About
170
Publications
133,810
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
5,852
Citations
Introduction
Jacqui True is the director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women. She is a professor of international relations at Monash University (Australia) conducting research into International Relations, Peace and Conflict Processes, Gendered Political Violence and International History and Politics.
Additional affiliations
January 2012 - November 2015
January 2002 - December 2011
January 2000 - December 2001
Publications
Publications (170)
With growing media attention and the increased visibility of female leaders, influencers, and groups within the far right, some analysts argue that the movement presents itself with a `female face,’ incorporating liberal values such as women’s empowerment -a phenomenon often described as paradoxical. This paper investigates the gender dynamics, rol...
Gendered narratives are political narratives that frequently frame decisions to go to war or broker peace. Such geopolitical narratives both enable the protection of women's rights and violate them. Women's rights, specifically, have been used as a rhetorical device by security policymakers to persuade people of the urgency and legitimacy of foreig...
In recent years, feminist scholarship has contributed a gender perspectives to examine extremist narratives, motivations and recruitment, as well as gender-responsive strategies to counter extremism. A systematic framework for analysing how gender operates at multiple levels to promote or counter extremisms, however, does not exist. To address this...
Hidden Wars documents the gendered political violence that is frequently neglected or ignored in conventional analysis of war and conflict, affecting how we understand conflict and which violence we prioritize with implications for postwar peace. Specifically, the book-length study examines the relationship between reports of sexual and gender-base...
Hidden Wars documents the gendered political violence that is frequently neglected or ignored in conventional analysis of war and conflict, affecting how we understand conflict and which violence we prioritize with implications for postwar peace. Specifically, the book-length study examines the relationship between reports of sexual and gender-base...
Hidden Wars documents the gendered political violence that is frequently neglected or ignored in conventional analysis of war and conflict, affecting how we understand conflict and which violence we prioritize with implications for postwar peace. Specifically, the book-length study examines the relationship between reports of sexual and gender-base...
Hidden Wars documents the gendered political violence that is frequently neglected or ignored in conventional analysis of war and conflict, affecting how we understand conflict and which violence we prioritize with implications for postwar peace. Specifically, the book-length study examines the relationship between reports of sexual and gender-base...
Hidden Wars documents the gendered political violence that is frequently neglected or ignored in conventional analysis of war and conflict, affecting how we understand conflict and which violence we prioritize with implications for postwar peace. Specifically, the book-length study examines the relationship between reports of sexual and gender-base...
Hidden Wars documents the gendered political violence that is frequently neglected or ignored in conventional analysis of war and conflict, affecting how we understand conflict and which violence we prioritize with implications for postwar peace. Specifically, the book-length study examines the relationship between reports of sexual and gender-base...
Hidden Wars documents the gendered political violence that is frequently neglected or ignored in conventional analysis of war and conflict, affecting how we understand conflict and which violence we prioritize with implications for postwar peace. Specifically, the book-length study examines the relationship between reports of sexual and gender-base...
Hidden Wars documents the gendered political violence that is frequently neglected or ignored in conventional analysis of war and conflict, affecting how we understand conflict and which violence we prioritize with implications for postwar peace. Specifically, the book-length study examines the relationship between reports of sexual and gender-base...
Hidden Wars documents the gendered political violence that is frequently neglected or ignored in conventional analysis of war and conflict, affecting how we understand conflict and which violence we prioritize with implications for postwar peace. Specifically, the book-length study examines the relationship between reports of sexual and gender-base...
After two decades of effort to embed Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), why and how did the agenda fail to transform patriarchal gendered structures and prevent the regression of women’s rights and security in Afghanistan? To address this question, the paper investigates how the WPS agenda was conceptualized and operationalized in Afghanistan. We ap...
The Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis repositions the subfield of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) to a central analytic location within the study of International Relations (IR). Over the last twenty years, IR has seen a cross-theoretical turn towards incorporating domestic politics, decision-making, agency, practices, and subjectivity—the s...
Governments worldwide are increasingly engaging service users to reform public policies and services and enhance public value. Survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) are one group seeking to be heard by governments and gradually being engaged to improve policy outcomes. However, the history of the victims’ rights movement and feminist scholarship...
For the past 50 years women’s movements have been inventing new forms of governance from the formal to the informal, from laws, institutional norms and policy framing to networks and relationships through which authority is both exercised and held to account. Our definition of feminist governance extends from the non-hierarchical style of women’s m...
For the past 50 years women’s movements have been inventing new ways of organising and these innovations have brought more inclusive and flexible forms of governance. As used here, the term governance covers all the processes of government from the formal to the informal, from laws, institutional norms and policy framing to networks and relationshi...
One year on from the Taliban’s takeover, what has changed in Afghanistan? Why has re-instituting a gender apartheid regime been so central to the Taliban 2.0’s (Taliban 2.0 refers to the second version of the Taliban that came to power in August 2021. The first Taliban rule were from 1996 to 2001.) consolidation of power in Afghanistan since August...
Peace mediation is a professional practice that is increasingly reliant on thematic technical experts, including gender experts. The strategy of including gender expertise in peace mediation reflects the Women, Peace and Security agenda and the call to include dedicated gender expertise in all peacemaking efforts. Based on interviews with peace med...
Times of crisis are associated with increased violence against women, often with reduced access to support services. COVID-19 is no exception with public health control measures restricting people’s movements and confining many women and children to homes with their abusers. Recognising the safety risks posed by lockdowns the United Nations declare...
The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda and women's participation in peace processes are strongly supported by states. Yet financing to support the implementation of WPS has lagged behind overt international commitments to the agenda. WPS scholars and practitioners have highlighted the funding shortfalls for enabling WPS implementation and conti...
Jane Addams’s writings and peace activism contribute an early feminist perspective on the ethics of war and peace. This chapter explores the theory and practice of Jane Addams, and its import for contemporary feminist international relations theory and practice. It analyzes the feminist tradition of theorizing war/peace through the pragmatist appro...
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...
Policy windows emerge through alignment among specific policy problems, political forces, and proposed policy responses. During policy windows, it becomes possible for change to occur, driven by the agenda-setting of policy entrepreneurs. We consider how the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) created a significant policy window. As we do so, we seek to...
COVID-19 has disrupted social, economic and political life across the Asia Pacific region, with particularly deleterious impacts on women. Rather than equitably affecting all, COVID-19 has brought about a “patriarchal reset”, exacerbating women’s health and care labour burdens and heightening the physical violence against women and other threats to...
Living through global transformations – including our current pandemic – requires imagination to see through to the other side. How can Australian IR scholars contribute new understandings of the prospects for global change and security when they are so sorely needed? This essay reflects on two themes: First, the important role of Australian IR sch...
This article explores the influence of victim-survivors as change agents through the examination of the case of domestic and family violence advocate Rosie Batty. Utilizing public policy and criminological theories, and drawing from interviews with Batty and policy actors, the article examines the “Batty effect” and the convergence of factors that...
A growing body of scholarship connects the participation of women and the inclusion of gender provisions to the sustainability of peace settlements. But how do women's groups navigate gender power structures and gendered forms of violence within complex and fragile political bargaining processes aimed at ending large-scale conflict? The 2016 Colomb...
Gender intersects as a major fault-line in increasingly polarized, contemporary global politics. Many democratic states in the global North and South have adopted pro-gender norms in their foreign policies, while other states and populist regimes have resisted the promotion of gender equality and women's rights. This article analyses how political...
Violent extremism and acts of terrorism are a major threat to peace and security globally. To date though the gender dynamics of support for, participation in, and prevention of violent extremism have been largely neglected by psychology, sociology, and political science scholars. Drawing on field research in Indonesia where the threat of violent e...
JOINT BRIEF SERIES: NEW INSIGHTS ON WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY (WPS) FOR THE NEXT DECADE
On 31 October 2000, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Several other resolutions followed, which together constitute the normative framework for the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda.
This brief series was initia...
Consistent with the country’s campaign for the Security Council seat, which focused on “Investing in Peace”, in its first presidency in May 2019 Indonesia oversaw the adoption of four resolutions on UN peace operations and issued the first presidential statement aimed at strengthening the training and capacity of peacekeepers.
Notably, in its seco...
Indonesia is the largest UN peacekeeping troop contributor among the 15 Security Council members, with a total of 2840 personnel including 158 female peacekeepers. The country is committed to growing its contribution to UN peace operations and is among the top 10 countries that pledged to contribute 4000 personnel in various UN peacekeeping mission...
This Report presents the findings from two surveys conducted by the Queensland Domestic Violence Services Networkover a ten-day period in April (15 April to 24 April) and a two-week period in May 2020 (8 May to 22 May). The surveys sought to capture the professional views and experiences of practitioners responding to women experiencing violence du...
The COVID-19 global health pandemic has increased women’s vulnerability to all forms of gender-based violence. Australia, like many other countries worldwide, entered into a period of government directed lockdowns in the first weeks of March 2020 including stay-at-home orders and movement restrictions. With more people confined to their homes to re...
The gender dimension of violent extremism is under-studied; and “women terrorists” are stereotyped as either men’s dupes or (internet) warriors. Applying a gender lens, this study uses content analysis to examine Islamist extremist websites in Indonesia. Analysis reveals distinct recruitment language targeted at women and men, and rigid gender segr...
This paper provides a framework for explicitly linking feminist analysis of global political economy and feminist analysis of war/peace through the concept of ‘gendered circuits of violence.’ The framework connects the gendered economics of peace and war through analyses of standard policy mechanisms promoted by International Financial Institutions...
What does world peace mean? Peace is more than the absence and prevention of war, whether international or civil, yet most of our ways of conceptualizing and measuring peace amount to just that definition. In this essay, as part of the roundtable “World Peace (And How We Can Achieve It),” I argue that any vision of world peace must grapple not only...
This article seeks to explain the rise of pro-gender norms and feminist strategies in foreign policy, which are increasingly salient in global politics. How can this trend be theorized? In what ways is this development resisted and contested by other states and international actors? To what extent can we trace continuity and change in regard to gen...
This special section focuses on how postconflict societies depend on large and under-recognized care economies that, because they are not adequately recognized or supported by societies, states, and international actors, deplete women’s lives. It contributes to the initiative to bring feminist scholars working in the area of security studies and in...
Drawing on depletion through social reproduction and political economy of violence against women (PEVAW) approaches, we show how the context of violence intensifies the depletion of women’s lives as they labor to meet their household needs; and how this depletion heightens their vulnerability to violence in conflict-affected contexts and inhibits t...
Drawing on depletion through social reproduction (DSR) and political economy of violence against women (PEVAW) approaches, we show how the context of violence intensifies the depletion of women's lives as they labor to meet their household needs; and how this depletion heightens their vulnerability to violence in conflict-affected contexts and inhi...
In this article, Eleanor Gordon and Jacqui True analyse policies and programmes to prevent and counter violent extremism in Indonesia and Bangladesh and whether they are gender responsive. Even where the aim is to be gender sensitive, existing policies and programmes reinforce gender stereotypes and are ineffective in preventing and countering thre...
Gender researchers have highlighted the role of transnational feminist networks across the twentieth century in the international diffusion of the suffrage, gender quotas, gender mainstreaming institutions and anti-violence against women norms. By contrast with conventional analysis, they have studied the diffusion of norms and policies as a dynami...
‘Women, Peace and Security’ (WPS) is not just any normative agenda: everyone wants a piece of it. WPS is characterized by unprecedented recognition by states at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the presence of multiple stakeholders, including its own transnational NGO network focused on the first Resolution, 1325. The high degree of p...
Female foreign fighters and the need for a gendered approach to countering violent extremism
The Oxford Handbook on Women, Peace, and Security examines the significant and evolving international Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, which scholars and practitioners have together contributed to advancing over almost two decades. Fifteen years since the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), the WPS agenda has...
The presence of gender provisions in peace agreements affects women’s participation in post-conflict societies as well as the chances that a post-conflict society will move towards gender equality. While there is an overall upward trend in the number of references to women’s rights and gender equality in peace agreements, gender-sensitive agreement...
Feminist conceptualizations of global violence are less partial and more encompassing of all forms of harm, exploring the connections between micro and macro level violence through a gender lens. Understanding violence against women, its causes and its consequences in a global context has never been more important given our crisis-prone world chara...
Studying politics and gender without feminism is akin to institutionalising democracy without women. We argue that it is not possible to understand the gender dynamics of politics without feminism. We show the benefits of doing ‘Politics and Gender’ with feminist analysis and of analysing gender and doing feminism grounded in the study of politics....
Two decades ago, V. Spike Peterson published a book titled Gendered States in which she asked, what difference does gender make in international relations and the construction of the sovereign state system? In the intervening years, a wealth of feminist scholarship has responded to her question, but in doing so, has looked past the nation state to...
Women’s economic participation and empowerment are submerged within the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, yet both are crucial to the success of its core goal to bring gender equal and lasting peace. Relief and Recovery (R&R) is the one of four pillars of the WPS agenda that most strongly aligns with the goal of economic empowerment. Among a...
The Women, Peace, and Security agenda (WPS) stands at a juncture with significant potential to prevent conflicts, protect human rights, and promote recovery from conflict but inadequate progress and institutional resistance to meeting the commitments enshrined in UNSCR 1325. The chapter builds on feminist constructivist theories of normative change...
This paper examines international relations feminism from the emergence of women’s peace pragmatism during WWI to the development of the UN Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda a century later. We argue that rather than feminism being a recent development in the field of international relations, it is international relations that has come late to...
Reparative measures for conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) attend to the practical needs of victims while also addressing the long-term structural conditions that led to the violence and often endure after conflict. Over the last decade, transitional justice has sought to address high levels of impunity for SGBV, while also ad...
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, political scientists have been paying more careful attention to the role of banking institutions as economic but also political institutions whose financial decisions involve the exercise of power and shape the conditions under which governmental decisions are made. Because the United States is still the wo...
‘Brexit’ was a watershed moment. It has made visible the major faultlines and fissures that underlie the so-called ‘United Kingdom’ (UK) and our increasingly globalized world. But the precise nature of those faultlines and fissures requires multiple strands of critical analysis and interpretation. To date, most analyses have highlighted the socio-e...
Theories of international norm diffusion rely on accounts of entrepreneurial action almost exclusively identified as normative non-state actors who persuade powerful states to change their behaviour. We argue that powerful state agents can (also) be moral norm entrepreneurs and explicate the foreign policy acts that make them significant agents of...
In this article we explore the relationship between pre-existing patterns of gender inequality and the occurrence of widespread and systematic sexual and gender based violence (SGBV). We ask three questions: What do we know about the status of gender inequality in high-risk situations prior to the outbreak of atrocities (which include SGBV)? What c...
Scholars, states and international organizations have begun to systematically count, document and compare sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in conflict-affected countries. Qualitative and quantitative studies point to a “tip of the iceberg” phenomenon, where there is a high prevalence but low level of actual reporting of SGBV. We investigate...
This chapter reconceptualises global violence and security through a feminist political economy framework. Violence and insecurity is intimately related to unequal political and economic power. However, the ‘continuum of violence’ is obscured by masculinist norms of security within gendered structures of political economy especially the division of...
Most studies of the gendered impact of conflict focus on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) atrocities committed in high-intensity conflict environments. In contrast, this article focuses on the patterns of SGBV in Mindanao, Philippines – an environment of protracted low-intensity conflict within a fragile state. We examine the current Mindana...
The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) is the most significant international normative framework addressing the gender-specific impacts of conflict on women and girls including protection against sexual and gender-based violence, promoting women’s participation in peace and security and supporting their roles as peace builders i...
Why are women so vulnerable to violence and death as a result of disaster compared with men? This article investigates how global environmental forces in the form of natural disasters from floods, droughts and famines to earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes affect women and men differently. Disasters are known to have direct and indirect impacts on...
The objective of this report is to present an analysis of women’s inclusion
distilled from the larger “Broadening Participation” research project to
date, in order to provide UN Women (and other organizations studying
women’s inclusion) with direct comparative evidence on women’s influence
in previous cases of peace processes since the 1990s.
Over the past decade, significant global attention has been paid to the issue of ‘widespread and systematic’ sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). To contribute to the prevention of SGBV, researchers have examined the relationship between the presence of armed conflict and the causes of SGBV. Much of this causal literature has focused on the ind...
Since the 1998 Rome Statute recognised widespread and systematic acts of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) as an act of genocide, a war crime and crime against humanity, the last decade has seen historic recognition that egregious acts of sexual violence merit international political and legal attention (UN General Assembly, 1998). Notably, t...
Scholars have recently claimed that global violence-defined largely as homicide and casualties from war-is in steep decline. However, research dedicated to using data to prove the decline of violence, in particular Steven Pinker's book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, almost completely neglects evidence of gendered violence within and across state...
A photo depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin in chivalrous fashion, placing his coat around the shoulders of China's first lady at an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) dinner made headline news around the world in November 2014 (Allen-Ebrahimian 2014). Surely this is not the serious stuff of international politics, IR colleagues commen...