In Fixing Gender, Aiko Holvikivi seeks out feminist subversion in unlikely places: the classrooms where peacekeeping soldiers receive gender training. What she finds is paradoxical, featuring both the re-inscription of harmful logics (such as colonial thinking and heteronormativity) and the re-writing of martial scripts (with soldiers seeing themselves as both warriors and humanitarians) (pp. 43–44, 86). Gender training appears to be simultaneously good and bad for feminist commitments (p. 25).
Given this paradox, the author rightly resists answering the positivist question, “Does gender training [of peacekeepers] work?” (p. 14). She explores instead the work that gender does within militarized spaces, pursuing questions such as how gender gets defined and who is granted epistemic authority. She also examines pedagogical practice, including how trainees respond to educational materials and how trainers navigate their classrooms. The result is a rich study of both the content and practice of gender training for peacekeepers, by a skilled scholar who was formerly a trainer in this “transnational community of practice” (p. 35). Holvikivi’s findings have implications for gender training practitioners in peacebuilding and development as well as scholars and activists who promote feminism in relation to peace and security.
Fixing Gender rests on a persuasive base of qualitative evidence, detailed in the discussion of methodology in Chapter 1. Holvikivi completed a multi-sited ethnographic study of seven training courses located throughout Europe and Africa. Across 8 weeks of participant observation, she observed gender training courses, interviewed trainers and trainees, and studied classroom materials and policy documents (p. 16). To analyze these materials, she employs an interpretivist lens and uses techniques coming from discourse analysis, investigating three features of the discourses that she uncovers: subject positioning, authoritative knowledges, and instability and contradiction (pp. 20–22).
Her analysis of the curriculum in Chapter 2 tracks with post-colonial patterns of knowledge production. Holvikivi finds that the “knowing subjects” come from the Global North; they design and typically implement the training materials. The “objects of knowledge,” by contrast, come from the Global South, particularly featuring the “Woman-in-conflict” whose experiences are regularly used by trainers (but rarely with citation) (pp. 37–38). Examination of the curriculum also exposes a non-critical understanding of gender, which emphasizes mere differences between men and women. Holvikivi notes that race, colonial legacies, and sexuality are excluded from curricular discussions of gender, although the materials are implicitly informed by a Eurocentrism that privileges whiteness, Western culture, and straightness (pp. 42–45).
Holvikivi moves to the study of pedagogy in Chapter 3, arguing that the receipt of training is not only cognitive but emotional and political (p. 67). Focusing on how peacekeepers feel about their training on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), Holvikivi finds that many of the trainees’ responses to the content exceed the intentions of the course. The training approaches CRSV as a problem to solve with military action, such as catching the perpetrators (making the racialized assumption that these perpetrators reside within the “peace-kept population” rather than within the group of peacekeepers) (pp. 71, 77). Revealing the possibility for subversion, however, many trainees voice their concerns with the limitations of this approach, wishing to respond as humanitarians instead (p. 86).
Still investigating pedagogical encounters, Chapter 4 describes examples of resistance to the training performed in the classroom (pp. 97–98). These social performances tend to follow three “scripts,” used by both trainers and trainees: joking (reinforcing hierarchies), distancing (separating course content from progressive politics to increase buy-in), and projecting (denying that problems with gender apply to themselves) (pp. 103–111). Resistance is frustrating from a feminist perspective, but Holvikivi again underlines ambiguity by providing examples of feminist theory and colonial histories entering the classroom (pp. 110, 113). Hierarchies are both reinforced and questioned; feminist politics are both undercut and advanced. Holvikivi also reminds her audience that resistance is an indication of learning, which is often painful but nonetheless worthwhile (p. 116).
Following the primarily negative instances of resistance, Chapter 5 excavates the potential for surprising, positive ruptures in hegemonic logics. Holvikivi does not believe that full-scale transformation of militarized masculinity is possible through gender training, but she recognizes the value in small, subversive acts of feminist pedagogy that promote critical consciousness-raising among trainees (p. 121). Two useful practices that emerge include trainers sharing personal experiences and an ethic of care, which show attentiveness to context and power relations in the classroom (pp. 131–143).
In Chapter 6, Holvikivi concludes with a review of her findings and their implications for feminist organizing and institutional reform. The work gender does in martial institutions produces both harm and benefit. These paradoxical results challenge the liberal notion of linear progress towards a utopian future (pp. 155, 160). Giving up on utopia does not mean forgoing feminist commitments, however. Indeed, Holvikivi insists that “transformation may be elusive, [but] resistance is imperative” (p. 161). Her findings indicate that feminists should focus their energies on the small, daily maintenance that Gayatri Spivak recommends in “Practical Politics of the Open End” (in Sarah Harasym, ed., The Post-Colonial Critic, 1990). In lieu of grand, ideological gestures, the persistent labors of pushing back on sexism (and racism, and more) in the present might prove surprisingly effective among an audience feminists may feel tempted to write off (pp. 163–164).
Regarding institutional reform, Holvikivi argues that we ought to resist the temptation to evaluate and standardize gender training, as extra scrutiny may threaten opportunities for change. Many of the subversive moments that occurred were enabled by an understanding that gender training is technical and neutral (pp. 145, 166). In an era of rising hostility to feminist politics, it may be best to subvert sexism quietly from inside, doing what is possible within the parameters of technical “expertise” while remaining vigilant against co-optation (pp. 36, 165).
I found Fixing Gender a worthwhile and engaging read. It is well-written, grounded in good research, thoughtfully organized, and aware of its scope. I value the depth of self-reflection and disclosure Holvikivi provides in her work, building on the tradition of critical feminist scholarship to detail how her social location affects what she uncovers as a researcher. For examples of this tradition within international relations (IR) and especially the subfield of feminist IR, see Naeem Inayatullah (Autobiographical International Relations, 2011), Teresia Teaiwa (“Scholarship from a Lazy Native” in Emma Greenwood et al., eds., Work in Flux, 1995), and Swati Parashar (Women and Militant Wars, 2014).
I likewise appreciate Holvikivi’s careful consideration of how to critique (not criticize, xvii) her former colleagues—those who have given her not only professional help but also their time and attention during her fieldwork. Holvikivi notes, for example, that she questioned racism but would never call an informant-colleague racist (p. xvi). She also looks for positive practices in places where critics might expect only the negative (Chapter 5). These are generous moves which I find important for both ethical scholarly analysis and an inclusive politics that invites people into small subversive acts that improve our shared present.
Instead of criticizing a valuable book, I will build on Holvikivi’s conclusions to imagine a constructive next step. In literature that the author is well aware of, many scholars have criticized the larger Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda for the same hierarchies that Fixing Gender exposes in gender training classrooms. For examples, see Lisa Davis and Jessica Stern on heteronormative bias and Swati Parashar on neo-colonial power relations (in “WPS and LGBTI Rights” and “The WPS ‘Agenda’: A Postcolonial Critique,” both in Sara Davies and Jacqui True, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security, 2019).
In good critical feminist fashion, Holvikivi hesitates to draw universal conclusions or to make policy recommendations beyond the scope of her context. Still, I believe Holvikivi’s work contains ideas with wider practical importance than she allows. In light of her findings, could those working on the agenda prescribe better processes, or at least voice questions that should be considered in future WPS documents? It seemed improbable that the UN Security Council would ever pass something like the WPS agenda. Maybe 25 years later, they can muster the will to make future Resolutions, and the trainings for peacekeepers that flow from them, even better at addressing known hierarchies and problems with epistemic authority. For example, future WPS documents could call for attention to not just gender-based but sexuality-based harms within armed conflict, and discussions of implementation could mandate that a certain percentage of trainers and soldiers come from the regions they work in.
Holvikivi might respond that this is asking for the big ideological gesture rather than settling for Spivak’s daily maintenance work (p. 151). Critical feminists do not want to assume that everyone shares the same politics, and we do not want to limit the subversive opportunities that exist. While we should follow Holvikivi in not expecting perfection, perhaps feminists can continue to push harder on more fronts, sneaking “feminist Trojan horses” (p. 159) into not only serendipitous moments in training classrooms but future mandate documents themselves.
