 Good morning. On behalf of the United States Institute of Peace, we are delighted to welcome you to today's event on why women matter to peace and security in the Indo-Pacific. We think this conversation this morning comes at an important time and a relevant moment in our global context. My name is Kathleen Kinest, and I lead the Institute's work on women, peace, and security. And I will also serve as moderator for the morning's panel. For those of you who are new to USIP, we are a national institution founded by the US Congress 39 years ago and dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, practical, and essential for US and global security. This coming October, we will celebrate 23 years of the Critical United Nations Resolution 1325, which was the first formal declaration made by the international community that recognized the critical role women play in peace building, as well as the disproportionate impact and burden that falls to women and girls in war. In recognition of the impact of war on women, the US Congress passed the Women, Peace, and Security Act in 2017, which calls for the United States to be a global leader in promoting women's participation in conflict prevention, management, and resolution, and in sustaining democratic institutions in fragile states. To date, the US is the only country to enact such a law on women, peace, and security. Four departments and agencies were tasked with integrating women, peace, and security into their overall strategy. And today, we will hear from one of the co-coms who will lay out their vision and programs of Indo-Pay-com. During the conversation today, we'll take a deeper dive into how the US military is making what we call WPS, just so you know, we will use that acronym, Women, Peace, and Security, WPS, more than a slogan and how they're bringing it into their leadership and the implementation of the combatant commands. So it's now my pleasure to shift to our opening speaker, Air Commodore Chris Robson, who will offer opening remarks. He will then be joined by our three other distinguished panelists for a conversation about this work. I'm going to only offer very brief bios, but Air Commodore Robson joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1993. He has served in many sectors of the military, including air combat capabilities, space capability acquisition and operations, and in the role of directing all Australian Defense Force operations across the Indo-Pacific. Among his many duties in J5, he joins us today as the WPS general officer for Indo-Pay-com command. Welcome, sir, and the podium is yours. Thanks, Dr. Keynes. Thank you for wonderful words about what I've done in my past. I've done a bunch of things, would be the best description. So of all of those things I've done while part of the Royal Australian Air Force and being involved with the US, it's been a distinct pleasure to be involved with what I think is the best operated women peace security group of people that we have inside of this organisation. Sharon, who's the lead of that, who you'll get to speak to later on, has got a fantastic team, a small team of about five people that do an amazing job and have been lauded across the organisation as the leaders in driving how we manage things inside of a co-com. So really, I'm the frontman for what is an exceptional team and you'll get to speak to Sharon a little bit later. So without further ado, clearly an Australian, so a little bit strange having somebody in a different uniform with a different voice. For those that have got children and watched the TV show Bluey, apparently I sound like Bingo, Bluey's dad. So as I'm going through this, you can imagine that in the back of your mind. That's who I am. Alrighty, without further ado, so I'm an Australian Defence Force military exchange officer. So I'm not a liaison officer, so I don't work directly back to Australia. I'm embedded inside of the US system and work directly for the commander of US Indo-Pacon through the J5 in Hawaii. As part of that role, I've got several different organisations that work with me and in particular WPS is one of those. I'm humbled by the tremendous amount of knowledge, experience that I have in the room here and also have online. USIP's work to provide forums for research, sharing diverse perspectives across peace and security is vital to the understanding of how we can innovatively and effectively resolve today's security challenges. And it starts with inclusive institutions, processes and mechanisms that enable and empower diverse perspectives to confront today's complex security environment. For the US Department of Defence, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda has transformative potential for improving security, but it requires effort, strategy and time. As you previously mentioned, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 fundamentally broadens the definition of security by expanding who can become our security partners, those we've often and long overlooked. And women expand our understanding of what makes us secure. Their perspective improves how we provide security that is both effective and sustainable. We know this by the data. There is strong correlation between gender equality and stability. Factors such as meaningful participation of women and incidents of gender-based violence are directly tied to whether or not a country has strong democratic institutions and whether or not they're more likely to engage in conflict. Changes in the treatment of women are also among the first indicators of instability. So the importance of including women and promoting equality to strengthen security outcomes cannot be overstated. Recognizing this, in 2020, the Defence Department stepped up its efforts by releasing the First Women's Peace and Security Strategic Framework and Implementation Plan, a critical step in advancing the approach to promoting meaningful inclusion of women across the spectrum of conflict and crisis. At US Indo-Pacific Command, we established the Office of Women, Peace and Security in 2019. Now, I'll hold there for one moment just to highlight, even though that was established in 2019, Sharon has been working individually with WPS for the past 15 years in Indo-Pacon. So, yes, we started in 2019, but the wealth of knowledge and capability that she brings to our small organisation goes without saying. It was established in 2019 by our Command Gender Advisor, who is obviously Sharon, and she'll talk further on that role a little later on. As said earlier, we're a small, but what we would say a mighty team, and I'm proud to share that US Indo-Pacon has the most robust WPS capability for the Defence Department and remains at the leading edge of Defence WPS implementation. This is because we recognise how critical prevention is to both defence institutionalisation and operationalisation, and the WPS principles and gender perspectives are key to that. For US Indo-Pacon, prevention efforts means gender mainstreaming with our organisations, tailored training to an inclusive standard to include supporting the Command's diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts, and application of gender perspectives and analysis to our military operations. We recognise this is a dual-track approach. In order to truly achieve inclusive security, we need to be working on ourselves within our Defence institutions, and at the same time, we need to integrate gender perspectives within our military missions. Once again, we'll talk about this a little bit later on. It's not only the outward-looking portion of what we do, but it's the inward-looking portion that is extremely important to us. Applying a gender perspective helps us better understand the security concerns of the entire population, reduce potential gender blind spots, and identify the full range of risks, resources and opportunities available to us. It also helps ensure our forces are used to our maximum potential by ensuring we have the right mix of people, planning or deployed to achieve mission success. As we better understand the security concerns of our partners, especially local women on the ground, we continually adapt our approach to WPS. This requires a learning mindset and also, importantly, a humble one. We need to be able to look at ourselves and understand where we come from, and the people that we are dealing with, and I say this with great gravitas, are not stupid, so we can't treat them that way. From a strategic perspective, all US-Indo-Pacific Command WPS efforts are guided by a set of principles that emphasise a whole of government, whole of society, multinational and localised approach to WPS implementation. This means we coordinate closely with our inter-agency partners, especially the State Department and the US Agency for International Development, and we seek to include civil society participation in our engagement whenever possible. In working with partner nations, we also welcome participation from our like-minded international partners and international organisations with WPS expertise. So we haven't got the market cornered. This week, Sharon and myself have spent today and will spend tomorrow in the DC area working with State Department, working with OSD, talking to other organisations to ensure, yesterday we were with USAID to work with them because they all have perspectives that as a whole of government, we need to be able to drag together and present. We're conscious of the gap between WPS policy and effective implementation. We therefore strive to design initiatives that not only leverage and amplify local expertise, but that achieve contextualised outcomes. This means elevating the voices of marginalised populations who are frequently absent from high-level WPS conversations and working to get them a seat at the table. I'd like to provide some examples of recent WPS efforts undertaken by our Office of WPS. Everything starts with relevant data. And Sharon will talk about this a little later. We went to make sure our efforts in the region are prioritised in a way that is supported by data, not just areas we think are important and not just in partner nations that we think are important. We think the benefit for WPS is for all. To determine the WPS ground truth in our region, we joined with the Pacific Disaster Centre to develop a WPS assessment of each country in the Indo-Pacific. The index enables us to analyse and understand a partner nation's ability to build resilience, to potentially destabilising shocks to better inform our planning. This regional WPS assessment, which also includes the United States and Australia, has also informed how we develop the rest of our regional engagements as well. Guided by this regional WPS baseline, US-Indo-PACOM WPS engagements with partner nations focus on the following areas. Now, I'm not going to break these down, and later, if you've got questions on it, you can talk to Sharon about it. But firstly, it's the building institutional capacity and capability, inclusive health security, transnational security challenges, and crisis operations. Our Indo-PACOM gender adviser, Sharon, as I said later, will expand on that if you want any further details on it. I guess to keep this short, in closing, we're all well aware that the Indo-Pacific is home to a wide variety of cultures, and therefore, a wide variety of gender-based challenges. Many of these issues exist due to years of conflict, unrest and instability, and also from the lack of empowerment, representation and perspective of and from women. These issues can destabilise communities and exacerbate the effects of conflict and crisis. But as I noted earlier, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 is transformative and provides US-Indo-PACOM the inclusive framework to develop concrete actions that could improve the lives of all people. US-Indo-PACOM is committed to advancing WPS alongside our regional partners. That means all of you here today are part of that. So working in that region means that we have reached back to all of the organisations to try to push that into our theatre. We're doing this to achieve mutual goals for a lasting peace and stability. We welcome opportunities and stand ready to meaningful partner, meaningfully partner on WPS. And lastly, we recognise that every nation faces challenges when it comes to full implementation of WPS. Importantly, including the United States and from my own side of things, Australia. We're all different. We all are at different points along our journey and have much to learn from one another. I look forward to hearing from the rest of the team here and in particular the expert panellists. So without further ado, thank you for your time. And again, my honour to be in the room and be able to present to you. Thank you. I'm going to invite you up to the stage. Bring your coffee. Hello, everyone. It's working? Okay, great. Thank you so much, Air Commodore. And we look forward to hearing more from you during this panel discussion. I want to welcome our panellists to the podium here. And I'm going to introduce each one before I ask them a question, only so that it's not a long list of bios. So forgive me as I move through this group. So first of all, you know, we want to dive a little bit deeper and we have panellists here and I will just say who they are, though. On my left in the pink is Sharon Feist, who you've already been introduced to by the Air Commodore. She is the Gender Advisor for the U.S. Indo-Pay-Com Command. Next door is Brigadier General Mora Hanigan, who is president of the Marine Corps University. And next to the Brigadier General is our own, Dr. Jennifer Statz, who directs our East Asia and Pacific programs here at the Institute. So Brigadier General Hanigan, I'm going to begin with you. Welcome back. Among your many friends, welcome back. Among your many amazing things you've done as far as your career, you also served here as the Commandant's Fellow during 2015-2016. And now you are in a whole different ball game than the 78 countries that you have worked in. We'd really appreciate a view of how you see this perspective, some of the ideas that you heard from Air Commodore Robson, this whole of institutional approach to looking at WPS really as both a strategy at the 20,000-foot level, but then implementation at the three-foot level or five-foot for me. But in any case, I would love to hear some of your thoughts also about how you are imagining the gender inclusion at your own institution training at the junior officer level. So the floor is yours, and then we'll turn to Sharon and then to Jennifer. Thank you, Dr. Cronus. Welcome back. Am I on? It looks like I am. So with that, thank you so much for having me. Thank you to USIP for being here today. I like to say I was living in WPS, and then I came to the institute and I actually learned about WPS. So what a different inflection to have. And honestly, I'm truly humbled to be here because I really did take away a lot of the education that I received here and have been able to grow in that as I've traveled on. Part of the reason I believe that I'm sitting up here right now, besides the fact that obviously an interest of mine but was really the amount of time that I've actually had the opportunity to serve in the Pacific as well. And so, you know, one only has to look at the newspaper today and see how the Pacific is influencing the world. And I think that more so than anything really lends itself to an understanding within the military of why it's so significant and with our partners that we have that are there throughout the Pacific. I would tell you the other side of this too is as the military leans in and I'll use the Pacific Command or Marine Forces Pacific, they continue to work and today is no different. Again, if you look at the conference that they're in, it's a cooperation on a multi-level in which they're looking at peace and global security. So I think it's ever important to understand that the militaries readily support these efforts as well. I think probably one of the most influential and to the question, where have we gone from whether it be at the strategic level or all the way through, my last tour in Okinawa allowed me the opportunity to really have a greater perspective and enjoyed really the collaboration with the Japanese. I had the opportunity to go with multiple individuals across the DOD and go and have a chance to interact with women that were in the Japanese forces. And so being able to truly understand where some of their issues, their concerns, their policies lied and then how that again was reticent or familiar to what we see in our services or where it was completely different. And so whether we look at where we feel that we've got a lot of room to grow, I think everyone does and so that, of course, anywhere that we travel across the Pacific and 78, once you look at how many countries are in the Pacific, it basically looks like I've spent all of my time there. So truly it's a gamut of countries and whether that be in Korea or in the Philippines or anywhere else throughout Thailand, Indonesia, absolutely a wealth of opportunity but never have I ever been anywhere that someone hasn't stopped me from another service, especially other women in the other services and asked, hey, how did this happen? How did you get here? And really what kind of an example that we're able to them provide and again, it'll harken back to USIP. I believe it was Abigail Disney who said, show them what you can be and then individuals will follow. So it's amazing when you finally see individuals and that's within our own military as well that the opportunities are there and I'd like to always echo that it's oftentimes less about my military career and the fact that I'm also a mother of three girls, that's usually what everybody immediately warms to so I would offer that as well. Last but not least, I think it's always interesting, I was also here where we talked about empowerment and the speaker at the time said, women are empowered, it's giving them a platform so that they can use that power is really what we need to be able to provide and so that's never been lost on me. So now coming full circle back to the university and what we're doing at Marine Corps University so it started well before me. In 22 we had the opportunity to take a look at our curriculum across the university and as Kathleen mentioned we have the ability to provide instruction from our most junior Marines so those 18 and 19 year olds that are coming in and pretty much as they get ready to go through in our promotions, we start there and all the way through our officer corps but being able to then take the curriculum and look from a women's peace and security perspective and figure out what are we doing, what do we need to update as far as that curriculum and more importantly what are the gaps that we potentially are missing at that point. So we took a look at it not just from a military perspective which I'm really proud of. We went outside from an academic perspective, we looked at it from a leadership perspective and then we invited subject matter experts to come in and then again provide us some input on where our curriculum is going. We then took that and we were then able to drive that into our curriculum review at every level and we are then able to now grow that women's peace and security side of our education so we see that being inculcated with our officers across the board as well as our enlisted. I think where do we really see the benefits of that? Well, we have examples riddled across but we have individuals that are now reaching out and we have partnerships with the Swedish Armed Forces recently traveled to Israel and got a chance to sit down with the Israeli self-defense forces there and be able to talk more about where we are and what we're doing so those opportunities that interaction continues to grow over time. I think the biggest thing that I've seen as well as our scholarship program we have a Reynolds Scholarship Program which is named after a recently retired Lieutenant General Laurie Reynolds who was a foremost expert in cyber and communications so again completely outside of where we have seen traditional roles and she was really carving a path and readily comes back, she actually sits on our Board of Visitors and provides additional influence over the university and helps us again continue to grow. Last but not least, we are also able to publish and so our Marine Corps University Press gathered not just from the Marine Corps but from across all the militaries and pulled into a publication and we were able to produce that last year and provide women's peace and security in the professional military and that gave us again the opportunity to not just provide one voice but to provide many and how that voice influences the military across the board. Thank you Brigadier General. I'm going to come back to you with a couple of questions but that was a wonderful way to open up the storyboard here. I'm going to turn now to colleague and friend Sharon Feist who is the first gender advisor to the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and serving as the principal U.S. military advisor on WPS. I mean Sharon is kind of legendary for us in the WPS world so to have her here in person I really want to ask you like you're working as a civilian in the middle of a military force and one of the things when we had time to meet with your team last summer in Hawaii was just the impressive way you are translating the grand WPS international agenda even down to the languages the words you choose to make sense not only as you pointed out Commander but in a very diverse region in the world. That is tough but also how you translate from the civilian into the military and back and I'd love you to talk more about that but also if you could share what you think are some of the key examples of success and of course some of the challenges your team faces on the daily basis. Over to you Sharon and welcome. Thank you Kathleen. Actually regarding some of that translation and some of the communication techniques about 19 years ago I was a very poor graduate student at American University getting my master's of fine arts writing with a specialization in poetry and you may laugh and it was definitely my passion and love at the time but that has really helped with targeting very specific messaging and how to make your specific audience understand and feel something in a very cogent and concise and precise way so those skill sets actually have translated pretty well into the defense and security industry but I'd also like to mention that I'm a student eating ramen and walking by the U.S. Institute of Peace and imagining one day maybe I could go inside the building so certainly this feels like I've come kind of full circle so thank you to Dr. Kienhast for that. So regarding the INDO-PACOM WPS program as Eric Commodore mentioned earlier we were formally established in 2019 through Congress through the NDAA the National Defense Appropriations Act even though we have been working on WPS actively since about 2011 and it is an evolving approach Eric Commodore mentioned it is a learning mindset and it certainly has been one and we're always learning new things and innovatively trying to pilot new things as well our main focus though and this is what has kind of helped with our success is understanding that there are two focus areas that we have to deliver simultaneously develop and deliver simultaneously so first is the institutionalization and the second is operationalization and you'll hear us using those terms quite frequently so with institutionalization this includes everything that Eric Commodore mentioned before gender mainstreaming which sounds like that could be easy but it is not it takes years for gender mainstreaming the number one role of gender mainstreaming is first known as mainstream so certainly being a civilian in the defense and security industry has helped in understanding defense culture and leveraging the right processes to influence and to also translate the why, why this matters why this is relevant to defense and security why women, peace and security is a game changer in achieving lasting stability within the region the second focus is operationalization so as a combatant command based out of Honolulu we have coverage of over 36 nations within the Indo-Pacific region so this is work with all of our partner nations who deliver WPS or implement WPS very differently and where we completely understand that and meet partners where they're at recognizing that we are imperfect as well which is why we still work on the institutionalization aspect on ourselves as well by the end of this program year we will have been working with over 29 partner nations on some form of advancing WPS of course bilaterally but also multilaterally as well I did want to mention at least a couple of our areas of success but also they translate to challenges as well because we continually have to work on them and when we first established our program we realized very quickly that we needed to address two big gaps the first one is internal training and education and this meets or fulfills with the DOD strategic framework and implementation plan and women, peace and security there's three outlined objectives and the first one is about organizing, training and equipping our forces with gender perspectives that include WPS principles so we developed piloted new training to train gender advisors based off of curriculum from NATO but also from the Australia Defense Force as well and we knew that we needed to deepen the bench and train the trainers so we established our first military gender advisor course in 2018 and we are continually adapting in fact late last night I was rewriting a new module because again we're continuously learning about what a comprehensive curriculum needs to look like and also just training to a standard training to an inclusive standard the second area or gap that we realized we need to address immediately was the data the lack of relevant data within the region to military, to militaries so right now or before there were a lot of data that could come from World Health Organization, United Nations there were more focused on women's economic empowerment or other inequality type of measures but it was not necessarily addressing drivers of instability which is what makes it relevant to defense and security so we worked with Pacific Disaster Center who is globally renowned for their work they are also partly a duty entity part of an academic entity and then we worked also with OSD and other command commands actually a gender baseline assessment and we looked at different indicators of gender inequality gender empowerment and then on top of that looking at drivers of instability such as climate change, malign actors etc other transnational threats etc and that really produced basically what we call the WPS responsiveness score for each country so we have a profile on that as well as a regional score as their commander mentioned earlier we have scores also for the United States and for Australia as well so we're part of the scoring of ourselves but essentially this was important to establish two things the first was establish a baseline for measurement because very importantly especially for the military to show different metrics of success and be able to do that in a meaningful and comprehensive way and then second it also informs how the Department of Defense can prioritize its security cooperation work with partner nations and a really good example of this is with Papa Nagini it is part of the US strategy to prevent conflict and promote stability and we knew earlier on based upon its indicators that it would likely be a country that would be nominated for that strategy and we were doing a lot of work on there and I'm happy to talk about that later and then I think it's just kind of the last point that I'd just like to convey and this echoes what Eric Hallmutter said earlier about partner nations we are constantly surprised at how smart and adept and how hungry they are for women peace and security this was evident most recently when we were in March in Papa Nagini again in Malaysia in Japan in March and May and having a methodology, a proven methodology within defense of how you build a program for WPS, how you look at institutionalizing, mainstreaming and also operationalizing seems to be one of the gaps that defense, particularly women in defense and security sectors have been looking for and wanting and they are leaps and bounds ahead of us in many ways too in the sense that when we were in Papa Nagini that was the first group of students that we've ever taught who actually conducted a gender analysis for an operation so responding to conflict and simultaneously conducted gender analysis on their own organization and that's something we in the United States haven't quite done yet simultaneously but goes to show their aptitude and their desire for more women, peace and security training and education and partner nation engagement Yeah, we're just getting going Sharon you've left a lot of things on the table that we want to come back to so thank you for that I'm going to shift now to our colleague here Dr. Jennifer Statz who directs East Asia and Pacific programs she was previously served as director for advanced capabilities at national security staff spent several years at the Pentagon so she really does I feel like cross-sectors and will add to these perspective that we're looking at this morning but Jennifer take us out to the 20,000 foot I mean it is in a massive region as already noted how many countries are in the region how can you share some key examples from countries that USIP is working on how the WPS effort and gender make sense from national institution like USIP Thanks for having me today it's an honor to be on this panel with all of you and especially with Kathleen who is really a leader in this and so important to the work that we're all doing on WPS so thank you very much for allowing me to be here to speak about the work that USIP is doing on the ground across the Indo-Pacific the way that so many of these themes and initiatives and efforts are really manifesting themselves in the region and it's especially exciting for me to get to talk about this because I can't take credit for any of it all of the work that is being done is really being driven, designed, led, implemented by our amazing partners and colleagues on the ground who are living in these areas and who understand the problems far better than I ever will but also understand the paths to solutions and this path to addressing these problems in an effective way and so I've learned so much from them from learning from their perspective and their understanding of how to best really make their communities safer and make their countries better and stronger and which is of course in the interest of all of us so it's really been an honor to be a part of this so I just want to talk a little bit about three different approaches that we are taking and the way that some of this work that you all have already described is really kind of coming through at the local level and the first is obviously something we've heard many times, the importance of inclusion and making sure that women have a seat at the table, that they are a part of these conversations all along the way both in terms of participating in the existing processes and structures but also helping communities design new processes and structures that will make sure that they are facilitating a more inclusive discussion going forward and the first place I'll talk about is Myanmar which is really an absolute devastating situation right now really feeling being torn apart by a terrible internal conflict being led by the military junta and the way that that is challenging and peace and security threatening peace and security in the everyday lives of people all across the country we are working with women in the resistance movement trying to make sure that they are part of those conversations that their wisdom is driving their efforts and that resistance movement is pretty fractious it itself is facing some conflict and division and we believe that women can play a really important role in trying to unite and build cohesion in that resistance movement so that they are more effective to reassert peace and stability across the country we are also working with some of the groups, the pro-democracy groups that are actually administering territory outside of the area controlled by the junta so there are some areas that are still being controlled by civilians and by others and really trying to make sure that those groups also include women that they are at the table and that when they are designing their new administrative structures, security structures for this what we hope interim period in the future, there is a role for women in those conversations we are working with police, with community security actors again trying to make sure that they are thinking about ways that women can play a role in those security institutions and we are also helping them think about policy changes whether that is gender quotas and their local administrative councils or other things that they can be doing to really again ensure that they are designing these structures in a way that will be more inclusive going forward so that has been really exciting work again just incredibly inspiring because it is really being led and informed by the people who know the situation the best and who feel the consequences of this conflict most directly nearby in Vietnam we are taking a different approach, it is obviously a very different situation but working with both military and civilian leaders on addressing issues like war legacies but also strengthening US-Vietnam relations there we are working with a number of really incredible impressive women the vice director of the military broadcasting network, the director of the war remnants museum, the president of Ho Chi Minh City peace and development foundation and acting president of the diplomatic academy of Vietnam to name a few there are not a lot of women in the most senior positions in Vietnam but there are many very strong and impressive women leaders in positions that are really relevant to peace and security in the country and so it has been terrific to have a chance to engage them and make sure that their voices are included in conversations with the United States and with others on issues related to peace and security the next area I will talk about is thinking about the drivers of conflict and what is really behind some of the challenges that we are seeing and there that thread of work is really focused on male behavior change and what Kathleen and her team and others call peaceful masculinity in which participants in these discussions think about different notions of masculinity and how those different ideas affect expectations of men during conflicts or violence and it is really asking participants to think about things a little bit differently and is it really true that violence is a part of what it means to be masculine and hopefully the answer is no and Papua New Guinea which has been mentioned many times I think many of you know gender based violence is a huge challenge a recent survey suggests that 56% of women aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence 28% have experienced sexual violence and that is likely an under counting based on what we know it's a terrible problem but there are some really innovative efforts underway to try to help facilitate conversations to think about some of these challenges in a different way and you know it won't be a surprise to anyone here but there is research commissioned by USIP and by others that really again affirms what most of us know that when you're trying to reduce violence it's really important to tackle the causes and that's as important as addressing some of the symptoms and in this context and many others that really means changing the behavior and the attitudes of men that is not something I can do as an outsider that's not something most of us can do is being really led by local leaders, innovators who understand the political the social, the cultural, the historical the religious context that shapes the way people think about their relationships with others and how violence plays into that and Papa New Guinea we have an amazing program manager named Zouabe Tenning she is an experienced facilitator counselor and advocate who has really worked on male behavior change across Papa New Guinea and also in New Zealand and she is conducting this work doing workshops, doing training reaching out to men trying to really encourage them to think about their role in their family structures and their community structures and how they can all work together to build a more stable and peaceful society and community the last piece I'll mention and I'll turn back is something that's come up many times which is the importance of research and data everything starts with relevant data we've heard that a couple times today we need to understand the problem and understand what works and what doesn't work if we're going to be able to address this effectively we've done some work at USIP publishing some really impressive research on different efforts to transform the security apparatus and Myanmar changing it from really a violent male dominated institution known for its use of sexual and gender based violence to a much more inclusive security service led by and protects the rights of women in PNG we're supporting PNG's own National Research Institute as well as its long time research partners at the Australian National University and their very good work to understand better what strategies and interventions are effective in trying to reduce these very high levels of interpersonal and intergroup violence and it's really about trying to understand the problem we're mapping incidents of sorcery relation related violence and tribal fighting really just trying to find out where is this happening what do the numbers look like so we can better focus our efforts going forward and the other really looks at drivers of conflict and instability in local communities especially in Hela province this is just a brief snapshot but I think it's important to give at least a few minutes a look at the work that's being done on the ground that's really being driven by the communities and the way that these very important concepts and the work that is being done within the US military and Indo-Pacific command is being reflected and echoed and reinforced and complimented by these real bottom up initiatives in the countries that are feeling this most acutely so thank you again for the chance to be here and look forward to the conversation wow you covered the world that was very well done thank you Jennifer well Air Commodore I didn't give you this in the preface but since you are the only male on the panel and I think Jennifer has covered this question that all of us are looking at in terms of gender we always say gender is not another name for women it is an inclusive dynamic process that is shaped by society, culture and practice every day so you know my question is going to be what do you think is the outlook for changing these dynamics in male based institutions of course the military but I think what Jennifer brings forward is we see it in everyday life it doesn't need the military to remind us about this and the only other thing I would add is in working recently with your government Australia is taking a very strong stance on gender equality how does that get translated in your own country and in the surrounding regions got me? there you have you I feel like I've been set up here I've got amazing people next to me and I'm not going to be half as eloquent as what they have been I guess from if I started a baseline from our military organisation as a starting point the how Australia looks at it is that men just have to be better it's as simple as that men just have to be better there's a cultural part of this there's a generational part of what we're doing and then there's a carrot and stick part of how we need to get the reality is that from the very base level of the military our recruiting still is around about 30-70 as far as female male now if that's your recruiting trying to get 50% of your leaders to come from 30% of your workforce the math just doesn't work it just doesn't so when I look at our institution we need to be doing a far better job of getting a focus and it's not just with regards to women but just diversity into our organisation because currently we spend a lot of time looking at how do we actually develop the higher level leadership to ensure we have the right people unless you have the appropriate pool that is probably not going to change not in the short term so that's one part that we need to get after the second part is that there is a generational way of when it comes to WPS when we go into other nations Sharon and I were talking about this in the car on the way over is that the military perspective is and my wife would tell me this all the time is I just need you to listen and hear and stop trying to solve my problems the military is a male dominated organisation that goes without saying we're trying to rectify that but that's the reality so the organisation doesn't listen and hear generally the organisation solves problems so when we go into other nations understanding that that nation might just want you to listen and hear and not resolve their problems without understanding how that affects them and what the culture is like inside of that organisation is extremely important and from a marine perspective and from an Air Force perspective whenever we go into any sort of operation and my job is to do planning at the moment is you never go anywhere unless you've got an exit strategy you don't step off the plane unless you know how to get out and the times when we haven't done that and recent times in Afghanistan and even if we go back to Vietnam shows where we didn't organise that very well because of that mindset we don't have presence so when we go talk to other nations instead of understanding to build a relationship to have an influence you have to be there you don't go in resolve a problem step away say thank you very much for coming the military is not particularly good at that that's not what we do so from an organisational perspective those things need to change and we need to be able to look at that however that costs money that takes people and that's just to deal with that external side of things so it's a difficult problem set that we need to get after internal to our organisations Australia is no different to the US I think we're doing better but we haven't got it right and we've still got a long way to go with regards to gender whether it be because of sexual harassment whether it be because of bullying whether it be because of glass ceilings and through those things we need to be better at I can give you an example from an Australian perspective where we've got a a policy in particular bystander training that we do which has been a significant change in how defence gets after things where at leadership responsibility at all levels not to step past any sort of activities that are not appropriate and we had a three star general in charge of the army who created an online video where he was criticised quite significantly from the department because he said if you're a person that does this you are not welcome in my army you need to leave now he then went on to say that the activities and the things that you step past are the things that you not only accept but they're the things that you need to promote inside of the organisation there is no room for that and when it comes to bullying sexual harassment they are inside of the Australian defence force mandated reporting if somebody comes to you and says they've been bullied you don't get the chance to say right now let's sit down and have a discussion about that's mandated reporting and that needs to be investigated harassment and sexual harassment and any sort of racial harassment mandatory reporting if you've found that you have done that then you're out of the organisation it's as simple as that now that's a very carrot stick mentality and hopefully generationally we'll get to the point where people and frankly I think the younger people understand this far better than people that are frankly my age that's and many in particular I think it will change over time how Australia is dealing with it and I think the US has similar sort of concepts I'm not sure that there is the freedom of reporting that we probably need inside of the military to get after that a bit more yeah I think you brought a lot of perspective into just the original question of how do you change these kind of institutions thank you for taking that leap with that question I just want to let the audience know we did get a late start Washington is not dealing well with its first rain of I think a month and a half so we are going to go a little longer here and I want to be able to get back to each one of our panelist and revisit some of the opening comments Brigadier General and again I'm going to come back to you you are really at the in your current position looking at those as you said 18 and 19 year olds they are Commodore said actually they are a little easier to work with than the rest of us in a certain age group how does that play out in your work right now and what do you feel the women peace and security agenda brings right now to your situation so I think there's an overwhelming growth and I think you said it well truly the 18 and 19 year olds do get it what's more refreshing that I've had recently or the experience that I've had recently has been the more senior officers coming in and talking to me and one of the focus areas that we've looked at as talent management and that recognition that a talent really knows no gender and it really does come at us that way and I think as the leaders continue to grow and the policies more importantly continue to grow we're seeing where that undercurrent just again leads the way and quite honestly they will follow where the leaders take them so I think it's a great opportunity and no matter who's out in front whatever job is out in front we saw that change as well across the military of any job is open to any individual and really it comes back to being the very best and I think for us it comes back to making sure that we do our job well and so once again that I think will continue to pervade again it's readily expected at the more junior levels and they just want it so now that we're seeing it infuse even in our senior leaders or as our senior leaders continue to ask those questions I think we'll continue to see that success yeah and I'm going to follow up one more how many women presidents have there been at the Marine Corps University and what does that mean in terms of women peace and security moving forward? I am not the first no I was proceeded by another general another female general a few back we are we are one of the smaller services we do have less females we generally run about 8% in our military and we continue to see that some of it is just I think as the Commodore said it's a clear fact we don't have medical services in our military and therefore we don't have a lot of other avenues that women can serve in the military where you see that in the other military so we rely on our Navy for that we are seeing that change over time we're seeing more women come into definitely at the senior ranks the general officer and then on the enlisted side our sergeants major or master gunnery sergeants again is considered that pinnacle in their field but again I think it's just growing across the board what's always great to see is you see a lot of younger women in the military that's what's always just so invigorating to be around so definitely with our younger Marines as they come in you see that really that blend yeah you know often when we talk about women, peace and security we do focus on the peace building part and I'm just wanting to amplify the security side of women, peace and security Sharon I am going to ask you I think for reminding us that all our skill sets and talents come to bear on our current whatever job we're doing and I appreciate that because young people need to know that poetry matters, language matters all of these things so I'm glad you amplified that. I want to come back though to the question of we had last summer and I remember sitting with your team and we were talking about our gender inclusive framework and theory we call it the gift and you all said now peaceful masculinity is not going to go over in Indo-Paycom tell us what you did with that term and how you workshopped it really to make it relevant for your work Thanks for that question I think it's an evolving approach to training and we read and listen and take feedback through poll surveys or different type of data that we collect from our training audiences so interestingly we were asked by our Indo-Paycom leadership to help develop and deliver the stand down training on extremism and that sort of led into our foray into assisting with diversity inclusion and accessibility type of efforts understanding of course who again is our target audience and how to build a curriculum that is effective and that also sticks so we also were asked by one of our directorates to develop a 12 month long a full one year train the trainer training based upon different issue sets they were seeing within their work climate and environment related issues like harassment different microaggressions et cetera so we took kind of a step back and looked at how we would want to develop that and build really interpersonal communication skill sets and just building trust within each other because we have to have that first before we could have conversations about masculinity to be frank within the military culture so first we were very surprised about how everyone was very receptive to one having just a safe space for discourse and then second how they were receptive to different types of training and all of our training is very interactive as well so a lot of different role playing understanding bystander intervention techniques and tips different allyships techniques and tips and also different types of understanding your own types of biases as well so I think one day maybe we can get to the term peaceful masculinity certainly I think we're aiming for something around healthy masculinity but that's not something that directly comes into conversations I do think we indirectly are achieving the same outcomes however great thank you for that I'm going to conclude our panel with my colleague Jennifer Jennifer you sit at the crossroads of so many of these concerns looking out five years from now where do you see us in the Indo-Pacific us meaning all of us not just USIP but and how does that intersect with women peace and security agenda that is an enormous question I won't get out my crystal ball to try to predict what the Indo-Pacific will look like in five years but I can say it is going to remain a very volatile region there are a lot of people dealing with a lot of challenges some historic some cultural some that have been around for centuries and some new related to some of the challenges that we're facing based on how the world is changing the economy is changing the planet the climate is changing and so I think these dynamics will remain will remain important to watch and ever changing and I do think that these themes that we have talked about today about the importance of being inclusive of giving women a seat at the table about thinking about challenges and solutions from the perspective of the local communities and what they understand to be the real drivers of that conflict and the possible solutions is really exciting because I think it's such an important piece of the puzzle in addition to all of the other things and policies and initiatives that we have under way so it's reassuring and inspiring to hear all the good work that's going on Well with that I want to thank our four panelists today and the audience online and here at USIP I want to call out to my colleague Karin Graf who helped us pull this together Chandi Lu and others who are here today I just want to conclude by saying I think this has been a terrific way to really see inside look under the hood if you will of Indo Pecom, thank you for being willing to help us do that I appreciate the perspective from the Marines and of course civil society and independent institution here so thank you very much have a great Wednesday and we are going to go off-line now thank you