Educating NATO’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda: Lessons from Russia’s War in Ukraine
February 26, 2026
NATO has formally embedded the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda into its doctrine, action plans and strategic guidance, including alignment with UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the adoption of an updated WPS policy in 2024. Dedicated gender advisers, focal points and training packages signal institutional commitment. Yet, across the Alliance, professional military education (PME) remains an underutilised instrument for fully realising these commitments - particularly in strengthening the role of women in the security sector. While a majority of member states report integrating WPS principles into training, implementation is uneven and often limited to standalone modules. This compartmentalisation constrains the influence of gender perspectives on senior leadership development, strategic planning and core defence tasks such as deterrence and crisis response.
Embedding gender analysis directly into PME, rather than isolating it, enables a more comprehensive understanding of contemporary conflict. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine illustrates how pre-war gender inequalities, domestic violence trends and the political mobilisation of “traditional values” intersect with broader geopolitical and regime-level explanations of aggression. A gender lens expands conventional assessments of causality by highlighting how patterns of gender-based violence correlate with bellicosity and how masculinised nationalist discourse can legitimise war. At the same time, the conflict has underscored the operational contributions of Ukrainian women across the defence sector, while exposing structural shortcomings such as ill-fitting body armour and equipment designed primarily for male soldiers. These gaps are not symbolic—they affect force protection, readiness and effectiveness.
A gender-informed approach also broadens risk assessment beyond state-centric and hardware-focused metrics. Traditional military analysis privileges quantifiable indicators such as troop movements and weapons systems, often discounting discourse, lived experience and patterns of violence as secondary. However, in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, conflict-related sexual violence, increases in domestic violence, and gendered propaganda narratives form part of the strategic environment. Recognising the continuum between wartime and peacetime insecurity reinforces the understanding that individual security and national resilience are interdependent. For women in the security sector—whether as soldiers, planners, advisers or policymakers - mainstreaming gender perspectives within PME strengthens their institutional authority and ensures that their expertise informs doctrine, procurement, early warning systems and long-term defence planning.
To read the original journal article, see here
February 26, 2026
Educating NATO’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda: Lessons from Russia’s War in Ukraine
February 26, 2026
NATO has formally embedded the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda into its doctrine, action plans and strategic guidance, including alignment with UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the adoption of an updated WPS policy in 2024. Dedicated gender advisers, focal points and training packages signal institutional commitment. Yet, across the Alliance, professional military education (PME) remains an underutilised instrument for fully realising these commitments - particularly in strengthening the role of women in the security sector. While a majority of member states report integrating WPS principles into training, implementation is uneven and often limited to standalone modules. This compartmentalisation constrains the influence of gender perspectives on senior leadership development, strategic planning and core defence tasks such as deterrence and crisis response.
Embedding gender analysis directly into PME, rather than isolating it, enables a more comprehensive understanding of contemporary conflict. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine illustrates how pre-war gender inequalities, domestic violence trends and the political mobilisation of “traditional values” intersect with broader geopolitical and regime-level explanations of aggression. A gender lens expands conventional assessments of causality by highlighting how patterns of gender-based violence correlate with bellicosity and how masculinised nationalist discourse can legitimise war. At the same time, the conflict has underscored the operational contributions of Ukrainian women across the defence sector, while exposing structural shortcomings such as ill-fitting body armour and equipment designed primarily for male soldiers. These gaps are not symbolic—they affect force protection, readiness and effectiveness.
A gender-informed approach also broadens risk assessment beyond state-centric and hardware-focused metrics. Traditional military analysis privileges quantifiable indicators such as troop movements and weapons systems, often discounting discourse, lived experience and patterns of violence as secondary. However, in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, conflict-related sexual violence, increases in domestic violence, and gendered propaganda narratives form part of the strategic environment. Recognising the continuum between wartime and peacetime insecurity reinforces the understanding that individual security and national resilience are interdependent. For women in the security sector—whether as soldiers, planners, advisers or policymakers - mainstreaming gender perspectives within PME strengthens their institutional authority and ensures that their expertise informs doctrine, procurement, early warning systems and long-term defence planning.
To read the original journal article, see here
