ABSTRACT
UK strategy and doctrine regarding gender is useful to assess because it is a European NATO member and part of the English-speaking Five Eyes Community, and for those reasons it is useful to compare US strategy and doctrine against it. The US is a North American member of both collectives, and the enormous size of the US military establishment and the large scope of its worldwide military commitments cause it to stand out in many ways. At the strategic level, the new US national security strategy no longer mentions climate change, and barely mentions gender. Although the US has continued to evaluate and update its national action plan, the pace of implementation across the US Department of Defense has been slow and uneven. As a matter of law, however, the US has passed the Women, Peace and Security Act of 2017 , which imposes legal requirements for implementing and reporting on national action plan tasks upon the Department of Defense. Although important progress has been made in US joint-level doctrine in operationalising gender, particularly that doctrine applicable to certain civilian-centric operations, there are still significant areas in which it does not register at all. This unevenness is also found in US Army doctrine, which is the most likely service-level doctrine to be employed by the US in civilian-centric operations. Certain subordinate doctrine within this service-level doctrine is actually better developed regarding gender considerations than is its hierarchical superior. In terms of practical measures to operationalise gender within the Department of Defense, there are distinct indicators of progress, such as the work being done with executive education at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Security Studies Center, and the new US GENAD course.
