains the most comprehensive blueprint for achieving global gender equality. ⁴³ UNSCR 1325 is built on four pillars: participation, prevention, protection, and relief and recovery. It calls for: the increased participation of women in peace processes; the protection of women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence; the prevention of violence against women; and the need to address international crises through a lens of gender equality. UNSCR 1325 is followed by nine subsequent resolutions reinforcing WPS principles. ⁴⁴ UNSCR 1325 and the WPS agenda in its entirety have been scrutinized on many fronts and there is a strong body of literature about both the positive and problematic aspects of the agenda. ⁴⁵ Some critiques include: that the bureaucratic operationalization of WPS largely ignores women's localized peace work; ⁴⁶ that there is a lack of attention to the diversity of women's needs; that the agenda has been used as a policy mechanism to maintain control over less powerful actors in global politics; ⁴⁷ that heteronormative assumptions in the agenda result in silence on homophobic and transphobic violence; ⁴⁸ that there is no representation of women with disabilities; ⁴⁹ that gender essentialisms permeate WPS discourse and insufficient attention is paid to men and boys; ⁵⁰ and that the agenda does not provide any clear mechanisms to measure progress. ⁵¹ Further, UN member states are responsible for operationalizing the agenda and thus far only 56 percent have adopted National Action Plans (NAPs). ⁵² Canada is on its third NAP, and while there has been some academic and civil society attention to the challenges and failures of previous iterations, ⁵³ I will focus on how the NAPs engage with peacekeeping.

Canada's first NAP, released in 2010, focused on peacekeeping through the lens of implementing zero-tolerance policies on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), by positioning peacekeeping as a way to protect the rights of women and girls, advocating for WPS to be included in the mandates of all new PKOs, and encouraging the participation of women on PKOs. ⁵⁴ Canada's second NAP, released in 2017, barely mentions peacekeeping other than to strengthen the pre-deployment courses for RCMP personnel who will be deployed on operations. ⁵⁵ The Department of National Defence (DND) and Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) implementation plan from 2017 draws more attention to peacekeeping, again, to respond to and end impunity for SEA committed by peacekeepers, to reinforce the importance of gender mainstreaming and the differences that women deployed as peacekeepers can make, as well as increasing deployment opportunities for women. ⁵⁶

Canada's third NAP focuses on peacekeeping when it comes to increasing women's leadership in international PKOs through the RCMP and DND/CAF increasing the deployment of women on UN PKOs. ⁵⁷ But most of the attention to peacekeeping in Canada's third NAP is to the Elsie Initiative. However, the initiative is run by Global Affairs Canada and is mostly outward-facing, and applicable to other countries where Canada provides development support, namely through the Elsie Fund, hosted by UN Women. The Elsie Fund provides funding for initiatives that support women's increased representation on PKOs, including barrier assessments to better understand women's challenges on PKOs. Funding has been allocated to construction where there is a lack of accommodation for women and for daycares, funding recruitment campaigns targeting women, and funding the development and implementation of gender training. ⁵⁸ The CAF is among a handful of national militaries or police services that have completed the Elsie barrier assessment called the Measuring Opportunities for Women in Peacekeeping (MOWIP) methodology. ⁵⁹ Other countries that have completed MOWIPs include Jordan, Bangladesh, Norway. Zambia, Senegal, and Uruguay. Unfortunately, beyond a news release from DND, there has been little to no attention about Canada's barrier assessment results, other than a brief article published in Canadian Military Family Magazine. ⁶⁰ CAF's barrier assessment was released in 2022 and draws on surveys and interviews with key informants to measure the impact of ten issue areas to the meaningful participation of women in UN PKOs. ⁶¹ The report concludes that the most significant barriers exist in relation to deployment selection (whether men and women have a fair chance to deploy), peace operations infrastructure (whether accommodation and equipment is designed to meet women's needs), and social exclusion (whether women are treated as equal members of the team during pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment). ⁶² The report does not include interview excerpts; as such, the data from this research study is a valuable addition to understanding the contributions women make.

While women have been perceived as less capable in combat ⁶³ and continue to face challenging stereotypes, discrimination, and sexual misconduct, ⁶⁴ their contributions to peacekeeping are always framed positively. The assumptions are that women can better protect citizens since they are less intimidating than men; that they improve intelligence gathering; and that they serve as role models and protectors ⁶⁵ for local women and girls because of their compassionate responses. ⁶⁶ The “smart peacekeeping” assumptions that women can improve PKOs draws heavily on gender essentialisms where calls for women's inclusion are not on the basis of equality, but rather on the basis that they improve PKO functioning and effectiveness. ⁶⁷ We see this discourse even with evidence that shows how women, added in small numbers to masculinist institutions, cannot make transformational change or address systemic social challenges and might even contribute to harm in the same ways as men. ⁶⁸ Based on my research, women rarely buy-in to smart peacekeeping logics and mostly challenge their underpinnings.

The UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), was Canada's first larger-scale mission since the 1990s and the first mission since Trudeau made promises to re-engage Canada in peacekeeping. Considering the visibility of this mission, particularly during Trudeau's feminist foreign policy era, a participant stated, “the expectation was that women would be the face of the mission in Mali.” Another participant explained the limitations of the Elsie Initiative, believing it did not have much effect on Canadian military women on the ground. She emphasized that the higher proportion of women in Mali was largely due to pressure to fulfill the UN quota and that if the military was fully committed to increasing women's representation, they would also be deployed to other missions in greater numbers, such as to Kuwait or Latvia. Some research suggests that missions with a lower risk have higher representations of women, revealing an adherence to norms around women's association with peace as well as reinforcing the association of masculinity with combat. ⁶⁹ Conversely, another participant suggested that the proportion of women on the Mali mission was the last consideration after focusing on qualifications and ability to deploy. She stated, “That speaks volumes right there because it means that we did have so many females even without taking it [gender] into account.” She contrasted Canada's ability to deploy so many women with the Malian Armed Forces, as the Malian government had a target that they should have a 25 percent representation of women. She explained, “I thought that would be a huge challenge for Mali because they are not a culture like we are. Who's gonna take care of the Malian children? The women do. They don’t leave their children with their husbands and go to work. It's not something they can achieve if we can’t achieve it.” This language when referring to Malian women is problematic and could be interpreted as colonialist. ⁷⁰ However, the comment also signals perceptions about Canada's progressiveness on gender equality, despite evidence that Canada's rhetoric is far ahead of its actions. ⁷¹

Participants had a lot of thoughts and experiences pertaining to smart peacekeeping logics, ⁷² and most did not agree with the gendered stereotypes they deployed. Half of the participants subscribed to gender blindness and thought a discussion on men's and women's differences was futile, as individuals’ abilities to excel in certain contexts was mostly related to personality, not gender. A quarter of the participants were disturbed by smart peacekeeping claims, judging that the claims created an unfair burden for them to carry. Women in this camp did not feel comfortable standing out based on their gender alone. One participant stated:

You are supposed to put aside your own struggles and do it for the benefit of women in another country. Maybe if I was more altruistic, I would help women in another country or with this initiative, but I don’t know why I would want myself in a gendered role when I came so far to not be seen as just a woman.

While there is ample resistance to being contained within a set of gendered expectations imposed on women, some women found a sense of power and purpose in their gender as they thought it made them stand out from the men, ultimately benefitting the operation. One quarter of my participants believed women did contribute something different and were valuable for operational effectiveness. How easily women chose to use traditionally feminine qualities depended on the tasks they were assigned. As one participant stated, “Sometimes you are kind, sometimes not.” Another said, “You don’t want a peaceful nice lady on a combat mission, but a peacekeeping mission benefits from just that.” A third participant remarked, “Dudes that come from combat arms trades are all about closing in and destroying the enemy and that may not be what you need to do in a peacekeeping mission where you are securing food, water, safe environment for NGOs to do their work.” According to several participants’ viewpoints, the military benefits if there is a gender mix and some participants felt that women should be prioritized for peacekeeping missions as it makes operational sense. One participant stated:

We seek out people who speak Russian when we go to Ukraine and teach people to speak Spanish before they go to Mexico … [and] deliberately seek out skill sets to make us effective on operations. … We are more effective if women are on team and should go and deliberately find more women.

Comparing being a woman to a skill that one acquires, such as speaking a second language, demonstrates the gender essentialism Kathleen Jennings describes when she writes that it is “not what women do, but who they are that makes the difference.” ⁷³

Another woman explained how her perspective on this matter changed over time: “Did I want to be seen as kinder and gentler? No, it would have been a weakness. But now I have grown to see it as a superpower, a force multiplier.” Interestingly, gender identity only mattered circumstantially to some participants, with one woman saying that “it doesn’t matter if women are kinder and gentler because they aren’t in the infantry, which is the ones who are mostly sent to peacekeeping missions. … It makes no difference if the person cooking is a man or woman.” Likewise, she noted that, “women can come off as more caring, but that is only beneficial if you work with the local population in roles such as a military liaison. If you are in headquarters, it makes no difference.” Of the one-quarter of research participants who believed women contribute to operational effectiveness, a majority were in positions that had contact with local populations, such as UN Military Observer (UNMOs) or Military Liaison Officers (MLOs).

In practical terms, women peacekeepers are sometimes necessary to conduct operations in ways that make sense for the populations that they are serving. That includes situations where local women may need help, but men are not culturally allowed to touch them. While these kinds of situations are inevitable, accessing local populations while mindful of cultural sensitivities extends beyond logistical support. Likewise, both local women and women peacekeepers were thought to see situations differently than men, and thus, tapping into them as a resource was thought to result in “a more complete intelligence picture” as women have “a window into a network that the guys don’t have.” Women were thought to be able to get into sites that their male colleagues could not, and to get otherwise inaccessible information and build unique relationships. Participants indicated they had more access to local women and men as sources of information. One participant explained, “I expected it to be easier for me to speak with women than my male colleagues, but I didn’t expect it would be so much easier for me to speak to the local men. … There was no alpha male show down. … They didn’t need to show me they were stronger than me.” It was common for women to be perceived as less threatening than their male colleagues because the men “didn’t feel challenged … [and] they saw me as novelty, not a threat,” and “men don’t see you as looking to win something, because of the status men have in their society; as a woman they don’t see me as a competitor, they see me as caring and stuff like that.” Another woman explained:

Men tend to deescalate their own emotions when they’ve got women around. Local men will not be as emotional when dealing with women because they don’t feel as threatened by women. When they don’t feel as threatened, they won’t escalate as quickly emotionally, which will make it easier to talk to them, negotiate with them, get access to areas and information.

Understanding their positionality, some participants leveraged their femininity and used it to their advantage. One participant explained that this view was corroborated by her other female colleagues, “white, African, Asian, we all had same experiences and got more information.”

Further, participants indicated that they had an easier time building trust, including by appealing to other women as mothers: “Whip out a photo of your kid and tell them you are a mother too.” This participant suggested that men could do the same in their roles as dads, but another participant explained that having a shared experience with other women is the key. She explained, “If I go on UN mission, and see a pregnant woman, I will know so much more on how to help her breastfeed and other things.” Having shared experiences (such as pregnancy) with other women was one way that women peacekeepers got their foot in the door with local women. Beyond shared experiences, some participants thought “women have soft skills and different approaches to problems that are valuable in the mandates of UN peacekeeping missions such as military and civil cooperation or thinking through access to health and education”, and that women have a “softer touch.” One participant pointed out, “it is hypocritical to go in there with soldiers that are white, heterosexual cis-normative men and say, ‘I can relate to you, I have empathy.’” Another participant provided an example of bringing unique attention to gender issues when many local women near a mission were being raped while getting firewood away from the local internally displaced persons camp and so women staff at the UN advocated for more patrols to monitor and solve the problem. While men were also in favor of this solution, the women peacekeepers prioritized it. As women in most of the world continue to be primarily responsible for domestic and reproductive work, one participant believed that they “may bring these issues to the table in a professional setting when it normally wouldn’t be considered.”

Some respondents evoked tropes about Canadian progressiveness, especially about how gender inclusivity in the CAF is a model for other nations. One participant explained that having women in non-traditional occupations, including pilots and gunners, “opened up conversations [about] how we value this in Canada, that everyone can participate.” Another participant stated, “Our presence impacts nations that aren’t as integrated as us. Still far ahead of them and we can show them it isn’t the massive hurdle that they think it is.” Unsurprisingly, women who resisted smart peacekeeping logics had no interest in being the face of a progressive Canada. A participant argued, “Not a lot of women want to become the poster girl for women in the army, they didn’t sign up for that, they signed up to do their jobs.” Women knew when they were put on display that they had to say the “right things,” which was not a desirable role. Institutional goals of improving gender equality in the CAF may not align with the additional work women have to do to fit in with the existing masculinist culture. Highlighting their gender then became not only undesirable, but potentially harmful because of backlash.

The expectation that women can improve operational effectiveness is a complex issue. Most participants did not believe it to be true, some strongly resisted it, while some felt empowered by it. Furthermore, the experiences of women are diverse and not unidimensional. Neither women peacekeepers nor women in peacekept nations are homogenous.

Conclusion

The goal of my research was to document and better understand the experiences of women in the CAF who deployed on UN PKOs. Motivated by the Elsie Initiative and Trudeau's renewed commitments to peacekeeping, this research uncovers some of the ways servicewomen make sense of Canada's role in peacekeeping and how their individual roles on missions are highly gendered. While some of the women I interviewed were drawn to peacekeeping as a goal and an important part of Canadian identity, many felt uneasy with the idea of peacekeeping and were troubled by their complicity in it. Although peacekeeping continues to be framed as a Canadian value, low participation means that it is largely a myth associated with peacekeeping as an ethically superior use of military force. ⁷⁴ Further, participation in peacekeeping should trouble how people, both the peacekept and the peacekeepers, experience security and insecurity. ⁷⁵ Peacekeeping can reinforce inequality, across nations globally and, through smart peacekeeping logics, between men and women as well. Peacekeeping is a unique site of gender analysis because, even though UN peacekeeping is militarized, peacekeepers are feminized in a way that is contrary to the typical masculinized military and the warrior ideal. In peacekeeping, kindness, compassion, and approachability are valuable skills. However, peacekeeping is still dominated by men and a “boys will be boys” environment. ⁷⁶ Akin to militaries, for women to be accepted in such hyper-masculine environments, they must appear to subscribe to the same ideologies as the men or risk being ostracized, disrespected, or stigmatized. Thus, women in peacekeeping face the predicament of being considered too kind, gentle, or peaceful for “real” militarized combat work while simultaneously often being included in PKOs based on assumptions that those exact same qualities will serve peacekeeping missions well.

Beyond documenting servicewomen's experiences, the findings of this study have broader implications for both research and policy. Future research should build on this descriptive foundation by examining how institutional cultures within the CAF and UN either sustain or challenge gendered hierarchies in peace operations. Comparative studies, looking at how women in other national militaries experience similar tensions, would deepen understanding of how foreign policy frameworks are lived and negotiated at the operational level. From a policy standpoint, the findings suggest that increasing the number of women on peacekeeping missions, while important, is insufficient without addressing deeper structural and cultural barriers within both Canadian and international institutions.

Initiatives such as the Elsie Initiative and National Action Plans on Women, Peace and Security should move beyond representation metrics alone and consider reforms in deployment selection, leadership pathways, and post-deployment reintegration as outlined in the CAF's barrier assessment, including adequate supports for mental health and family reintegration. ⁷⁷ Ensuring that women's participation is meaningful and consistent, rather than merely increasing their numerical representation, would align with the intent of UNSCR 1325 and strengthen Canada's credibility on the global stage.

Further, this research points to the need for more intersectional approaches to gender and peacekeeping policy. Although limited, the diversity among participants underscored how the category of woman is not homogenous, and policies should better recognize the unique barriers faced by racialized and gender minority servicemembers. Addressing these inequalities would contribute to more inclusive and effective operational environments, consistent with CAF's goals of implementing institutional culture change. ⁷⁸

Finally, at the level of national identity, these findings invite Canadians to reconsider what peacekeeping means in contemporary global politics. As geopolitical insecurity grows, the myth of “Canada the good” continues to persist and shape foreign policy discourse, but it obscures the moral ambiguities experienced by those who serve. Future scholarship might then interrogate how narratives of benevolent militarism sustain Canada's self-image while masking complexities. By centering women's lived experiences, this study not only challenges dominant narratives of Canadian peacekeeping but also advances a framework for more gender-responsive peace operations.