ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of feminist approaches to peace and security, including peacebuilding, peacekeeping, conflict, and war. We show how Feminist Security Studies (FSS), from an academic perspective, has revealed discriminatory and gendered practices in the study of peace and security. Similarly, from a practitioner perspective, the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda highlights the importance of sex and gender in peace and security practices. These literatures and practices critique mainstream understandings of what it means to be a man/woman or masculine/feminine and show how these understandings lead to policies based on erroneous assumptions about men as soldiers and women as civilians. A common theme in feminist critiques of conventional security studies is that security is not merely found through the prevention of war but through the empowerment of groups and individuals. Thus, they suggest that the solutions to war need to address structural inequalities, including those manifested in patriarchy.
