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How Women impact peace and security

How Women impact peace and security

Mothers are the centre of most households. The teachers, the nurturers, the peacemakers, the planners, the givers and the managers of the minutiae

One of the most fascinating things about the way men and women typically manage, lead, and make decisions, is the impact of their world view orientation - in this case their household world view. How mothers run households is a microcosm example of how they typically function in the broader world as leaders and workers.  

One of my absolute favourite community examples, albeit somewhat extreme for most of us girls as a working opp, are the women of Akashinga in Africa. This community driven model  trains disadvantaged women - in all female teams - to manage an entire nature reserve. Since the women have become involved in poacher management, the results have been transformational - for the women themselves, their community and the animals they seek to protect. 

Perhaps the biggest impact of putting women into these roles is that because women are less combative than their previous male counterparts, with more of a community driven interpersonal focus, the role of the anti-poachers has changed to more of a pro-animals standing. The women are trained as both rangers and biodiversity managers, allowing them to protect the reserves that were previously financed by trophy hunting, from a more constructive and peaceful orientation. (Interestingly, most of the women are vegans.)

Many of the women are single mothers, bringing up kids alone, so the opportunity to work with the team is extremely important - both for personal strength and paid work. One of the interesting insights of the team has been that women invest up to 3 times more of their salary than a male into their family. This means that 3/4 of the operational cost of running the reserve actually now go back into the community. 

Global peace and security

Taking this logic model to a global stage, there is also substantial evidence - and I say evidence because that's pretty much all we've got - that women are way more effective than men with peace and security. Where women are meaningfully involved in peacekeeping efforts, they are 65% more likely to succeed. Humanitarian assistance after disasters is more effective and peace agreements more likely to last longer where women are involved.

And yet, despite all the proof of the likelihood of far better outcomes, disaster management and peace keeping efforts are 98.5 percent run by men. Only 1.5 percent of peace agreements involve women. Coupled with the fact that only 7 percent of world leaders are women, many of us are wishing there was just a tad more representation right now on the world stage.


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