 Greetings or actually for the Aggies in the room. Let me say it. Howdy. Oh No, that was pathetic try again. Howdy Howdy, thank you very much for giving me that welcome. I Imagine this is the laser pointer Wow That's that's quite a piece of equipment there. Let me tell you I was thrilled to get this invitation Well, one of my good friends is Robert S. Wood who used to be dean here at the Naval War College for many years And he always spoke of the Naval War College in superlative terms And even though given a number of different chances to leave he always stayed because he loved it. So So when I received the invitation From Admiral Howe and gonna curve wrong to come out here. I was overjoyed Thank you so much for braving whatever lines you had to brave to get here And I promise you I think you're gonna have a very interesting evening together And so the title of my my lecture tonight is women and nations and You may have been noticing a theme in some of those titles right bear branches sex ratios sex and world peace sex and American foreign policy You can make probably beginning to see a theme here that I think that Some of what we do in the security realm has a lot to do with sex and this of course is is Usually creates some chuckles sex and national security But I hope that by the time of by the time we leave here tonight You'll be saying yeah, I see it. I see the link. So let's see if we can We can kind of show you what's going on here All right I'm gonna make some Assertions here at the outset and then we're gonna dive into the evidence and all the many dimensions and facets of of the links that that I see oh Wait, I know this works. I'm supposed to put there we go. Okay. Good. All right. Let's start with the abstract I'm gonna make the assertion that the first political order is in fact the sexual political order and I'm further going to assert that the character of that first our Order is gonna mold society and that society's governance and that society's behavior Thus for example, let me pre-sage some of what we're gonna get into Studies including studies that I have done have shown that women's situation is Significantly linked to the propensity for a state to be involved in intra and interstate conflict propensity to use violence first in such a conflict propensity to break treaty obligations and flout international norms now the question that should be floating around in your mind is Why would that be so? All right? What possibly could be going on there that links those two things? all right, and so what I'd like to introduce to you is the concept of patrilineality as the standing alternative security system to the state so There are two primary ways of ensuring group security in the 21st century states and Patrilineal extended kin networks and if any of you have served in Iraq and Afghanistan You have served in societies where security is provided almost entirely by Patrilineal extended kin networks Now where states are weak or weakening? Patrilineality will research as a security mechanism But what I hope to show through the rest of my talk tonight is that when Societies when groups go back to patrilineality This will aggravate Insecurity and instability it will produce high levels of corruption government ineffectiveness Asset stripping and the constant threat of annihilative clan violence and once again If any of you have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, you probably are nodding your head that you've seen some of this Now before we go into all the linkages, I'd like to mention what this means for women briefly Okay What this means in a sense is that the tempo of of change for women depends upon which security mechanism the state or the Patrilineal group is ascendant as a security providing mechanism So What you see all over the world, especially after the Arab uprising is that positive gender trends are easily reversible Okay, not just easily reversible. They are swiftly reversible Okay, so for example Even though one would imagine they had more important things on their minds One of the first things that the Morsi government did in Egypt was to strip women of their tiny little Legislative quota no other group not the farmers not anybody else The women were stripped of their small legislative quota The top of their agenda was curtailing divorce rights for women and Decriminalizing female genital mutilation and you got to say to yourself. Don't you have bigger fish to fry? Okay, what's going on here likewise Libya the first words out of the Libyan provisional government was they were going to Relegalize polygamy which had been banned under Qaddafi and yet again, you're thinking yourself Why why this obsession with what's going on with women? Well, if you see the first political order as the sexual political order, you're going to begin to see what I see so the Positive trends for women are easily reversible and when they reverse they will reverse swiftly Why because the patrilineal alternative to security provision is always at hand when the state can no longer provide security On the other hand, all right the tempo that you see in terms of progress for women is usually much slower Most experts in the field Suggests that progress is really only sustainable after at least a decade of experience with the change And yet again even then Researching patrilineality can cause that to easily change direction All right, so what's this patrilineality thing? All right, what I would like to show you first is a diagram and I'm going to use this industrial strength laser pointer To help me with it And we're going to see How patrilineality? Intersects with what's going on with women Okay, that's going to be our first graphic then in the second graphic I'm going to show you how each part of that syndrome that I'm going to talk about in the first graphic relates to things concerning National security and stability, so let's go there All right, I'm sure you probably maybe in the front rows you can see this but let's go ahead and start there I'd like to suggest to you that we have a self Reinforcing re-entrenching syndrome of Patrilineality and its effects on women So once this cycle has started it keeps going it keeps going unless it can be broken in some way Which we'll talk about later Not sure where to start but let's let's start with the willingness of males to violently coerce females to provide goods for them food sexual services reproductive services and so forth Leading to almost exclusive male access of resources So what you'll find in such societies is women often lack the ability to control resources such as property Property rights for women are often tightly circumscribed And in many countries even more advanced countries, you'll see that especially Items such as land all right. We'll stay in the patch line All right making women economically dependent on men We begin to see the rise of a patrilineal line Descendants from a common father or even a fictive father and Patrilocal marriage Where brides go and move from their birth family to their husband's compound Sometimes you'll also see a cousin marriage variant So in order not to lose girls from the group They will actually have cousins marry and again if some of you have been operating in the Middle East You'll know that there are there are several societies there that have a very heavy emphasis on cousin marriage all of this begins to lead to a devaluation of the value of daughters and wives and Explicit son preference where sons are preferred to daughters and given preferential treatment Because of this devaluation of daughters We also begin to see a depression in the age of marriage for girls Where girls may be married at puberty or even before puberty in societies that have this syndrome You begin to see a rise in deep inequity in family law and personal status law and this may take a multitude of forms So for example divorce in many of these what we would call syndrome societies is extremely easy for a man He may simply say I divorce you And that's it Whereas a woman may have to wait seven years and prove abandonment or mental illness or something of the sort We also see Personal status laws. We're in some such societies In addition to not being able to hold for example land or major assets and property in their name Women may also may not may not be able to to go to school or to work without the explicit permission of a member of the patriline And there may be in fact Very little consent in marriage in some societies the bride Does not have to show up for a valid marriage to take place as long as her father or guardian and A representative of the groom's family shows up that may be enough okay, so as we begin to get this kind of of Situation we also see an interesting bifurcation All right, if women's labor is valuable You begin to see the rise of polygyny And of course there's a big polygyny belt across Sub-Saharan Africa where women do the lion's share of the agricultural labor And with polygyny we also get the tradition of bride price Where the groom's family must pay the bride's family in order to receive this very productive worker There are a few societies where women's labor is not seen as valuable in which case you'll see the rise of dowry Where the bride's family has to pay the groom's family for taking the burdensome girl off their hands in Such societies you will begin to see significant sex ratio alteration such as we see in places like India where Where the birth of a girl may may lead to serious financial consequences for the family And they may simply decide not to have that girl instead So I think you can see how all of this kind of knits together Okay, reinforces each link reinforces the next link and so I can see I think you can see how a return to patrilineality is going to cause swift Regress in the situation of women because this is what you need to keep Patrilineality going you can't have patrilineality Unless you are willing to subordinate the interests of women to the interests of the patriline That's the only way you're going to get it You can't have girls deciding whom they're going to marry You can't have girls taking land with them when they marry All sorts of things become impossible if you want to go the patrilineal route in order to secure your group all right, so Don't bother trying to understand this because I'm going to explain it in my subsequent slides But if this central if this central circle is just what you saw previously, right? That's syndrome. There's that circle and Here's that circle again All right, what we have theorized is that you will see all sorts of secondary effects from each of these components of patrilineality and Every single one of them has effects on national stability and security Okay, so let's go ahead and go through each one of these dimensions Step-by-step and I think you'll see what I mean. Okay, there we go. All right, let's take food security Obviously national security All right is intertwined with food security. How does the syndrome affect food security? Well, as we know Women produce most of the world's food right in Sub-Saharan Africa women actually produce 80% of the food or at least they donate 80% of agricultural labor and Worldwide we're looking at over 50% But worldwide women only own 2% of arable land Even though children's caloric intake is tightly correlated with women's property rights When their mothers have property rights children are better fed The FAO the Food and Agriculture Organization Calculates that if women were given the same assistance agricultural assistance as men Training seeds fertilizers malnutrition would drop 17% globally just by rectifying that inequity We also know the cash crops tend to be an issue Remuneration for cash crops is almost always given to the patroline to the men who own the land however Study after study has shown that approximately 95% of a woman's earnings is going to go to her family While only 40 to 60 percent of a man's earnings will go to his family Furthermore, we know that the greatest poverty that women face is Actually time poverty And this plays into food security women are expected to process and cook food find fuel and potable water All on top of their other responsibilities for children and agricultural work Making them starved for time to do any of the three tasks very well Furthermore two-thirds of all malnourished children in the world are female children and 70% of the world's hungry are female in many societies Patrilineal societies women and girls are expected to eat last because of the devaluation of female life and In many agricultural societies it is women who are responsible to see that women and children do not starve Men may actually find it deeply culturally shameful to help their wives And so do not assist them those study after study has shown that men who help their wives in agricultural societies Have significantly larger harvests than men who do not help their wives So if you look at this this interlocking set of empirics I think what we need to ask is might inequitable treatment of women make famine and Malnutrition more likely for the country will the country be less food secure? Women are subordinated in this fashion and the answer is clearly. Yes Let's take a look at economic prosperity in women Okay, the World Bank has done a series of studies using their measure that they call the gender gap so the bigger the gender gap the The bigger the distance if you will between the situation and status of men versus the situation and status of women The World Bank has shown that the larger the gender gap The lower the GDP per capita of a nation and the lower the rate of national economic growth All right when you take, you know half of your population That part of your population which is most responsible for the literal future of the country in the form of children and Subordinate that half of the population Burying their talents and their skills you will get this kind of result The World Bank also showed that lower investment in female education is linked to lower national income Furthermore they did a landmark study in which they looked at all World Bank projects over a 10-year period And they categorized them as to whether they had an explicit Component that addressed women in development versus those that did not and they found that those of their own Programs that had a component addressed towards women were much more successful in hitting their outcome benchmarks than programs that were not Lastly just last year McKinsey and company the business consultants Ran an interesting simulation I'll quote them here. They ran a full potential scenario in which women participate in the economy identically to men right if You redo the figures of the world economy and have women participate identically with men that adds $28 trillion or 26% to annual global GDP by 2025 compared with a business as usual model what we have today This impact is roughly equivalent to the size of the combined Chinese and US economies today They also analyzed an alternative best in region simulation in which all Countries in the region would match the progress made by the best performing Nation in the region in terms of gender parity that would add at least 12 trillion dollars In annual 2025 GDP Equivalent in size to the current GDP of Germany Japan and the United Kingdom combined So here again I think we would ask ourselves might inequitable treatment of women make poverty and lower rates of economic growth more likely for the country and the answer I think is yes Now the issue of the linkages between health and women have been established going back to the 1940s 1950s and what's been found are things that I think you would find intuitive Again using the gender gap that is the gap between the lives of men and women as the the benchmark The World Health Organization and others have found that the smaller the gender gap That is the more equal women are to men under the law and in practice in society The lower the infant and child mortality rates the lower the level of child malnutrition The lower the share of household income spent on cigarettes and an alcohol when women have a greater say in household spending Conversely or inversely I can never remember which ones those are the larger the gender gap the higher the AIDS rate the higher the infectious disease burden and Interestingly the larger the gender gap the lower the life expectancy not just for women but also for men So think about that. That's kind of interesting. I think what we're saying here might inequitable treatment of women make disease And ill health more likely for a society. Absolutely. Yes. I think we know this now All right, let's look at Let's see here Yeah, state conflict and women and that of course Might be of a special interest to you here at the Naval War College and many of these studies are actually my own study So we'll be talking a little bit more about this in a minute. Go even deeper Empirical studies have shown that the higher the level of violence against women the more likely a nation-state is to be non compliant with international norms and its own treaty obligations Think about why that might be so Think about the idea of the first political order being the sexual political order We'll talk about this more in a moment The higher the level of violence against women the worse a nation-state's relations with its neighbors The larger the gender gap going back to the gender gap the more likely a nation-state is to be involved in inter and Interstate conflict and to use violence first in a conflict Interesting think about that linkage between the patrilineal syndrome the situation of women and then the outcomes in terms of violence and conflict And then let's see the higher the level of violence against women the less peacefully the nation-state will behave in an overall sense in the international system and Of course my earliest work on on women and nations looked at the sex ratios of China and India and that's a case study Those are case studies where we were able to show that culling girls from the birth Population through sex selective abortion as well as still some lingering female infanticide has created a young adult male population that is 15% plus Larger than the female population in these nations and this has led to problems with Great increases in violent crime instability and the potential for regional conflict So we ask again the question might inequitable treatment of women may conflict more likely I think we're beginning to get a corpus of work that says yet. Yes We could also look at another dimension that would be of interest to you governance and women This has not been my work to date, but actually my next book is going to be looking at governance The larger the gender gap the higher the levels of perceived and actual government corruption interesting The smaller the gender gap the greater the level of trust in government and the greater the transparency in government and When the representation of women in decision-making councils such as national legislatures is higher scholars have shown That you get a greater percent of legislation that deals with social welfare issues fighting corruption and Improving legal protections for citizens to get a slightly different legislative outcome when you have more women Furthermore, and this is pretty exciting news that has come out in the last couple of years scholars have shown that when women are represented at peace negotiations Participants are more satisfied with the outcome of the negotiations and as a result the agreement is significantly more durable It lasts significantly longer than peace negotiations where women were not at the table So once again, we might ask might inequitable treatment of women make poor governance more likely. That's an interesting question Now demographics and women well, that's kind of a duh, right? How do you even have demographics unless we're prepared to talk about sex at least still currently in the year 2016? What decades of study have shown is that when marriage is highly inequitable between men and women Where women do not have even any rights to say no to sex within a marriage or Access family planning methods what you find is unsustainably high levels of population growth and Surely in your national security classes you have found that Youth bulges and high fertility rates are an indicator of future instability down the line But what we also have found right if you take a look at the more developed countries when society makes it economically irrational for women to have children by Actually punishing mothers in the workplace as we've seen in nations such as Japan. What will the result be? Sub replacement birth rates. Do you think the Japanese view sub replacement birth rates as a security issue? Yes, yes, they do but unless you're prepared to talk about male-female relations. You can't tackle this problem and lastly We've talked a little bit already about abnormal sex ratios But what we find is that when women are devalued as we saw in that syndrome All right, you're gonna get distortions in the sex ratio in many cases and Something I think should have made the front page of the New York Times, but never did Was that the overall global sex ratio of our planet is now? 101.4 men for every 100 women In natural circumstances That number should be 98 men per 100 women because women live longer than men So all of us are fond of saying that women are half of humanity and women hold up half the sky But do you know that's no longer true? And that's not because of some natural disaster or some plague This is entirely a man-made phenomenon That women are now a minority on the planet so My inequitable treatment of women make demographic problems more likely. Oh, yes, absolutely All of this research has led me to believe that women are not the canary now Let me back up and tell you what that means Oftentimes I'll meet people and then and they'll say to me professor Hudson and professor Hudson Don't you understand that women are the canary in the coal mine? So when you have problems with democratization or when you have problems with resource scarcity Women are gonna be affected by all of that Right, so they're the canaries that chirp and then keel over dead right as the society struggles with these other bigger issues I'm sorry after after decades now of research My dear young people and esteemed guests Women are not the canary in the coal mine The first political order of male-female relations within the society is the coal mine The canaries that sing and then keel over our poverty malnutrition ill health explosive violence and all the other problems that we've talked about poor governance Etc. Etc This is the conceptual difference that is wrought by seeing women Or as secretary of state Hillary Clinton put it in 2012 The subjugation of women is a threat to the common security of our world and to the national security of our country Okay, and I hope at least now in the presentation by the time we've gotten through all these empirical studies You can begin to see why someone would say that right the roots of a lot of those problems of instability and insecurity are Found in that first political order between men and women Now I don't want to say that everything is bad because it clearly is not Okay, if we look at global gender trends, if you will from 2000 to the present Let's accentuate some of the positive and let's acknowledge it. Okay. First of all a huge significant reduction in maternal mortality Since 2000 overall with a few pockets of that are problematic. There's been a 45 percent Reduction in maternal mortality rates. That's Outstanding and it goes to show that these problems are not Expensive to rectify if they were we would not have seen a 45 percent reduction All right, but concerted effort in the addition of sufficient capital Which was not a huge amount of capital has resulted in this amazing and positive trend Secondly another amazing and positive trend that the planet should be patting its back itself on the back for All right is we now have virtual parity in primary school enrollment Between boys and girls. Okay, we still have a few problematic Pockets, but overall right we have 97 girls per 100 boys enrolled in primary school around the world And that's really terrific and part of that is due I think to the Millennium Development Goals Emphasis on just that benchmark Now of course many of you Have have been in a military bureaucracy or a government bureaucracy for a long time And so you probably have some questions going through your head after years of living in this system Which is tell me more about that benchmark how many of those girls actually finish Primary school and there I've got to tell you the figure doesn't look quite as good Okay, we have some countries in which only 30 percent of girls who start primary school finish primary school The enrollment rates are virtually one-to-one, but the completion rates are not quite there yet We also have seen a significant increase in the representation of women in national legislature since the year 2000 again overall we have some areas where no movement has been made at all But overall there's been some real progress so These days about 22.6 percent of members of national legislatures are now women In the Nordic countries we see an overall average of 41.1 percent For comparison back at the turn of the century It's odd to think of it that way but back at the turn of the century the corresponding global figure was only 13.1 percent so we've seen some real progress there But of course I think the women in the audience would probably say let's see We're just slightly less than half of the population and 22 percent of national legislatures as leaders are women I was still a long way to go Now in addition to these really positive trends though I started my lecture by talking to you about some of the troubling trends that I see Let me just take one as a for instance I told you I studied the sex ratios of China and India well, you know back when I first started studying all of this in 1990 there were five count them five nations that had abnormal birth sex ratios. Do you know how many we have now? 19 Listen, this is what 25 26 years later and instead of there being only five we now have 19 Shouldn't we have been making progress and not regress Okay, where is this coming from? Okay, and of course I would answer you it's coming from the resurgence of patrilineality as an alternative security system to the state That's exactly what's happening because if you look at the list by and large many of them are many as a by John Kosovo Montenegro, South Sudan and others are facing real Problems of weak or failed states and so people are returning to patrilineality to secure their group and You see a corresponding devaluation in the lives of women Anna Karen and I I'm not sure where Anna Karen is. There she is We were just talking at the reception about how there's even sex ratio problems in places where you would never imagine that there would be sex ratio problems You know as some as an American woman who studies gender issues We've always looked to Sweden as kind of a paradise for women But just at the end of this past year I ran the census and immigration numbers for Sweden and among older teens Sweden now has a ratio of 123 boys for every 100 girls that is significantly worse than China's which only has 117 boys for every 100 girls in that age group Ouch, and so what will that mean for Sweden in terms of stability in terms of security that's something to think about because you know what we find in the research is that sex ratio alterations have implications for things that you would recognize as being some sources of insecurity crime rates and political protest rates marriage market obstruction Okay, you begin to see surging bride prices in areas where there's a scarcity of females In fact a young scholar at the National Defense University and I are writing a paper on Bride price escalation and conflict So for example, I don't know if you know this but Boko Haram when it kidnaps girls Right will usually throw money as they leave. That's the bride price Okay, the idea is that if you join Boko Haram That bride price that you can't afford because you're a poor young man in northern Nigeria Which is very poor. You don't have to worry about bride price Boko Haram is going to pay your buy price and you will have a bride We see this in South Sudan where an escalation in bride price has led to Open warfare between clans and we see it in a number of other areas as well Let me tell you one of the things that just really blew my mind. Some of you may remember the Mumbai attack by Lashari Talib and Only one of the attackers survived right so they debrief him before they execute him and They asked him why did you join this group and he said my father asked me to join Because if I did join I would make enough money to pay for the bride price slash Dower of myself and my brothers. That's why I joined So this linkage here between marriage market obstruction Right and bride prices leading to easier rebel recruitment is something that I don't think is yet on the radar screen You know of those who are tasked with looking at security and stability threats in the region We also see ramifications such as increased crime against women including trafficking and forced prostitution We also see mobility restriction for women in societies that have significantly more young males and young females HIV and STD spread increased logarithmically when you get these types of sex ratio alterations and Right, perhaps even an altered calculus of deterrence Due to altered perceptions of the cost of attrition warfare Okay, the United States is not interested in attrition warfare But there are some societies that have 15 20 percent surpluses of young men Who might not feel the same way about attrition warfare as their neighbors might and that's something to look at Is there another trend other trends that we should be worried about and one of those I think is is Patrilineality resurging and I think it certainly is in some areas of the world the two areas that I would point to as the most Troubling for me are the post-Arab uprising nations that we've talked about as well as Central Asia and the Caucasus right where we see this this syndrome of patrilineality Lineality resurging and causing not just problems for stability and security in the nation But also of course many many problems for women as well We also see Realization of formally illegal practices. We now have more states that where polygyny is legal in 2016 Then we did in 1990 again. This is one of those stunning statistics that people You know don't even look at as being an issue when we talk about security and stability of the state and the nation We also see for example with ISIS a renewed religious sanction of crime such as rape or child marriage And and this of course again is stunning and swift regress What seems not to be changing right are overall fairly high levels of violence against women worldwide Right in times of war in times of peace Even the most peaceful of nations again Anna Karen not to pick on Sweden But even in Sweden one in five women have faced Domestic abuse physical assault or sexual assault in their lifetime That's the best that the human species appears able to do at this current time period But overall let me tell you the the rates are far far higher in a survey done by DHS a few years ago in Afghanistan 87% of women said that they had faced domestic abuse in the form of physical or sexual assault 87% you know That's an important consistent trend that we see the other consistent trend that we see is Continuing inequitable family and personal status law for males whether we're talking about property rights rights and marriage or Treating women as legal minors This is if you will the legal cage right that keeps women subordinated to the patriline And that's I think a very important thing to examine all right, so Questions to ask as we look forward to the next couple of days Well, some of the questions that I certainly have in my mind that first of all would be You know what are going to be the state regional and international effects of the increased culling of females from the birth population? I'd like to know that what's going to happen in the caucuses All right in other areas where this is resurging But I think Less specifically, let's ask some big questions also Where is patrilineality resurging and why and Does this relate to why women's progress is the first thing to be swept away when dramatic political change occurs? And what does that mean for American intervention? That's an important question If you ask the women of Iraq if they are safer now, then they were under Saddam Hussein What do you think they would say? They would say that they have lost a hundred years of progress for women because of the American invasion Is that something that we're prepared to take responsibility for is that something that we're prepared to think of? the next time that we're contemplating an intervention and Then secondly another big question for me is what are the mechanisms that allow progress and regress for women to proceed simultaneously? We have these stunning history-making reductions in maternal mortality increases in primary school enrollment increases in women's participation in the Legislatures at the same time we see stunning regress for women in other areas. How can this be? That's a big question. I hope we'll tackle So Given the many dimensions along which women's insecurity Ties in with state security. Does women's insecurity undermine state security? I hope at this point. You are with me and saying. Oh, yes. Yes, it does absolutely now If you're with me on this, I want you to consider something That means my dear young people and esteemed guests that a truly Realist foreign policy a truly Realist security policy is one that regards the empowerment of women as a core goal Okay, oftentimes I hear oh professor Hudson Yeah, it'd be nice to empower women, but are you being realist about this? Is this a real politic? security policy Yes Yes, it is. I think it's impossible to blind our eyes and not see the linkages that we've talked about tonight Between what's going on with women and what's going on with the nation state? Now I want you to know that I'm not naive Right what I've given you tonight is women in foreign policy 101 but it's not that simple and I found out just how not simple it is by writing a book called the Hillary doctrine sex and American foreign policy if there was any US Secretary of State that was more willing to view the empowerment of women as a core objective of foreign policy it was Hillary Rodham Clinton absolutely and She has a very high energy level and so do her staff and so they did an Amazing number of programs initiatives plans. You name it during those four years while she was secretary of state So how did that all work out? Well, let me just suggest to you That there were problems and again Many of you have worked in the military I think you can imagine what some of the problems might be there were moral and there were bureaucratic Quandries, let me mention just a few as I reach the conclusion of my talk Number one One of the things that we found out during those four years when she was secretary of state is that the absence of good Alternatives to those in power leads to conspicuous silences about women's oppression So Clinton was taken to task for not speaking up in behalf of Saudi women They attempted to drive and other sorts of things But you know, she rightly calculated that those who were waiting in the wings to take over from the Saudi Royal family Would be a thousand times worse for women So she found herself not saying anything for what the alternatives would be But there's more layers than that The Saudi Royal family helped fund Wahhabi missionaries that go out into all the world and preach a very hard-lying female subordination interpretation of Islam and so we find now in places like Indonesia and even in former Soviet Republics like Uzbekistan where We might say that women, you know had You know, we're living on there's a milder Interpretation of what their status and rights were now it's reverting. It's referring to the Wahhabi standard And so even as she was silent because she didn't you see any other good alternatives, right? That also allowed this kind of interpretation of Islam to spread even more widely Than it had before lots of moral quandaries here Another moral quandary is that they found out very early that open support by the United States or other third-party Governments for women's groups could lead to those groups being jailed threatened or even killed and So a lot of times they couldn't stand up and say oh we support this particular group who's fighting for women's rights in This country because I would have been a death sentence for those women All right, so it was a very uneasy game to try to support them without being vocal about it We've already talked about the fact that American military intervention has not even been a double-edged sword for women. Can I put it bluntly? It's been a single-edged sword for women in many cases and this is very troubling Especially to to Clinton who of course advocated some of these interventions All right, many people say, you know Libya was her greatest failure and they think about Benghazi I when I look at Libya, I look at the women of Libya I look at all of the human rights activists the female human rights activists who have been gunned down in their homes as a result of Our R2P action in Libya. All right, and that's very troubling Of course, the other moral quandary is that you know America is not Sweden We have not and probably will never ratify CEDA Furthermore, I think we're now only one of two countries that has no paid maternity leave although I expect if we get a president Clinton that will be the honeymoon issue mark my words and Only 20% of our next national legislature is female and we have significant Hide levels of violence against women in our country. So we're out there as the beacon of light on the empowerment of women It's a little bit of a shall we say oxymoronic stance there All right a few other things and some of you in bureaucracy will recognize these gender became a pet rock during those four years Everybody had to include women in their speeches But when push came to shove and resources had to be committed or will had to be mustered It wasn't there. All right. This was a rhetorical move more than it was a move by anyone else outside of the the State Department in fact, oh, we have this wonderful quote from that time period from an unnamed National Security Council met member who said Women were a pet rock who were weighing down our rucksack in Afghanistan. They had to be left by the side of the road Women are a pet rock. Yeah easily dispensable There all of you know, I think or you will know if you don't know that in a large organization Measurable benchmarks are where the action really is. So if you don't have hard targets per se Percentage of women represented at peace negotiations. You're gonna wind up with no women at your peace negotiation And this was made abundantly clear when John Kerry who took over after Secretary Clinton, of course Attempted to put together Syrian peace negotiations There were no hard targets Not even for who the Syrian representatives brought. There were no hard targets for who the Americans brought There were no women at all at the beginning of these peace negotiations Until open letters were published online Sort of, you know shaming John Kerry for not including them. All right, so unless you have the hard targets It's not gonna happen. And lastly Implementers on the ground undermined the policy by their behavior and here I'm not talking about the military so much as I'm talking about development Subcontractors the way development works in our country is there are very big professional development organizations most of whom have headquarters around the Beltway They are the ones who bid for the big USA ID projects and then they hire Subcontractors who hire sub subcontractors who are actually going to go in the field and implement these programs But most of these sub subcontractors do not come from countries where women are considered the equal of men And so you have we have in our book the Hilary doctrine instances of men who are supposed to be implementing Gender development projects who not only boast about visiting brothels. They run brothels in the nation where They're Implementing USA ID gender programming is all this against the law. Oh, you bet Who's out there on the field checking to see whether this is happening some big issues there big issues. All right So I'd like to ask some questions and then end What does a state foreign policy that takes women seriously actually look like? That's a big question For example, just to take an example. What is US responsibility toward the women of Afghanistan at this point in time? Many of you are familiar with just war theory, you know all about you said belem and use in bello Let's talk about use X bello. How do you get out of a conflict without destroying the future of the women of Afghanistan? How is that going to be done? We need to start thinking about that Another one that I think we will be talking about what difference has 15 plus years of UN Security Council resolution 1325 and five plus years of national action plans on women peace and security actually made All right, what differences can we point to? that that You know justify our regard and our admiration for these instruments What has worked what have been the unintentional consequences? What's failed? It's time for a report card How can states learn from each other's experiences? I am so happy to see that we're gonna have some panels where countries can learn from Australia and other countries about how to implement 1325 and then I think given the kind of change that we're seeing here in the United States certainly We need to be asking ourselves What recommendation would we give the next generation of national leaders in terms of women peace and security? What would be on their to-do list in other words? How do you actually do this? I've given everything that we know All right about food security demographic security governance conflict all these linkages to what's happening with women How do we make this happen? So the discussion we'll have over the next two days is therefore not only timely, but it's extremely important Particularly for you all right who are tasked with ensuring our nation's security, and I'm really excited to get started So and just so you know if you ever need data on women You can come to my database the women's stats project We have over two hundred thousand data points for a hundred and seventy six countries for three hundred and fifty variables for twenty Two years now So if you need it, we've got it. Thank you very much again for the chance to speak to you I'm happy to take any questions you might have And I'm told you're supposed to hold down the Plus Thanks, Dr. Hudson Lieutenant Carl Steve Kessner Army Reserve and the fortunate husband of Kyrgyz Rito Salami Kessner of Helsinki Finland and Finland is probably the most equitable nation on earth. We met in women's salaries one of the least corrupt nations on earth and Probably arguably the best education system on earth. No offense Sweden and I was just gonna say are you to cheat you and Anna Karen gonna go outside afterward and duke this one out or And the finished language has one pronoun for he and she hand And conversely next door Russia, for instance, I'll just use their word to be married as a museum behind the man and Najena on the woman for the male to be married I was wondering how important language is in all of this and if language changes and becomes more derogatory In those places where things are changing That's a very provocative question I am so glad that you asked that but I'm not a linguist I will tell you that but I can also tell you that Russia comes out very very poorly On on the list of that syndrome, although they're not the worst in the world. They're you know, certainly There's a great streak of patrilineality that runs through Russian culture that you cannot ignore And I think you're right these linguistic traces are all over the place Similarly if we looked even at things such as patrilocal marriage there's still a lot of patrilocal marriage in rural Russia and Land is not being passed down to female descendants. It's staying in the hands of male descendants So I do think that you're you're right that in a sense language is Representing how we view that first political order between men and women and and so I do agree That that I mean even in the United States, you know in the past a man would take a wife a Woman would be given in marriage All right now we've changed those words and we've thereby I think changed our understanding of marriage as being an equal partnership as being companion at marriage is is not being chattel versus master Women have changed the way that they they address themselves My great act would be furious if I mean she was a widow for many years But if I put Mrs. Jane Hudson, she'd be furious at me She was Mrs. Howard Hudson, right? But women don't do that anymore. So I do think you're right There's language and and this political order goes together Which one precedes the other whether one is causative or not? I'm not sure but certainly it's it's going to determine how we think about these things even on a subconscious level Well said great question Thank you so much. I'm coming from eight years from USAID senior advisor. I did business in brothels We did do some work with prostitutes. We did some work with violence against women in some of the more difficult areas I think the concern I have as a cultural anthropologist This was part of the work that I was doing in the agency was looking at how are we using definitions? And how are we using these categories right and talking about Matt Patrick Millennial as a encompassing category But also trying to think through and this is what we were looking at is not just looking at where the stats are Where they're coming from but also what are the other stats that are taking place in terms of actual reform within These organizations and within these countries themselves within these cultures the Islamist reform reformation within Islam For example and how that is really not part of anybody's on anybody's radar period much less on the radar of people They're collecting these statistics and trying to put them forward So part of the conversation we've been we had for many years And this is you know directly at Department of State with the Secretary and all of the advisors would sit together and just try To hash out how do you even take seed out Through a conversation that we are so embarrassingly behind on but how do you even talk about women's rights from within the context of those cultures? And how we do we not use those words? I mean language is huge We weren't using democracy in many many places because the women would say as soon as you say democracy You're labeling us to death forget about women's rights. It's not even democracy We had to come up with very and it was part of the conversation was being creative with the language and being creative To the extent that we were using the language itself of the people themselves rather than I had a hard time Translate translating the word entrepreneurship People thought that's something scary. We had religious leaders telling us we can't do entrepreneurship against religion So we had to think about okay How do we because it was innovative and innovation in religion is you know prohibited? So we had to think about another way to say that so when we started to do that That's when the interesting little nuggets come out because then you realize actually that Imam in Torah Bora Vanessa that I met with the mullah. He was looking at domestic violence in a way that we were looking at through our training But he had no idea that that connection was there until we started to talk his language I'm concerned about how much of that we're doing Whether it's you know through your work or others and how much we were in exactly what you said Which is right on point which is how much of our implementing partners first of all We're aware that needed to happen and knew how to do it This was the big thing for us was we were realizing capacity as you start to go further down But also if you go up we've got mission mission heads at us eight and then posted Ambassadors and so on so forth not having a clue on how to do it. How do we build that capacity? And it's not just the awareness and I realized without one without the other was not getting us anywhere It was just you know starting to tooth some horn somebody's horn wasn't even our own and trying to get someone to do something So I wonder from your perspective too is how much of do you see that as being part of? Existing conversation in terms of getting from people's perspective themselves people's cultures people's own abilities How do we do that? How do we get to that story and get people to understand that that story sometimes far more exciting and You know and and also sustaining And some of the things that we try to implement as imposed because those reforms that are happening are going somewhere And just the final point. I was thinking about what you were talking about the secretary when the personal law came out in in Afghanistan It's called the Shia law where it was about women and and rape within marriage We she did she did say something and what she said was actually Problematic because what she said and what all of us said because we believe it was rape within marriage should not be allowed It should not be registered Regist Legislated but then when I started to talk to the Afghan women They said please stop talking about this because at least this law as harmful as it is Let's us get out of our house and have a transportation. It lets us have You know be able to get around because that was part of the law But for them that was more important than sex or rape and marriage and we don't always have that Balance of you know, what do they actually want as opposed to what do we think is so so critical? I'm hoping that's something that you're looking at through your through the project But also how do we implement that whether it's here in the in the war college or other sorts of institutions that are hopefully Hopefully getting further as a as Admiral was saying beyond just the academic and really getting into implementation mode So if you have advice on that For either people that are in the agency or now that we've left and trying to go from the outside in I think that would be great too. Thank you. Oh What a rich comment and and please don't be asking me for advice Really because it sounds to me on the basis of what you've been talking about is that you have some of the experience And we should be asking you for advice I will simply say a few words because I'm up here, you know, and I have to say something But let me tell you That you are absolutely right religious leaders are an overlooked profound force for women for either good or bad and And and we you know in the West because we're more secular societies We treat religious leaders as either non-entities or as problematic persons, right that have to be outmaneuvered But I think you're absolutely right that the work that's being done by by those who are reinterpreting scriptures to be you know to have a more equitable view of men and women Those people deserve Nobel Peace Prizes for the work that they're doing absolutely I do know that US IP has been very involved in looking at women and religion and so I know that there's been some initial Efforts, I think the book by Jimmy Carter that came out that pointed directly at religious leaders and said when was the last time He told your parishioners they couldn't beat their wife Right, that's pretty simple when was the last time that you did it when was the last time that you stood up for women That's crucially important It's also true and I talk about this in the last part of the book sex and world peace Which you might want to look at is that truly lasting change only comes from within the society There's no other way you can't impose it and yet every time you ask women's groups You know do you want us to stay out? They say no we need your support Right, so there is I think this creative tension, which is they feel they need our support And I think there's a number of dimensions of that security Resources legitimacy. There's a whole bunch of things going on in that statement of need But then the tricky part right foreign policy women in foreign policy 401 is how do you provide that support in a way that can be appreciated by those who are receiving it and and and and not the opposite, right? How many ham-handed gender programs have been imposed on people And and nothing came of it or or even bad things came from it So you're right and that and I think again I almost feel like I want to write a book on USAID because How that chain goes from really nice ideas in Washington down to what's happening in a slum outside Kandahar There's a big disconnect There's a huge disconnect and I agree with you that I don't think the people on the ground are necessarily the right people For doing the types of culturally sensitive interventions that you're talking about so you're right That's exactly what has to be addressed and I can't solve it today And you can either but it seems like we have some good ideas and we could perhaps develop an agenda around those very issues Thank you very much So yes Yes, ma'am. My name is Deborah More. I'm a spouse of a student here at the Naval War College. Nice to meet you and one of the things I was taking away from your talk is Even another Denominator and that is the value of life and I think when you have a culture that values life You're going to value the vessel that carries that light and the safety of that person If you look at a culture of death or you value death Then the vessel doesn't mean quite as much. I Think that's a very profound comment and I will tell you that I'm I was Absolutely in favor for DoD opening MOS's to women who were equally qualified as men, but I feel very troubled about The initiative by actually certain Republicans in Congress Republicans who have had political platforms about valuing life Who would now like to draft women and you know, there's a part of me that says well Yes, women could be drafted to and then there's a part of me that says wait a minute Doesn't that mean that we've kind of completely overlooked what women do to provide a future for our country? I Mean think of all of the many monuments that you've seen to generals and soldiers who have given their life in battle Right that there might be a future for our country. Can you think of one monument anywhere? To the best number of women who've died in childbirth in this country. Can you think of even one? Certainly, they have spilled their blood as well One of them was a good friend of mine a young 26 year old woman mother of two giving birth to a third child Hemorrhage to death in the hospital blood everywhere Gave her life That a new citizen of the United States might be born So there's a part of me that says we must really not see women at all Or give any value to what women do to be able to say. Oh, yeah draft women, too All right, so that they have kind of a dual responsibility instead of Don't get me started on that. I'm sure we could have some politically incorrect discussions As a follow-up on the healthcare professional in the United States the number one cause of death for a pregnant woman is homicide Well, there you go And I believe don't we rank something like 28th in the world on maternal mortality? Yeah, we're dropping. We're not rising in terms of maternal mortality Okay, anybody else got anything to say Yes, sir Thank you I'm so sorry, could you speak just a little bit louder? I'm having trouble hearing you for some reason. Okay. Yes. There you go We all know that we didn't have to take a lot of immigrants the last year and I know Understand the problem you're talking about our boys Girls and like that But it was so much people who needed immediately help and I don't think the politician or the immigrants In Sweden thought about to counting the girls all the boys because everyone needed the help To get shelter and food and like that and I think the problem is down in Syria and like that we have to Think about the problem, and I think that's a worldwide problem By the way, I can say I'm half Finnish So it was just a thought oh Absolutely, it's just that there are other nations who said things like Canada Canada will only accept families That are coming from refugee camps that have been referred by UNHCR So they don't have a sex ratio issue at all with accepting refugees So it's and then there are other little things that I found out I now know more about Swedish immigration policy than I ever wanted to know But for example There used to be a medical test to try to decide whether someone was under 18 or over 18 and in recent years the doctors have said we won't perform those tests anymore and That's why you get this huge bolt right of people who are coming in claiming to be 16 or 17 And so I believe those medical tests have now been reinstituted as a result. So, you know, I think Sweden Sweden's heart I think was absolutely in the right place, but now you see the sex ratio issue you see Refugees being housed in cruise ships docked in bays You see Anna Karen was telling me now a tent city as Winter approach, I think a nation has to look at its capacity Right to to help refugees in the United States We have a saying that you you shouldn't run faster than you have strength And so I think an assessment of strength as well as an assessment of how much you want to help people goes hand-in-hand I know that there are parties in Sweden now that are calling for what they call a gender-aware immigration policy that would prohibit these kinds of Huge alterations in the sex ratio from taking place in the future and I think that's really good I think the Swedes have the ability to see this problem and do something good about it I see the only thing that bothers me is why the nation I viewed as the Paradise for women didn't sort of see what was going to happen in the first place But I think everyone was overwhelmed by the scope of the tragedy just exactly as you've said That would be you sir. I don't speak for the US Army or anything like that. I build small medical teams for special operations Preface my question by saying It's an asking advice to you for senior leaders Okay 2008 my daughter was a 2008 Boy Scout of the Year for Hawaii Okay, I firmly believe that girls can do it just as well as men What I have seen as I'm building these small medical teams that work in austere locations is Sometimes the females use it to their advantage that they're females I'm not going to use the political reference to a female card or anything like that Okay, if you were giving advice to a senior leader for how to prep the battlefield I've got my teams in the room. I'm talking to them collectively or individually how to prep them and say hey this is what the expectations are and You know work together as a team. What would you say? well once again, I feel you know since I've never had command of Military forces, I feel a little inadequate, but I am someone who's research women I am the mother of five sons and three daughters and I I do have feelings that one can create a culture In which your team Feels that they are to work together as brothers and sisters I've seen that kind of culture created by military leaders where it's based on respect And and that means That you can't play games with With some of the tropes in our society you can't play the woman card You can't play the man card that you must work together as brothers and sisters I Know that a commander can do this because I have seen people create that kind of culture I have I know it's real as To what specifically you would say I think it would depend on the circumstances, but I do know that that Even though men and women's bodies are different. I know that that women have incredible endurance Do you see all those things I put up there in my presentation? Women have incredible endurance think of what the life of an average woman in rural Afghanistan is like She has incredible endurance incredible stamina Incredible strength it may not be strength of the upper body, but there's an incredible strength there so perhaps we should re-see In a sense how how strong and capable women are but that's got to start with your Vision of seeing who they really are If you throw away some of these gender stereotypes about the weak and incapable and emotional woman I always say to My students I say isn't it funny that that women are viewed as the more emotional sex All right, let's look at homicide rates All right, who kills who? Men kill and men kill a lot of men and they kill women, too Let's look at road rage incidents. What percentage of road rage incidents are perpetrated by men, right? so Re-seeing some of these gender tropes using I think statistics Comparisons and so forth to cause them to put a new set of glasses on About who they are and how they can relate to one another the most important thing that you can do is To believe that there can be an environment Where men and women can work together as partners who respect each other equally and If you believe in that you can create it I have no doubt and I have a feeling you will