National security can only be achieved with the participation of all sectors—public, private and civil—and with the diverse perspectives that come when both women and men are in leadership positions. In a technological era in which social media gives more people a voice than ever before, more still needs to be done to ensure different voices are being heard.
This requires government and non-government entities to give women opportunities to voice their views. Those views should then inform the development and public messaging of security policies.
In Australia, women have broken the glass ceiling in many traditionally male-dominated security fields. Australia’s past three foreign ministers and the past three secretaries of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have all been women. In the intelligence community, women now run both the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).
Despite these breakthroughs, career progression can still be an uphill challenge, including in senior defence positions and in academia, where progress has been slower and acknowledgement of women’s contributions is lacking. As a woman in the field with close to 30 years of experience, I can attest to these continuing challenges.
We must avoid the trap of thinking it’s enough to have women lead agencies such as ASD and ASIS. It is also necessary to promote movement and progression across the security sector, including a pipeline of diverse leaders. This will mean that, when men are appointed to leadership positions, it won’t be viewed as an automatic backward step for women.
We are not there yet. Amplifying female voices, developing pathways to leadership for talented young women and maintaining retention will require a dual track approach: an internal culture that values organisational diversity; and an external stakeholder strategy in which women in national security are given public facing roles, including speaking opportunities, and are publicly cited for their work.
A higher level of representation is not the only measure of success. Women should be better represented across all fields, not just limited to fields traditionally considered softer or more feminine, such as gender balance in security—the very topic of this article. Female representation remains limited in public policy debates on hard security topics including international arms control issues, counter terrorism, and defence matters such as Russia’s war on Ukraine or China’s nuclear build-up.
Correcting this requires several steps, starting with increased public visibility. Governments, think tanks, academia and the media need to showcase the work being done by female experts. Recognition and appreciation of women’s work in national and international security is beneficial to show girls and young women that the field is not a boys-only club.
Public endorsement can go a long way in showcasing the work of female scholars. Less visibility means less name recognition and fewer opportunities for female scholars to be invited to conferences and panel discussions. This also results in exclusion from networks that identify and reinforce expertise.
Women are also less likely to have their work cited. As I have written about previously, citations are particularly important in the academic and think tank worlds. The number of times one has been cited in essays, opinion pieces or commentaries plays an important role when looking for jobs in these fields and influences promotions within institutions.
Media outlets, which often rely on experts for comments or interviews, are not immune to this citation bias. Generally, men put themselves forward more than women to provide comments on sensitive and controversial security matters. This should be factored into mentoring responsibilities within organisations, and media outlets should be obligated to seek diverse perspectives.
At a 2013 gender gap symposium, David Lake, a well-known scholar and then president of the International Studies Association, acknowledged the gap in his own work. He recognised that we all have a tendency to go with what and whom we know, despite the internet providing access to far more resources than ever before. Lake said that with so much new work coming out, he was more likely to read a piece if he knew the researcher: ‘Personal connections lead to deeper readings, which lead to more citations and, likely, more personal connections.’
As a result, men often promote each other’s work, amplifying their voices and referring to each other in their publications. Even when women are well published in top-tier journals or prominent websites on security and foreign policy issues, they tend to receive far fewer citations. Writing on this gap and bias, Daniel Maliniak, Ryan Powers and Barbara Walter wrote, ‘Articles authored by women are systematically less central than articles authored by men, all else equal. This is likely because (1) women tend to cite themselves less than men, and (2) men (who make up a disproportionate share of [international relations] scholars) tend to cite men more than women.’
It therefore all comes back to improving internal culture and increasing external visibility. Affecting change will take effort, regular review and a genuine desire to build better culture across government, academia, think tanks and other civil society institutions. The good news is that both culture and public messaging can be improved. This will, however, take time, consistency and persistence.
We cannot rely on change to happen naturally. Instead, we need to commit to conscious corrective measures to encourage and promote the work of female scholars. Such conscious change is not only a matter of ethics; it is in the interests of our national security as we navigate a complex international environment.