Even today, young women scholars do not receive sufficient encouragement to enter the field.
This article is part of the series — Catalysing Change: Women-led Development in the Decade of Action.
I have been in the think-tank world almost a quarter century, in the international relations (IR) and security studies disciplines. In this time, the situation for women in this field has improved in some respects but significant barriers remain. On the positive side, I have seen a big increase in the number of women entering the field of IR and security studies. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. There is still a big gap that needs to be filled when it comes to women scholars and analysts in IR and security studies.
The numbers are more promising today than they were two decades ago, but the numbers begin to go down rapidly as we climb higher in the hierarchy in these fields. The increase in the number of women is unfortunately not reflected in leadership and managerial roles in think tanks or in government bureaucracies. This is the case also if one were to look at senior executive positions or mentoring and supervisory roles in these institutions. So, even as density of women has become thicker, their career progression to senior and managerial positions remains an issue. Of course, this is partly a reflection of legacy issues: It will take some time for the growth in the numbers at the lower levels to make its way to higher levels. But this is only part of the reason.
Even today, young women scholars do not receive sufficient encouragement to enter the field. To speak of my own experience, for about a decade after I started, I worked on foreign policy issues, not on security studies. In some way, I think I had unconsciously accepted the social conditioning as natural — that I could not do hardcore security studies because women were not suited to these fields; that these were naturally male fields of study. But as I grew a bit older, I started to question this dominance and my own reluctance.
Whether in IR or security studies (and other fields too, of course), my experience has been what most women scholars have experienced. For instance, if I wanted to intervene during a discussion, first, one is ignored. Even if I spoke — and I was usually not easily discouraged — I would find that the Chair or others would credit a male colleague who had made the same points instead of me. I initially thought I was being over-sensitive — until I learned that this was the experience shared by most women in such settings! This was more than just an irritant in meetings because it did have professional consequences. Dr. Patricia Mary Lewis, a friend and a mentor, once told me that she had, for a few years, made it a point to refer to women who intervene during professional meetings. This is a useful tactic in highlighting women’s voices generally, but especially within security studies. However, this is yet to become the norm.
The professional consequences are that women scholars are often not considered seriously for even research openings. After I joined ORF and wrote my first book on Chinese military strategy, the head of another think tank to whom I had applied unsuccessfully for a research position told me he did not realise I could work on security studies. Somehow, he made it sound as if I was at fault, though the project proposal I had made to him was also related to IR and security studies. Despite his undoubted intelligence and broad-mindedness and cosmopolitanism, he had pigeon-holed me based on gender.
But if he was unconsciously reflecting gender biases, there were others who had little compunction about deliberately seeking to undermine women scholars. One told me that he had told the organisers of a conference not to invite me, despite the fact that it was an area I had worked on for years and was fairly well-established. He told me later that he was only joking. Maybe he was, but his point was made: I should not be working in such a field.
These problems are neither just Indian nor even so obvious. To give another example, something that often gets overlooked: Prof. David Lake, professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, a very well-known scholar and former president of International Studies Association, was asked about reference bias in IR and security studies. His response was that it was almost impossible to keep up with and read every new publication that comes out even within one’s narrow research field. He added that he is inclined to go with those that have been written by people he knew or was familiar with. He said, “For a book or article to get onto one of my reference lists, I’ve usually had to absorb the work in some deep way — and this takes time. Personal connections lead to deeper readings, which lead to more citations and, likely, more personal connections.” Even scholarly references and footnotes are based on visibility and personal networks, no easy matter for women in a field so dominated by men. This is particularly problematic because citations matter in academics.
Thankfully, while the general climate has been less than welcoming for women in the field, I have also had the privilege being mentored and supported by other men such as Brajesh Mishra, R.K. Mishra, Gen. V.P. Malik and Dr. C. Raja Mohan. And under Sunjoy Joshi and Samir Saran, ORF remains an organisation that strongly values gender balance, diversity, and inclusion. But the fact that it takes such levels of support to foster women scholars suggests how far we still have to traverse before there is even standing for women in the field.
The UN in 2000 passed Resolution 1325 to strengthen the role of women in decision-making processes at the national, regional and international levels and to expand the role of women field operations to place women among military observers, civilian police and human rights and humanitarian personnel, among other things. But 20 years later, India is yet to create a National Action Plan. Women have made a sizeable contribution to India’s UN Peacekeeping agenda, which is one of the actionable agendas in Resolution 1325, but a National Action Plan is one instrument that could strengthen the role and presence of women in peace and security. Events like International Women’s Day provide an opportunity to highlight and amplify what women have done and what more needs to be done. Though there is some criticism of such events, we need to use every opportunity to highlight what needs to be done.
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Dr Rajeswari (Raji) Pillai Rajagopalan is the Director of the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology (CSST) at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. Dr ...
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