Gender or Power?: Understanding of Gender Beyond Binary
By Marina Kumskova, M.A. in Human Rights and a member of the Center for Progressive Security
There is a lot of terminology when it comes to the question of gender analysis. Generally, gender experts talk about sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression; often, many professionals use the word gender as an overarching concept. However, I would claim that depending on different terminology used in a given context, the work that you do is very much different.
In the world where the number of gender analysis toolkits is expeditiously growing, it is important to navigate the terminology and concepts, which will help you with a specific problem or a question.
In my understanding, criminal justice and security professionals should look at “gender” as a concept of power and at gender analysis as a way to understand and address power relations through the reform of criminal justice and governance system (i.e.: legal frameworks, law enforcement (traditional and non-traditional), justice mechanisms).
Essentially, gender is about power.
Adhering to the power argument from the recent Comments to the Draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention by MADRE, I would support the argument that gender is an evolving social and ideological construct that justifies inequality and provides a means to categorize, order and symbolize power relations. As such, gender has historically resulted in a hierarchical distribution of power and rights.
Therefore, gender analysis is also about understanding and addressing the question of power to advance equality and non-discrimination.
Gender analysis is a tool for identifying and documenting differences in power, roles, resources, norms, needs and interests of individuals in a community or group and analyzing the impact of these differences on the safety and security of the community at large.
