ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on the gender analysis framework begun in Chapter 5 with some additional feminist analytical perspectives that increase the complexity of the framework. It starts with the discursive nature of gender and the importance of socio-cultural interpretations of masculinity and femininity. Gender role expectations, essentializations, and homogenizations often come down to the way in which the binary nature of gender is constructed, especially within policy language that is not complex enough to capture the full scope of the concept. This binary construction often does not extend to the category of youth. However, lack of gender analysis for youth denies programming the accountability for varied experiences. This chapter also addresses the complexity and multidimensional nature of identity, and how people’s various defining factors often have intersecting points. This illustrates the impact of Western ideological influence on resistance to global security policy, often due to the post-colonial environment in which transnational CT programming takes place. Until policy and programming can account for this complexity, it will fall short of equality goals. These additions to the gender analysis framework are employed in comparative analysis of UN Women’s gender-sensitive program, Engaging Women in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremist Violence in Kenya.
