Wanted: More Men to Champion Women in Peacekeeping

To boost the numbers of female peacekeepers, more male leaders need to become champions of women’s involvement and apply a gender perspective to this vital sphere of work, says Sahana Dharmapuri of the One Earth Future Foundation.

Hard evidence and field experience have both shown that female peacekeepers are able to gain access to greater numbers of people in the local population than their male counterparts, for the simple reason that in many conflict situations, female peacekeepers can talk to both women and men, whereas male peacekeepers often cannot. To boost the number of female peacekeepers, more male leaders need to become champions of women’s involvement and apply a gender perspective to this vital sphere of work. Sahana Dharmapuri explains more in this publication from News Deeply.