Why gender matters when you’re on military manoeuvres overseas

Capt Deirdre Carbery of the United Nations Training School Ireland faces her audience. Before her are 21 fellow Defence Forces officers ranging in rank from lieutenant colonel to corporal – all of them men bar one.

What sex are you? Capt Carbery asks.

A few moments elapse before someone says “male”, which is, in the main, true. And how do they know that?

A further awkward few moments before someone brave mentions genitalia.

Right, said Carbery. But what gender were they, she wondered, and how did they know that?

“The way you might look at me,” says an even braver soul, prompting a certain amount of mirth. Despite the laughter it is the correct answer.

Welcome to the gender-awareness class for the officers of the 48th Infantry Group who have just deployed to their mission area on Syria’s Golan Heights. It is not some latter-day exercise in political correctness. It is about operational effectiveness.

Carbery outlined a scenario. An incident occurs in a village, something that threatens to hamper Undof’s peacekeeping work in the buffer zone between Israeli-occupied Golan and Syria proper. A patrol from the 48th is dispatched.

The patrol enters the village where it is known that community leaders, who are all men, tend to gather in a particular café. A wealthy source of information, and clearly visible as the patrol enters.

But over there, on the opposite side of the square, is the market which is dominated by women and for whom the daily task of food-buying is also a social event. Could any of them have information? They are part of the same community as the men, but may have different sources or ways of interpreting, events.

“Gender isn’t like an airy-fairy concept; it’s not a theory; it’s not something to be debated in this classroom session. There are very specific operational tasks that we can derive from this but also our ultimate goal is to provide a tool to the commander to improve his operational effectiveness.

“And we can only gain that information by having an understanding of the gender roles in the country we are deploying into, by having an understanding of their culture.”

Carbery is an instructor at the UN school run by the Defence Forces in Curragh Camp as part of the Military College there. She has made gender-awareness her teaching speciality, working closely with a counterpart in the Swedish armed forces.

For three days last February, the officers of the 48th attended the school for lectures on human rights, sexual exploitation, cultural and gender awareness, personal behaviour, and Undof’s mandate and the law of armed conflict.

But it was the sexual exploitation, gender-awareness and personal behaviour aspects of the briefings which struck home, partly because they were approached with such seriousness.

The imperative in these areas stems from a UN Security Council resolution, UNSC1325 of 2000, which deals with the role of women in preventing and resolving conflict.

“We have signed up to this,” she tells her colleagues. “And the Defence Forces is doing so well that we are being held up internationally.The more women you have in your unit, the more women you have out on patrol – mixed teams of men and women – the greater access you have to the local population.”

The resolution was prompted by the shame visited on the UN through people associated with the organisation found to be involved in sex abuse of children and adults. In the past 15 years, some 5,000 “UN babies” have been born by host population mothers in mission areas. Most are abandoned.

“You are going overseas as members of the Defence Forces, yes. But you are then going over as members of the United Nations. You are going to be wearing a blue beret, and you are going to be held to the standards laid down.”