Around the world conflict and disasters
disproportionately affect women and
Children . Yet women remain under
represented in efforts to secure
against and resolve conflict . Research
shows that when women participate in
security and peace negotiations
Agreement is 64% less likely to fail
and 35% more likely to last at least 15
years . A wide range of barriers still
prevent women's meaningful
participation including biases and
perceptions of gender norms of men and
women , legal and policy barriers and a
lack of gender informed perspectives
throughout planning and operations .
Women , peace and security is an
internationally recognized framework
utilized within the US and among our
allies and partners to address these
challenges . The United States
introduced the Women Peace and Security
Act in October 2017 to ensure
meaningful participation of women in
preventing mitigating and resolving
conflict . This law tasks the
Department of Defense Department of
State and Department of Homeland
Security and the United States Agency
for International Development to
implement WPS initiatives . In
2020 the Department of Defense released
its W P S strategic framework and
implementation plan . The dod framework
outlines three primary objectives
as an extension of the dod framework ,
the Department of the Air Force
established women peace and security
objectives for the Air and Space Force ,
Air Force Reserve and Air National
Guard , which include applying the WPS
framework to core functions such as
training and doctrine , exercises ,
operations , and security cooperations
to promote WPS principles and gender
perspectives . The Department of the
Air Force is committed to implementing
W P S across all Air and Space Force
functions to ensure readiness by
training our gender advisory workforce ,
ensuring W P S principles in all
training curriculum and conducting
gender analysis to reduce barriers and
improve gender equity .
The women peace and security initiative
asks us to examine our processes and
organizations differently to face the
complex security challenges of today
and in the future , we must grow our
understanding of how gender relates to
the outcomes within the security sector .