Catherine Goetze has provided a review of Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping that highlights its contributions and offers a number of constructive paths forward to further uncover the study of gender dynamics in peacekeeping operations. We respond to this thoughtful and gracious assessment by making a point of clarification, a point of rebuttal, and a point of congruence.

First, it is important to clarify that while one of the main aspects of the book is sexual exploitation, abuse, violence, and harassment (SEAHV), it is by no means the central focus of the book. The book broadly assesses the ways that organizational gender power imbalances shape the practice of peacekeeping, and SEAHV is only one outcome of interest. The book also makes efforts to uncover how gender power imbalances affect the participation of women in peace operations and peacekeeping's local legacies.

Second, we take issue with Goetze’s point that there are too few contributing countries to ascertain whether variation in the gender norms in contributing countries affects the levels of SEAHV in peacekeeping missions. While we agree that low-income countries dominate troop and police contributions, we note that there are currently 124 troop-contributing countries and 90 police-contributing countries. This provides enough variation for statistical analysis—indeed, insufficient variation would have led to a lack of power and inability to observe the relationships that we do. The level of variation across contributing countries also is sufficient for developing policy implications—it is possible to form peacekeeping missions with personnel from countries with better records on gender equality than others. We further note the important variation in gender equality among low income contributing countries. For example, with respect to political inclusion, Rwanda, a low-income country, leads the world, boasting 60% of women in parliament. Moreover, Goetze brings up the important case of French troops engaging in SEAHV as an example that our theory does not address. While France is clearly a high-income country, we do not assume that it has high levels of gender equality within its military organization. For example, French military history suggests that gender inequalities are pervasive (Michael J. Hughes, Forging Napoleon’s Grande Armée: Motivation, Military Culture, and Masculinity in the French Army, 2012), whereas the Swedish military has recently prioritized gender mainstreaming (Robert Egnell, Petter Hojem, and Hannes Berts, Gender, Military Effectiveness, and Organizational Change: The Swedish Model, 2014).

Third, we endorse Goetze’s recommendations for what the research agenda could emphasize going forward. For example, she rightly points out that our treatment of the causes and implications of a warrior masculinity needs to be more fully developed. In particular, the exposition in the book does not account well for the variation in the modalities of queerness and their relationships to hegemonic masculinities. In addition, Goetze pushes for theorizing on the links between organizational culture and interactions with locals. In our discussion about local interactions, however, we highlight the dearth of interaction between peacekeepers and locals, which is an issue in and of itself. Nevertheless, the book does miss an opportunity to bring in discussions about intersectionality, colonialism, and other theoretical lenses that are relevant to understanding variation in the gendered practice of peacekeeping.

With momentum growing worldwide for the “Women, Peace, and Security” (WPS) agenda, Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping aims to explore the implications of this important policy development to the practice of peacekeeping. The book also aims to bring the attention of many conflict scholars who have not considered the relevance of such topics to the wealth of feminist international relations literature that speaks to the WPS agenda as well as to broader issues related to gender and war. In focusing on applying existing feminist scholarship to the study of peacekeeping, we agree with Goetze’s main thrust that the research agenda could do more to use the lens of peacekeeping to advance the feminist scholarship.