Transformative indicators? Gender expertise and technocratic peace

Abstract

In the last decade, the use of indicators to track implementation of international peacebuilding and peacekeeping programmes, policies and practices has proliferated. Indicators are criticised by many scholars for their technocratic, standardised and colonialising effects. This article follows a different line of inquiry. Can indicators be transformative? Contemporary critiques place indicators as bureaucratic artefacts in a vacuum, detached and decontextualised from the nuances of human agency developing, utilising and subverting them. I conceptualise indicators as powerful gendered technologies of knowledge creation developed, used and subverted by institutional actors. Using interviews with institutional actors and United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Reports, I trace institutional stories of one indicator (out of 26) developed to capture implementation of the UN Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The indicator investigated tracks the number of senior gender experts employed within UN Peacekeeping and Special Political Missions. Stories of progress, skill, and location in the reporting of this indicator between 2010 and 2020 highlight strategies deployed and opportunities taken by feminist-change advocates within the UN to prompt a deeper implementation of the WPS agenda. While indicators hold the danger of reinforcing neoliberal norms, the failure to conceptualise the potential for developing, utilising and/or subverting the indicators smacks of hubris, limiting opportunities for meaningful transformation.

Introduction

Gathering and systemising knowledge has represented a significant proportion of work done by international institutions in the last few decades. Information about development, human rights, peacekeeping and peacebuilding and climate change – among other things – are categorised, counted, analysed and promoted as knowledge, often in the form of an indicator. Indicators measure how changes occur in a specific condition over time: a speed indicator tells us changes in speed. In peace practices, indicators evaluate mandate performance, conflict containment, limitation of casualties, measure the rule of law, capture the percentage of reported cases of sexual exploitation and abuse perpetrated by peacekeepers, and so on. Indicators are developed for internal monitoring and evaluation purposes to assess the success of a project or used as evidence to persuade and reassure others about the value of these efforts. Such efforts are linked to how forms of quantification – like indicators – are seductive (Engle Merry, 2016a) means of developing ‘modern facts’ (Poovey, 1998) systemising information about the world in which we live and presenting this as ‘objective’ knowledge. Within global peace and security governance, what does the knowledge generated by indicators do?

Scholarly attention has focussed on the limitations of international indicators and the knowledge produced, highlighting how liberal, colonialised, and unequal structures of governance are reinforced (Engle Merry, 2016a; Mac Ginty, 2013). In these accounts, indicators are typically presented as bureaucratic and technocratic artefacts. On the other hand, feminist global governance has explored ways gender experts subvert global gender mainstreaming indicators and norms on the ground (Jauhola, 2013; Novovic, 2023). Özlem Altan-Olcay (2022) observes gender experts draw on technicalisation – including indicators – as a strategy to navigate organisational priorities and political convictions. This article extends these observations to highlight how feminist-change advocates have reshaped technical processes to achieve transformations within an organisation. Significantly, intentional efforts to subvert and alter the effects of an indicator upon organisational discourses, practices and mechanisms are made by advocates, and we must pay attention to how advocates create these spaces to make it possible to escape the unequal effects of indicators in international peace and security.

Analysis is focussed on one indicator (out of 26) devised to capture implementation of the first resolution of the United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The WPS agenda encompasses a broad range of principles guiding global responses to women and gendered needs in conflict-affected areas, protection and prevention of sexual violence, and the participation of women in peace and security institutions and decision-making. In 2009, concerns abounded that the first resolution, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325, adopted October 2000), was being inadequately implemented. The development of 26 indicators to track implementation of UNSCR 1325 was one response. This article investigates how feminist-change advocates have used a single indicator – indicator 10, tracking the percentage of field missions with senior gender advisors – to prompt transformations within the UN system. This deep-dive into a single indicator enables close investigation of how actors use the indicator, revealing strategies used to exploit the indicator’s transformative possibilities. We can uncover the micro-effects of opportunities used and political tensions navigated by feminist-change advocates inside the United Nations (UN) system. I draw on interviews and the annual Secretary-General Reports on WPS produced between 2010 and 2020 to assemble institutional stories about the indicator, facilitating an awareness of work done by feminist-change advocates.

This article proceeds in four parts. First, I explore the literature concerned with technocracy in global governance and public policy, drawing out myriad ways indicators are powerful technocratic practices sustaining liberal, colonialised and unequal structures of peacebuilding and peacekeeping governance. However, this literature offers little deliberation on how actors are involved in the creation and use of indictors. Not deliberating on this limits theorisation of the transformative possibilities of indicators. I develop this line of thought in the second part of this article, where I introduce the case study to explain how ‘transformation’ can be conceptualised. Crucially, actors are involved in the creation and use of indicators, and so the potential to adapt and subvert mainstream bureaucratic technologies exists. Third, I describe the methodology used to investigate these transformations: where interviews with UN ‘insiders’ are layered with a close reading of UN documents, enabling investigation of stories about one indicator. Fourth, I investigate stories of progress, skill and location across a decade of reporting on indicator ten, highlighting ways feminist-change advocates use the indicator to alter organisational discourses, practices and mechanics. I conclude by re-centring the contradictions of the indicator: drawing out both transformative potentials and illiberal and colonising effects to urge us to move beyond binaries and imagine alternatives for further transformation.

Realising the power of global indicators

The potential for identifying spaces for indicators to be subversive and/or utilised for institutional transformation runs counter to scholarly debates – within public policy, sociology/anthropology of knowledge, peace and conflict studies and feminist global governance – concerned with how global indicators are powerful technologies of knowledge creation sustaining liberal, colonialised and unequal structures. This scholarship draws attention to (1) the power of indicators, (2) indicators as technocratic processes and (3) how indicators limit knowledge. I contend these interrelated critiques present indicators as bureaucratic artefacts in a vacuum, detached from the nuances of human agency developing, utilising and subverting them.

Indicators are powerful. Various forms of quantification, including indicators, work to prompt ‘new things and new relations among things’ (Espeland and Stevens, 2008: 413). Indicators and other forms of measurement intervene in the social worlds it depicts (Espeland and Stevens, 2008: 413). Thus, indicators shape policy practices and outcomes in global governance. Indicators work to shape ‘acceptable’ standards of performance or to legitimise and substantiate policy preferences (Boswell, 2008; Power, 1996: 7–8). Indicators generate or dull activity in certain areas over and above other areas by prompting people to think and act differently. They work to create outrage (the failure to achieve!) or celebration (some tangible progress at last!). In their analysis of the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TIPs) report and global performance indicators such as the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, Judith Kelley and Beth Simmons (2019) suggest this power frequently takes the form of social and political pressure of comparison against peers. The knowledge produced by these indicators has powerful ramifications shaping global policy processes, practices and outcomes.

The power of indicators relates to their function within technocratic (governance by technical experts) and bureaucratic (process-led) practices of global governance. Indicators are perceived as a bureaucratic artefact with organising and rationalising effects: a technology of knowledge creation. Sally Engle Merry (2016a: 29–31) explores how indicators are a seductive means of knowing about the world: they are ordering activities packaging and presenting knowledge in easily consumed ways. For instance, the US State Department’s TIPs reports rank countries according to their antitrafficking efforts, creating knowledge conforming to standards established by the United States (Engle Merry, 2016a: 112–139). This simplified, reduced, and distorted ranking has economic and political power determining prevailing conceptualisations of trafficking (Engle Merry, 2016a: 140–160). In the indicators-as-technology-of-knowledge approach, indicators are a form of quantification shaping decision-making and governance wherever ‘organisations or individuals can harness its power’ (Baele et al., 2017; Davis et al., 2012; Engle Merry, 2016a: 212). The emphasis is on how global indicators constitute a form of power providing partial and distorted knowledge.

These concerns with the power of indicators feature prominently in investigations of the ‘technocratic turn’ within international peace interventions. Intervening states, organisations and/or institutions seek out bureaucratic, standardised, apparently rational ways of explaining and organising their activities (Mac Ginty, 2013: 57). International organisations working in intervention contexts draw on ‘benchmarks’ and ‘best practice’ (Brown, 2013: 492). Roger Mac Ginty (2013) notes the increasing use of programmes, projects, log frames, targets, budget cycles and reporting mechanisms which offer a peacebuilding package, akin to ‘peacebuilding from IKEA’ (p. 57). Within this technocratic culture, ‘multiple actors are complicit in the creation and perpetuation of a particular approach to peacebuilding’ normalising bureaucratic responses subsequently regarded as ‘neutral’ (Mac Ginty, 2012: 288). The focus of scholarly attention is on the ways knowledge about doing peacebuilding and peacekeeping is constrained by measurement. Indicators become a self-fulfilling prophecy where peacebuilding actors are unconsciously complicit in their use, as bureaucratic processes are normalised to actors (Mac Ginty, 2012: 287). This recognition about the power of indicators points to a perspective that indicators are bureaucratic artefacts continuing their work regardless of who is responsible for their use or implementation.

Viewing indicators as powerful bureaucratic artefacts shaping outcomes mean scholars point to how indicators are a manifestation of the liberal peace model, promoting a top-down intervention seeking to create ideals about governance, human rights and market-led economies in conflict-affected societies. Liberal models of peace are extensively criticised for imposing westernised and colonialised peacebuilding practices (Sabaratnam, 2017). Indicators come under fire for sustaining liberal peace practices excluding local voices and reinforcing colonialised and unequal structures (Brown, 2013: 492). For many, ‘the approach [of international institutions towards indicators] is pathology rather than engagement’ (Brown, 2013: 492). However, some scholars urge us to avoid the ‘indicators as evil’ trap and advocate development of nuanced, localised, and everyday indicators (Brown, 2013; Firchow, 2018: 10; Holt, 2013). Pamina Firchow (2018) conceptualised a model of ‘everyday peace indicators’ to better account for local voices in post-war measurement and evaluation, enabling nuances between different communities to be articulated. Developing richer, locally-owned indicators addresses some concerns about the homogenising and colonising power of indicators. However, this still presumes actors cannot easily disrupt indicators exclusively created by international institutions: the ‘solution’ posed involves coproduction of entirely new indicators with local actors.

Feminists also articulate concerns about universalising and/or colonialising effects of indicators. This is particularly noticeable with indicators seeking to capture empowerment, equality or violence against women. It is notoriously difficult to collect data about violence against women. There is significant underreporting of gender-based and sexual violence because of patriarchal structures, including (among others) criminal justice systems, social and political norms, and fear of the abuser (Davies and True, 2017). Furthermore, the theoretical framework used to measure violence against women matters: do we measure ideas from gender equality, human rights, criminal justice or national statistics? (Engle Merry, 2016b). These frameworks have varying levels of power with ‘enormous consequences for the way those phenomena are understood and governed’ (Engle Merry, 2016b). Measurement of conceptually complex terms – empowerment, gender equality – are viewed as largely inadequate at best, and problematic in reinforcing universalising assumptions about these complex concepts. For instance, measurements of ‘empowerment’, a UN Millennium Development Goal, ignore relational aspects of power structures sustaining differences, problematically reinforcing assumptions the entire group is empowered when some members of a marginalised group gain access to power (Arat, 2015; Kabeer, 1999). Similarly, attempts to quantify ‘gender equality’ within CEDAW replicate a narrow perspective, rendering intersectional inequalities invisible (Liebowitz and Zwingel, 2014). Feminists offer important insights into how indicators have a powerful ‘flattening’ effect through attempts to universalise complex concepts or phenomena.

Just as bad is collecting no data at all about women and girls. Feminist scholarship investigating the ‘gender data gap’ and its effects on the lives of women also recognise the power of indicators. As specific data about women is not collected, knowledge about women, their bodies and their lives is rendered invisible in planning and policy processes, sustaining systematic discrimination against women (Perez, 2019). Initiatives such as the Washington DC-based Data2x programme highlight the existence of, and begin to address, gender data gaps (Buvinic et al., 2014). The development of the UNSCR 1325 indicators investigated in this article arises from demands made during 2009 for better WPS data (Castillo-Díaz and Cueva-Beteta, 2017: 186). If we fail to count women, then women are not counted at all, and policies, processes, practices or outcomes that address the needs of women and girls are not formulated. Here, scholarship points to a need to generate indicators (presumably new indicators) because existing indicators are unable to adequately capture the real and pressing needs of approximately half the global population. There is limited consideration of the possibility of subverting indicators, and investigations of how indicators make particular groups invisible maintain an indicators-as-distant-technocratic-process perspective.

Unifying this wide-ranging scholarship is a recognition that indicators are a powerful technocratic practice creating certain and limiting knowledge with ramifications for the work international institutions do. Indicators are part of a bureaucratic machinery, supported by a technocratic culture, and have neutralising, flattening, colonialising and pathologising consequences. There are gendered consequences too, in how indicators render women invisible in some areas while having a universalising effect in others. I do not dispute that indicators are limiting and problematic. However, I wish to shift the question and pay attention to how human agency creates, use or subverts indicators. This echoes existing scholarship exploring how technocratic processes are strategically drawn on by feminists working within institutional frameworks (Altan-Olcay, 2022; Eyben, 2015; Jauhola, 2013; Novovic, 2023). Asking about the role of human agency comes from a feminist perspective concerned with the possibility of transformation: how can we (as feminists) advocate for a more gender-positive future (even if there is no agreement on how this looks) if there is no possibility of transformation?

Room for adaptation: what are transformations?

This section unpacks the notion indicators are developed, used, and subverted by actors and recognising this enables appreciation of the transformative possibilities of indicators. Transformations need to be advocated, enacted, or sustained by someone, or a group of people. The following paragraphs outline a means of understanding how indicators hold the possibility for transformation and the role of human agency in this. To develop this framework, I introduce the 1325 indicators in the context of ideas from ‘data feminism’, feminist global governance and scholarship about indicators. Taken together, we have a framework for conceptualising the work of feminist change advocates using an indicator to enact institutional transformations.

This article explores how feminist change advocates have used a single indicator to prompt gender transformations within the UN system. For many feminists, measuring transformation is difficult and contested, not least because of fears of a potential sell-out or co-option of feminist ambitions. For feminists, the vocabulary of ‘transformation’ refers to a challenge to ‘underlying relations of domination and oppression’ and normative ambitions to alter structures, policies, practices, and processes (Hobbs and McLeod, 2023: 164). Indicators are typically created to assess something about the success of existing ambitions and structures and so might not be considered transformative. Yet, there is no single mode of transformation, and feminist-change advocates may draw on one strategy from many to pursue desired change (Waylen, 2008: 254–255). Significantly, ‘the transformation of institutions does not equate in any direct or simple way to the wider transformation of social relations’ (Waylen, 2008: 255). Thus, I unravel the impact of an indicator within the UN system and the work of feminist-change advocates in pushing for any transformative effects.

I explore one of 26 indicators launched by the UN Security Council in October 2010 to track the implementation of UNSCR 1325; UNSCR 1325 and 9 other related Security Council resolutions agreed between October 2000 and October 2019 represent a global WPS agenda for better considering the needs of women and gender equality in conflict resolution and international security governance. I suggest the 1325 indicators are transformative in two ways. First, creating a set of indicators to track implementation of the UN’s WPS agenda was transformative. Second, feminist change advocates mobilised indicators to transform policy practices, processes and outcomes. The latter mode of transformation is the focus of this article.

Creation of indicators: potential to transform

In 2009, feminist change advocates within the UN system were concerned about poor implementation of UNSCR 1325 across the UN system. ¹ The perceived lack of progress was linked to the absence of an accountability mechanism. To address this, advocates inserted a paragraph within the fourth WPS resolution, UNSCR 1889 (October 2009), calling for the creation of global indicators to track implementation of UNSCR 1325. ² This was a deliberate move to realise the ‘transformative and structural changes envisioned by all actors contributing to the birth of resolution 1325’ (Coomaraswamy, 2015: 236). Creating these indicators during 2009 and 2010 was a ‘painful’ ³ and politically fraught process. ⁴ Many within the UN system described the 1325 indicators as ‘one of the most revolutionary things that have happened in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda’, precisely because they push people to change. ⁵ The ambition to prompt better implementation of UNSCR 1325 across the UN system gave impetus to devise a set of indicators to track this: in this regard, the creation of the 1325 indicators is transformative.

Creating indicators has the potential to capture information and form data to alter things. In this case, to alter implementation of UNSCR 1325. Evidence is gathered in a systematic and generalisable manner ‘in light of – and thus in some sense for – a theory or hypothesis’ (Poovey, 1998: 1). Underpinning the creation of the 1325 indicators is the hypothesis that the principles of UNSCR 1325 have the potential to be – and ought to be–better implemented. Perceiving indicators as a form of social pressure (Kelley and Simmons, 2015), the creation of the 1325 indicators was intended as a mechanism to transform organisational practices and processes. Crucially, information about progress made on UNSCR 1325 is not already ‘there’ to be discovered and consumed. Rather, the information and its creation and capture have been designed by someone for a specific purpose (Espeland and Stevens, 2008: 405). There is human involvement in creating indicative knowledge. This perspective reminds us of the potential for data – including the data generated by indicators – to be transformative where the drive for it to be transformative exists.

Creating indicators is a feminist strategy or action too. Using data science to ‘challenge and change the distribution of power’ is the work of a ‘data feminist’ (D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020: 8–9). Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein (2020: 49–126) advocate a set of principles guiding feminists in collecting (mostly–but not exclusively–systematic or quantitative) data to analyse and challenge unequal power structures, value diverse knowledges, disrupt existing gender binaries and prioritise local, indigenous and experiential ways of knowing. There is something decidedly political in the creation of the 1325 indicators: they ‘cost a lot [emotionally]. . . it was a lot of tension and headaches. . .[but] it has been a revolutionary thing [to create them] and it was the right thing to do’. ⁶ Relatedly, I use ‘transformation’ over ‘change’ to recognise the political ambitions underpinning the work of advocates.

Technocratic transformations: using indicators

Once created, feminist-change advocates mobilised the 1325 indicators to transform policy practices and outcomes. This builds on the idea that indicators are a form of social pressure (Kelley and Simmons, 2015) but extends it to recognise how actors intentionally use indicators to push for change. The 1325 indicators were developed to prompt change, but feminist-change advocates within the UN system do further work to realise the full transformative potential of these indicators. As one interviewee explained,

‘for those of us who are activists on this (WPS) agenda, we see this as an agenda that has the ability to transform. . . [UN entity, redacted] approach to this issue [redacted] is far more about recording women’s presence, pushing for women’s presence but not necessarily the transformative content that we want to see go along with that presence’. ⁷

There is effort expended by feminist-change advocates to make the WPS agenda transformative via the indicators.

I contend indicators hold the potential to be transformative and prompt shifts in institutional discourses, practice or mechanics. To understand how this potential can be realised, we need to conceptualise the centrality of human agency in the creation and, crucially, use of indicators. While no definite definition of indicators exist, for our purposes: Indicators capture information in a simplified and processed format to compare, contrast and evaluate standards or performances (Davis et al., 2012: 73–74). There are three core components to this definition:

1. The capture of information. Indicators capture information about the level or ranking of something. If we wanted to know about affluence, we could turn to indicators like car or home ownership. However, this information is not already ‘there’ to be discovered and consumed: but is created by someone for a specific purpose. There is human involvement in creating knowledge: the 1325 indicators emerged from an intention to create and capture knowledge to prompt change.

2. The simplification and processed format. Indicators present data in simplified and processed formats, allowing an assessment of performance or standards. The format need not be numerical or statistical, although numerical indicators are particularly powerful and persuasive (Baele et al., 2017: 3). Facts do not speak for themselves and the processed data requires interpretation (Best, 2012: 154–156). Hence, there is a need for explanation and elucidation: there is human involvement in the interpretation of facts.

3. The judgement of standards or performance. Indicators create standards and a reference point comparable across time and space (Baele et al., 2017: 16). These standards – judgements of success or failure – are intentionally defined by someone. Many indicators of performance relate to monitoring, with the potential to ‘shame those who are revealed to “underperform”’ (Kelley and Simmons, 2015: 57). These judgements do not emerge from a vacuum. Indicators are used in a normative and intentional manner to alter policies in desired ways or to enable the formation of judgements.

How can we unravel the role of human agency in the creation, simplification and processing of knowledge, making judgements to enable analysis of the transformative potential of indicators? I draw on Carol Cohn’s (2008) prompts for assessing UNSCR 1325’s ‘path to radical transformation’ within the UN system. Cohn (2008: 192–193) proposes exploring (1) rhetorical and discursive changes and if/how actors use statements to initiate various political processes; (2) shifts in organisational policies and practices (and where–headquarters? In the field?) and the extent to which actors push for changes; and (3) the organisational mechanisms for facilitating change. These are intended as prompts to probe a ‘textured description and analysis of impact’ (Cohn 2008: 192), used while exploring the institutional stories described later in this article.

Crucially, the work being done is beyond merely tracking progress: there is a sustained effort to utilise the WPS indicators to alter organisational discourses, practices and mechanisms. This echoes Özlem Altan-Olcay’s (2022) analysis of how gender experts draw on technicalisation – including indicators – as a strategy to navigate organisational priorities and political convictions but extends it by highlighting how advocates reshape technical processes to achieve transformations. To demonstrate how feminist change advocates sought to exploit the transformative potential of the WPS indicators, I undertake a deep-dive investigation of a single indicator. For the rest of this article, I focus on indicator 10, which tracks the percentage of UN field missions with senior gender experts. I investigate how feminist-change advocates sought to enact transformation of organisational discourses, practices and mechanisms via mobilising indicator 10.

Methodology: investigating transformations

To investigate how actors utilise indicators to enact transformations, I focus on a single indicator capturing the number of senior gender advisors within UN field missions – indicator 10. The focus is on this indicator for two reasons. First, it was the most frequently discussed in interviews, suggesting a greater degree of contestation and work being done in this area. Second, the designation focuses on people employed, not outcomes. Yet, as I discuss later, work is done to informally extend the original designation. The contestations and changes involved enable investigation of its transformative potential. What is indicator 10 and how can we investigate ways actors sought to transform it?

The designation of indicator 10

Indicator 10 is one of 26 indicators set out to track the implementation of UNSCR 1325, published in the September 2010 Secretary-General Report on WPS (s/2010/498: 38). Indicator ten seeks to measure the percentage of field missions with senior gender experts. There are two aspects to this designation: (1) seniority of gender expertise and (2) field mission.

The indicator specifically refers to senior gender experts. A gender expert is someone appointed to a professional role to advise and encourage others within the institution to enact policies and practices addressing gender concerns (Kunz and Prügl, 2019: 4–9). The assumption is the presence of gender experts (as opposed to a simple increase in the number of women) prompts effective promotion of women’s interests within policy implementation. In short, gender experts can be a way of ensuring an organisation achieves its stated gender goals. As the designation for the indicator suggests, a ‘senior gender expert’ is specifically someone appointed to the role at P-5 or above level. P5 is top of the professional scale, with D1 and D2 being the director levels above (United Nations, 2024). Grade P5 or above is considered by the UN system as a mid-career professional, requiring at least 10 years of progressively responsible work experience: typically gender advisor jobs advertised at this grade ask for experience to be broadly in WPS (United Nations Careers. 2021). Post-holders are required to demonstrate ‘a high level of functional and managerial skills and involve a supervisory responsibility’ (United Nations Careers, 2021). The recruitment pool is international, and the successful applicant is expected to work at an office (duty station) outside of their home country (United Nations Careers, 2021).

The concern with seniority relates to specific issues on the agenda in 2009, when there were difficulties around recruitment of women within the UN’s organisational culture. Torunn Tryggestad (2009) observed how positions like special envoys, special representatives of the secretary-general (SRSGs), and special advisers were occupied by ‘men of a certain age group, with relatively similar diplomatic or political careers behind them’ (p. 550). Recruitment processes favour old-boys-network dynamics, with senior staff being ‘recycled’ around the UN system, making entry for women challenging (Tryggestad, 2009: 550). Furthermore, there was a concern with the seniority of gender advisors within the UN system. Posts within the UN system focussed on gender equality work were at lower grade than comparable posts on other issues (Hassan, cited in Deen, 2009). Thus, the context for developing a specific measurement of specifically senior gender advisors related to an ambition to raise the overall profile of gender equality work within the UN system.

Part of the indicator’s designation is concerned with field missions. By ‘field missions’, the reference is to UN Peacekeeping and Special Political Missions (SPMs), managed by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO, now DPO: Department of Peace Operations) and the Department of Political Affairs (DPA, now DPPA: Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs) respectively. ⁸ Peacekeeping missions have the ‘ability to deploy and sustain troops and police from around the globe, integrating them with civilian peacekeepers to advance multidimensional mandates’ (United Nations Peacekeeping, 2022), while SPMs cover a broad spectrum of activities related to political settlement, mediation, ‘conflict prevention, peacemaking and post-conflict peacebuilding around the world’ (Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, 2022). Both types of field missions have become increasingly complex in recent years, and the number of missions has grown considerably.

Understanding this designation becomes important later in this article, where I investigate how the organisational structure of a field mission and the implementation of seniority both become areas where feminist-change advocates push for transformation.

Who is doing the transformation?

To describe those making efforts to alter the indicator investigated, I refer to ‘feminist-change advocates’, as a heuristic device to capture agential efforts to enact transformations at that moment in time. Capturing agential efforts allows a focus on the capacity of actors to act. As such, ‘feminist-change advocates’ does not describe a particular group of people or suggest binary positions at stake. People do not fit into neat silos to be ‘pitted’ against each other. Labels such as WPS advocates, feminist and gender advocates or femocrats (Yeatman, 1990) are avoided because these labels imply actors not advocating for change are unsupportive of the WPS agenda, are not feminist, or do not occupy institutional positions seeking to advance the interests of women. This would be inaccurate: indeed, a broad range of actors within the UN system self-define as feminists and/or take seriously the implementation of WPS goals. Even if they hold an institutional position to advance women’s interests, some actors (within the same institution) face significant institutional constraints, making advocating for change difficult. Hence, ‘feminist-change advocates’: a group of feminists currently in a position to advocate for change, seeking to effect feminist change.

Investigating stories

Reporting of the WPS indicators occurs annually within the Secretary-General Report (SGR) on WPS. Typically, this report is published every September/October and is a lengthy summary (around 60 pages) of progress and work on WPS issues within the UN. As an official report by the Secretary-General to the UN Security Council, a certain format is required, including a word count, which means ‘we only get a very teeny, tiny bit of a story’. ⁹ The information collected is extensive, involving input from across the UN system: those with a policy or programming presence related to gender contribute in different ways. ¹⁰ The Peace and Security Section of UN Women coordinate the writing of the report, including collecting the information, collaboration and negotiation of the text. Data and monitoring specialists within UN Women begin work 8 – 10 months prior to publication, sending requests to entities for information, working to agreed templates and collection methods. UN Women collate and aggregate figures. ¹¹

I focus on reporting of indicator 10 between 2010 and 2020. Reporting on indicator 10 may only be a paragraph or two within the 60-page report, but put together and tracked over time reveals cumulative narratives about the indicator across the decade. These stories would not be evident by reading each annual report in isolation. It is the reading of multiple successive reports, layered with interviews, which allows the stories to emerge. The focus is on stories as a product of narrative co-constitution (Shepherd, 2021: 27): recognising how ‘I/researcher-self’ crafted these stories by drawing on narratives produced in interviews and the cumulative narratives of indicator 10 within a decade of SGR reports.

I draw on 16 interviews conducted during 2016–2017 with current or former UN staff, or with civil society organisations closely working with the WPS indicators in New York City. ¹² I layer the cumulative story from the SGRs together with interview material to notice stories told about the measurement and tracking of gender expertise in UN field missions. Layering interviews with documents recognise how documents are the result of private negotiations (breakfast meetings, coffee breaks and chance encounters) and contestations between individuals (who may be representing member states, UN entities or a civil society perspective) over the language and framing of the document. Thus, documents are a product of human agency and an opportunity to identify efforts made by feminist-change advocates to transform organisational discourses and practices. Indeed, one interviewee was keen to remind me ‘in your analysis, just remember when you are presenting the report as the UN perspective, yes, technically it is. . .but that has been very contested through the agencies and the sharp elbows’. ¹³ These interviews enabled me to read the documents better: I became more alert to the language used, I understood why something was said one year and not the next, and better perceived the significance of minute shifts within the documents. Paying attention to both documents and interviews facilitates a nuanced perception of how the indicator has functioned within the UN system.

Interviews revealed how divergences in positions arise from constraints individuals face within their specific location within the institution. The UN is an international institution keen to present itself as an arbiter of global justice, frequently expressing normative ambitions. Yet, normative ambitions for progress are tempered by entities hesitant about the existence of the WPS indicators. ¹⁴ Gender teams necessarily navigated the conservativism of entities where head offices had ‘no appetite’ for what was suspected to be monitoring by UN Women. ¹⁵ These divergences go some way towards explaining why the SGR on WPS is a heavily negotiated document but also why attention needs to be paid to the changes that do occur, and the wording that does end up in the report, no matter how incremental or insignificant the change or word seems.

The stories around the tracking of indicator 10 highlight ways actors within the UN system utilise the indicator to prompt meaningful change. These stories matter as they sustain, enable and limit descriptions of the indicator’s tracking of gender expertise within UN field missions. On the face of it, the indicator is straightforward to measure. There is a clear designation identifying who is targeted and how to count progress. The next section scrutinises reporting on this indicator between 2011 and 2020, unpacking how the apparently innocuous goal to track the number of gender experts in field missions is more politically complex and charged than it initially appears.

Stories about indicator 10

Political challenges face feminist-change advocates seeking to use the WPS indicators, primarily negotiating the tension between feminist aspirations and technocratic implementation. In discussing the methodological challenges at stake, a UN statistician commented:

Most of the gender people are very aspirational. They’re like ‘we want to achieve this. We’re going to fight for this’. Which is great, but most of the statistics people, their mentality is ‘we don’t have the data for this. The methodology is very iffy. The comparability is very limited’. It’s very concrete things versus very aspirational things. ¹⁶

The idea of ‘aspiration’ and ‘fight’ is important to unravelling the contestations at the heart of stories about indicator ten – beyond the technical difficulties of creating measurable indicators. There are aspirations for change underpinning the WPS indicators, and feminist-change advocates are willing to seek opportunities to achieve these aspirations. Technocratic processes – like the 1325 indicators – become a strategy to ‘assert power’ (Altan-Olcay, 2022: 218). My reading of the annual SGR on WPS was guided by an awareness of the feminist aspirations at the heart of creating and utilising these indicators.

A study of stories within indicator ten revealed three areas of transformation: skill, location and progress. These stories describe how feminist-change advocates sought transformation of the interpretation, use and implementation of the indicator within the UN system. Strategies include demands for increasingly rigorous measurement, specification of specific professional expertise, and a deeper deliberation on the effects of institutional structures for successful gender expertise work. These moves may appear to be tiny, but add up to a shift in the UN system’s expectations about and value placed upon gender expertise work. I argue this shift was possible because feminist-change advocates utilised indicator ten to enact these transformations.

Progress

Stories of progress suggest performance-based indicators ought to track an upwards trend, and each year (and thus each annual report) should be ‘better’ than last year. This is not uncommon for UN publications where data is ‘carefully massaged’ to indicate ‘steady, if excruciatingly slow, progress’ (Jenkins, 2015). The SGRs regularly remind us of improvements and upwards trajectories: ‘United Nation peacekeeping benefits today from an entire normative and institutional architecture that did not exist 15 years ago’ (s/2015/716, 2015: 26). However, close reading of the reports reveals a disjuncture from positive stories of progress. I contend these tempered stories of progress occur following work by feminist-change advocates demanding transformation of the indicator’s reporting.

In the case of indicator ten, an expected cumulative story would point to an upwards trend (an improvement) in the percentage of P5 senior gender advisors within field missions. However, inconsistencies emerge when reviewing the reporting of data. Initial reporting disingenuously presents a success story. In 2014 ‘all nine multidimensional peacekeeping missions had gender units led by gender advisers at either the P-5 or P-4 level’ and ‘all seven traditional missions had gender focal points’ (s/2014/693, 2014: 16). Yet, in the same report, ‘four of the P-5 posts were vacant’ (s/2014/693, 2014: 16). It is unclear how many – if any – gender advisors in field missions are at P-5 level. It is impossible to track the percentage of P5 senior gender advisors in field missions from data reported in the SGR over the course of the decade because numbers of specifically P5 senior gender advisors were not always reported.

Later, SGRs offer detailed information about the seniority of gender advisors. For instance, the 2016 SGR specifies:

Of the 10 special political missions active in 2015, 6 (60 per cent) had gender advisers, compared with 50 per cent in 2014. . . However, of the 25 gender advisors deployed, most were at the junior level (P-3 and below). Only two missions (20 per cent) had gender advisors at the P-5 level and above, compared with 50 per cent of missions in 2014. (S/2016/822, 2016, 24)

The reporting is considerably more nuanced in 2016 compared to 2014. The level of detail makes clear the proportions of gender advisors and exactly how many are appointed at level P5 or above, at least in SPMs. With this more rigorous reporting (revealing the downwards trend), there is greater transparency and accountability, opening possibilities for effective implementation of the stated goal – to have P5 senior gender advisors within UN field missions. The increasingly rigorous reporting over the decade – to the point that the downwards trends and gaps are clearly signalled (atypical for UN reporting) – is indicative of internal advocacy work being done to transform reporting processes.

Discussions of financing the gender expertise role also reflect tempered progress. Earlier reports do not consider how the gender expert role is financed. Interviewees expressed concerns about persistent underfunding of the role. ¹⁷ It was not until the 2018 SGR that concerns were raised about ‘continued cuts and downgrading of already limited gender posts dedicated to providing such expertise and advisory services’ (s/2018/900, 2018: 6). In 2016–2017, several field missions cut dedicated gender posts and reduced seniority levels of remaining gender posts (E/2017/57, 2017: 26). A step back, certainly. However, the 2019 SGR earmarks for ‘immediate action’ a recommendation placing the onus on heads of entities and missions to ensure financing, employment and location of gender experts (s/2019/800, 2019: 36). This is a significant shift ensuring someone has explicit responsibility for achieving a target established a decade before. Even this progress is tempered, as within SPMs, gender posts and activities are typically funded through extrabudgetary resources, making ‘availability of expertise temporary and dependent on project funding’ (s/2020/946, 2020: 29). Without stable financing of the senior gender expert role, it is difficult to ensure that the role is secure. Regardless, the indicator’s existence allows feminist-change advocates to use the indicator as a lever prompting UN entities to finance gender expertise. ¹⁸

A glance at a single SGR in isolation from others implies a glossy picture of progress where gender advisors are appointed and financed. Reading the SGRs over the course of a decade, it is clear progress is uneven. Bearing in mind SGRs are highly negotiated documents, I suggest tempered stories of progress occur because of internal advocacy by feminist-change advocates. Feminist-change advocates seize upon the indicator’s reporting as an opportunity to raise awareness of uneven progress, demanding more institutional rigour (in reporting and financing). Changes are not a direct result of reporting practices per se but a deliberate feminist intention to work tirelessly to make reporting more effective and to gather and create systemised, indicative knowledge. As one advocate put it, unless ‘people have a vested interest or experience or knowledge in this, it just doesn’t get done’. ¹⁹ Increasingly better data has become available because of the work of feminist-change advocates to strengthen data collection and reporting practices. ²⁰ Making explicit institutional gaps and failures to meet stated targets acts as leverage for feminist-change advocates to demand that stated goals are implemented, achieved and met. Furthermore, reporting on the designation has raised awareness of the importance of financing gender experts, and so this has been negotiated into reporting practices to highlight what is needed to achieve the increase in the percentage of senior gender experts. Returning to Cohn’s (2008) prompts, we can identify the role of organisational mechanisms as being transformative – but it is not the simple existence of the indicator making the difference: it is the involvement of feminist-change advocates insisting on precise reporting and appropriate financing.

Skill

Over the decade of SGR reporting (2010–2020), gender expertise within UN field missions is increasingly framed as a specific, professionalised, skill. Demanding a skilled gender expert relates to the desires to transform the role and embed it within UN field missions as an authoritative and influential position. The demand for a senior gender expert (P5 or above) recognises hierarchal performances matter within the UN system: someone at that grade is better placed to ensure that women’s interests are translated into policy and advocate the UN’s WPS agenda. The role is professionalised and expertise is attributed and recognised (Kunz and Prügl, 2019: 9). Initial reporting on indicator ten failed to accurately track the work done by those counted as P5 gender experts. I highlight how the SGRs increasingly detail the required skills of the gender advisor, making it clear the role requires specific expertise and is not one that can merely be filled in a tokenistic manner. I suggest shifts in framing arise from feminist-change advocates utilising opportunities arising from the requirement to report on indicator ten.

Initial reporting offers limited consideration of gender expertise work within the UN system. In 2012, it is made abundantly clear ‘increased numbers alone are not enough. Gender expertise is also needed’ (s/2012/732, 2012: 12). Separating parity from expertise reinforces how gender expertise is not simply about having more women, but rather, refers to a particular role with specific skills and knowledge. This is the start of a longer process of distinguishing what the gender expert role is. The 2017 SGR offers a clear articulation of what gender advisors are expected to do: ‘support gender mainstreaming in the work of all mission staff to enable more gender-responsive United Nations Peacekeeping operations and special political missions’ (s/2017/861, 2017: 22). This is a distinct shift: the gender advisor is cast as someone with specific expertise and skill around the design of gender mainstreaming within field missions. For example, they might offer ‘dedicated technical expertise’ through ‘strategic planning, analysis, budgeting and programme design and implementation’ (s/2017/861, 2017: 22). The knowledge they offer is highly specific to UN field missions, where they contribute to detail related to ‘planning options and strategic outcomes for transitions, drawdowns, and related benchmarks’ (s/2018/900, 2018: 5). By 2017, the gender advisor tracked by indicator ten is cast as a highly skilled figure who bears knowledge about designing gender-responsive systems and in the specific details of how UN field missions operate. Their skill is not merely in conducting stand-alone gender projects but rather in enabling the achievement of gender mainstreaming across the UN system.

Gender advisors are also required to translate ‘normative commitments and concrete actions’ about the achievement of gender equality (s/2017/861, 2017: 22). In the 2018 SGR, gender expertise is described as crucial: without it, field missions lack a gender lens, analysis and planning are ‘flawed’ with ‘a detrimental and long-term impact on the whole of society’ (s/2018/900, 2018: 5). Gender experts are necessary to ‘question and unmask unequal power dynamics’ affecting women and girls in field missions (s/2018/900, 2018: 5). There is a strong articulation of hope placed on gender advisors within field missions to uphold normative ambitions including gender lens on planning and analysis; concrete action about gender equality; questioning unequal power dynamics (s/2018/900, 2018: 5). These statements cast gender advisory work as crucial in improving the work of the UN system: the job can only be done by certain people with a specific skillset and normative ambitions.

The push to specify the skills required for the role emerged from a frustration with process-orientated reporting on indicator 10. In stories of progress, we observed that not all gender experts were appointed at P5 level. During 2016 and 2017 interviewees noted occasional instances of someone occupying a post as P5 gender advisor, thus counting as one for monitoring purposes, but in reality, fulfilling a different role in the field. ²¹ This is a danger of indicators: they allow a focus on the processes and appearance of achieving goals (Castillo-Díaz and Cueva-Beteta, 2017: 189), and is a reason why we must pay attention to the actors using the indicators and how they are using the indicators. There are more and more statements about the skill, expertise and work of the gender advisor with each SGR across the decade. This is not accidental. Each SGR is a highly negotiated document, and the word count is limited. There has been an effort to include these pronouncements.

Utilising the reporting process to disseminate knowledge about the skillset and work of a gender expert relates to what Cohn (2008: 193) describes as a means of putting mechanisms into place to facilitate change through informing and educating those within the institution. Increasingly specifying the skills of a gender expert is not a simple rhetorical move but can lead to changes in understanding and actions across the institution. Laura Shepherd (2021: 82–83) ‘hesitates’ to dismiss the annual reporting on the indicators as ‘bloodlessly bureaucratic and simple’ precisely because, as one of their interviewees remind us, ‘there has definitely been space pried open’. Feminist-change advocates have likely seized the space to not just make proclamations about the work a gender expert ought to be doing but to encourage institutional shifts in the framing of gender advisors within the UN system: ultimately, exploiting the transformative possibility of indicator 10.

Location

Stories of skill and progress intersect with stories of location within the SGRs. Underpinning all three stories are concerns held by feminist-change advocates within the UN system about the failure to fully implement gender advisory work within UN field missions. So far, I have drawn attention to how advocates utilise reporting on indicator ten to reinforce accurate data collection and the presentation of the skills required by a gender advisor to advocate for appropriate appointments. Here, I pick up on work of feminist-change advocates to challenge where the gender advisor is located within the UN field mission.

Location refers to where the gender advisor is within the field mission’s organisational structure. Is the senior gender advisor located within the mission head office or a separate gender unit? These considerations have ramifications for how the UN conceptualises and frames gender problems. Are gender issues an external concern ‘out there’, perhaps in a Global South country, or a structural internal concern with the institution itself? (Ferguson, 2015: 386–387). Lucy Ferguson’s (2015) account of the experiences of gender experts in international organisations notes how gender is often compartmentalised into one department, with little incentive for other areas of an institution to take the issue seriously. The challenge is not simply about prompting a numerical increase in gender experts. This would not necessarily enable participation of women’s interests and the translation of these interests into policy implementation. There is a real need to ensure gender expertise is woven through field missions in a meaningful manner; thus, location within the institution comes to the fore. Location determines who you have access to (who can hear you?); it tells people how senior you are (who can see you?); and how much influence you have (who can feel your presence?).

The formal designation of indicator 10 does not demand the specific location of a senior gender advisor within the field mission. Yet, by 2017, the reporting of indicator 10 within the SGRs begin to include location stories. How and what was the work of feminist-change advocates in achieving this?

The 2013 SGR reports on a review of the structure and deployment of gender expertise within the UN system. It is identified as good practice to ensure placement of senior gender experts in the mission head office; embedding sector-specific gender expertise is noted as valuable; and gender advisors are recognised as most effective at the subnational level in mission settings (s/2013/525, 2013: 14). Placement, embedding, and at the subnational level: it is clear location matters. But these suggestions are dropped. This is within a report which has five pages of other recommendations for UN entities in preparation for the fifteenth anniversary of UNSCR 1325 in 2015 (s/2013/525, 2013: 26). The absence of these location-based recommendations when the report is otherwise devoted to making onward progress implies a degree of resistance within the UN system about implementing the review recommendations. Placing a senior gender advisor within the mission head office (Office of the Special Representatives to the Secretary-General—SRSG) has several benefits. These include ensuring gender advisors are part of mission decision-making processes, providing access to senior management, and facilitating direct reporting and advising structures. ²² Demanding a senior gender advisor located in the SRSG office represents a shift in institutional framing of gender problems, how they ought to be addressed, and who is responsible for addressing gender. A gender advisor in the Office of the SRSG provides a mission-wide perspective, potentially avoiding institutional compartmentalisation of gender issues as the sole responsibility of a ‘gender department’. ²³

While there was initial reluctance to place a senior gender advisor in the Office of the SRSG, this changed quickly. In 2015, three peace and security high-level reviews (HIPPO, AGE and the Global Study) took place. ²⁴ The impetus for the Global Study was to address implementation of the indicators, fostering ‘more meaningful monitoring’, and some wanted to have an independent study that would ‘come in and be quite harsh on the UN’. ²⁵ Advocates knew gender experts tended to be side-lined in field missions, and the hope was that a Global Study would revise the indicators to tackle this. ²⁶ The published Global Study says little about the WPS indicators themselves, but eight recommendations are made to strengthen the UN’s Gender Architecture and the deployment of gender expertise (Coomaraswamy, 2015: 284–285).

One recommendation made in both HIPPO and the Global Study: senior gender advisors should be placed in the Office of the SRSG, with technical support from gender experts within mission components (Coomaraswamy, 2015: 284; HIPPO, 2015: 79). Within reporting on indicator 10, the 2015 SGR reaffirmed a commitment to this recommendation (s/2015/716, 2015: 24) subsequently ‘welcomed’ in UNSCR 2242 (2015). Both the 2016 and 2017 SGRs celebrate that there are gender advisors located in the Office of the SRSG on all field missions (s/2016/822, 2016: 24; s/2017/861, 2017: 23). However, a 2019 independent assessment reiterates that progress remains ‘inconsistent’ (Allen, 2019: 6). Subsequently, the 2019 SGR notes ‘stark contrast[s] between rhetoric and reality’ remains, demanding ‘immediate action’ (s/2019/800, 2019: 3, 36): work is still needed to ensure senior gender advisors are placed within the Office of the SRSG.

Has there been a change to organisational policy and practice in the UN system because of indicator 10? A direct and tangible line between indicator 10 and the recommendation to locate senior gender advisors within the Office of the SRSG is not possible to draw, especially as the location recommendation was made via the High-level reviews and UNSCR 2242. But we can observe how the formal reporting processes for indicator 10 referred to the importance of location even in 2013 – but was evidently controversial or problematic enough for someone within the UN system be dropped. The recommendation was reinforced within two 2015 High-level reviews, suggesting the involvement of feminist-change advocates looking for opportunities to enact these organisational changes. We can also observe how, from 2016, reporting processes on indicator 10 begin to refer to where the P5 senior gender experts are located. Crucially, commissioning an independent report on progress made on the gender recommendations across the three 2015 high-level reviews provided accountability evidence to insert into UN reporting on indicator 10. The transformative possibilities of indicator 10 in enacting transformations within the UN system are not simply down to the existence of the indicator, or even simple reporting on the indicator. Rather – returning to Cohn’s (2008: 193) prompts – there have been changes to organisational practices and it has required the work of committed feminist-change advocates in using the SGR report to inform, hold accountable and persuade.

Going back to the initial ambitions for the 2015 High-level Review to facilitate redeveloping the indicators. One reason the indicators were not redeveloped in the end related to the internal constraints of the UN system. ²⁷ One advocate explained difficulties in revising indicators: technical reasons (absorption into institutional strategies and plans); financial or capacity reasons (constraints to the UN budget), but ‘the bigger, political, reason is that a lot of member states objected to the indicators [in 2010] and we just barely got them through. . . there’s been a fear to open them up again’. ²⁸ Several feminist-change advocates alluded to ‘informal processes’ and ‘informal negotiations’ across entities to reshape reporting on the indicators as they are. ²⁹ Informal negotiations typically take place behind the scenes where there are differences between member states on the Security Council (Basu, 2016: 259). Institutional stories about progress, skill, and location in relation to indicator 10 reveal how reporting within the SGR shifted over the decade: from considering a simple increase in the number of P5 senior gender experts in field missions to a concentrated push towards discussing the value and strategic importance of a skilled gender expert, ideally located within the Office of the SRSG. These shifts needed feminist-change advocates to enact or exploit opportunities to work creatively within systematic constraints, utilising the indicator’s reporting structures for change.

Conclusions: the radical potential of indicators

In creating the indicators, feminist-change advocates wanted a ‘new birth, a new approach’ to altering the reporting and implementation of WPS. ³⁰ This article demonstrates it is not simply the existence of indicators that transform. Rather, feminist change advocates do (occasionally difficult and fraught) work to ensure the transformative effects of an indicator within an institution. Feminist-change advocates within the UN system worked to ensure indicator ten has a transformative impact, demanding (1) rigorous reporting, (2) viewing the gender advisor role as highly skilled, (3) reconsidering where the gender advisor should be located within the field mission. This challenges the idea of indicators as static bureaucratic artefacts. Earlier I discussed how scholarship in critical peace and conflict studies, public policy, sociology/anthropology of knowledge recognise indicators as a powerful technocratic practice, part of a bureaucratic machinery, creating specific and limited knowledge with invisiblising, neutralising, flattening and colonialising consequences. The danger of reducing women’s participation and achievement of gender mainstreaming to a technocratic tick-box exercise ( ‘more gender experts’) persists. Yet, stepping away from the notion of indicators as mere technocratic and bureaucratic artefacts opens possibilities for considering spaces for subversion in using indicators.

Feminist global governance has long queried if feminist engagement with institutions –including the UN – means co-option of feminist agendas. Does the instrumentalism of policy mean the radical edge of feminism is lost (Kabeer, 1999: 436)? Interview participants were concerned too about these potential contradictions. One participant felt in their work life, they

‘separate my [their] personal politics – which I think are quite radical – with what I can do on a daily basis. For me, I’ve always achieved more results being pragmatic, because I think when you’re unrealistic, people just shut you out’. ³¹

Within the UN, which is contingent on multiple negotiations and compromises, the ‘relatively less challenging’ liberal feminism becomes the ‘minimum common denominator’ (Arat, 2015: 680). But the transformative effects of the indicators seem much more powerful when located within the history of how UNSCR 1325 was created. UNSCR 1325 emerged from a ‘daring’ ambition of a transnational feminist anti-war movement to make a significant ‘intervention in the functioning of a global governance institution’ (Cohn, 2008: 186, 189). It is difficult to say how far the work of feminist-change advocates to transform indicator 10 speaks to the initial feminist ambitions of UNSCR 1325. There is a degree of ‘pragmatism’ even in the aspiration to push around the edges of technocratic processes.

Nevertheless, we need to remain attentive to the intersectional power-effects of indicators. Technologies, including indicators, shape understandings of the achievability of ‘gender’ and ‘feminism’ (Bauchspies and de la Bellacasa, 2009: 339); and the impacts of these technologies are intersectional. Intersectionality is an analytical tool to critically think through how systems of oppression – including gender, race, class, disability, colonialism and sexuality – intersect (Crenshaw, 1989). Discrimination understood along a single-categorical axis typically erases complex lived experiences of those facing multiple systems of oppression (Crenshaw, 1989: 140). A black disabled woman faces multiple burdens and marginalisation not explained simply with reference to racism: their experiences need to be understood at the intersection of racism, ableism and sexism. Indeed, as a form of knowledge production, indicators are accused of contributing to a homogenised Western agenda where the ‘race for gender equality’ is winnable (Liebowitz and Zwingel, 2014: 385). In this reductive vision of gender equality, there is a very real danger intersectional experiences are rendered invisible.

Is there more actors navigating institutional opportunities can do to address intersectionality? I remain acutely aware of the potentially troubling effects of the 1325 indicators. Concerning heteronormative, colonial, racist and ableist norms are sustained, especially as the WPS agenda reinforces racialised and colonialised hierarchies of global north knowledge ‘steeped’ in whiteness (Haastrup and Hagen, 2021; Henry, 2021). Indicator 10, as it is currently configured, reinforces racialised, sexed and ableist-gendered hierarchies. The work of the UN gender advisor in field missions rarely seeks to advance the agendas or needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, Trans, queer and intersex [LGBTQI+] communities: there is limited room to move away from heteronormative goals. Only people with certain experiences, and ability to be globally mobile can take up such roles. There is limited consideration of the intersections between gender and disability in the WPS context (Stienstra, 2021). Even the target of measuring the number of gender advisors is one-dimensional, missing what work is being done by those appointed in the post. There is limited sense of how gender advisors are involved with the local communities the field mission serves. However, what we have seen in this article is how feminist-change advocates do seek to identify spaces and opportunities to create transformations. If we recognise (a) the 1325 indicators represent a ‘strong reform agenda’, ³² and (b) that agenda can be transformed – even in modest, mundane, or technical ways: then the possibility of addressing these intersectional diversity concerns remains open.

Addressing diversity concerns is known to be difficult, especially intersectional diversity concerns. Sara Ahmed (2012: 174) talks of how diversity workers ‘become conscious of “the brick wall”’, in the process of ‘acquiring a critical orientation to institutions’. Within the UN there are many brick walls. UN entities. Member states. Ambassadors. Financing. Indifference. The list goes on. Noticing the transformations advocates achieved in attempts to institutionalise a skilled P5 senior gender advisor, located in mission head offices (it seems like a simple request, but we have seen the efforts required. . .) has meant noticing ways informal processes can enact changes. The ‘sharp elbows’ ³³ one interviewee referred to points to the negotiations involved over the wording of the text of the SGR on WPS. It is interesting to me how reading a single SGR in isolation from others presents a picture of a limited and mutilated feminism. Yet constructing a story through interviews and multiple reports make it harder to dismiss these indicators as manifestations of a violent, neoliberal governance feminism, simply because the efforts of actors to transform via the indicators come to the fore. The brick walls they navigated and face become all-too apparent.

There is a reason the article title is ‘transformative indicators?’ question mark, always never quite foreclosing my own doubts. The 1325 indicators are not mere artefacts simply reported on. It is clear advocates within the system creatively enabled and negotiated opportunities for transformation within the constraints of the system. Noticing how indicators are shaped by individuals challenges the narrative of tick-box indicators used to impose standardised outcomes. Understanding indicators are powerful, gendered technologies of knowledge creation that – while limiting – can also hold transformative possibilities, which means we need to move beyond the idea of feminist advocates within global governance as mere figures being co-opted by neoliberal institutional norms (and its binary, the empowered and critical feminist). The failure to recognise how actors are involved in the creation, use and implementation of indicators is fraught with the danger of missing opportunities for (further) transformations.