LAUSR

Captain Jennifer Wittwer is the Technical Adviser on Women, Peace and Security in the Office of the Chief of the Defence Force, Australia. In August 2013, Jennifer was appointed the inaugural Director of Australia’s National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) with the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Captain Wittwer has been seconded to UN Women as Technical Expert on Women, Peace and Security – Arab States, beginning in August 2016. Captain Wittwer has experienced and lived within hetero-masculine militarized environments throughout her career and has surfaced as a strong gender equality advocate. She has played a pivotal role in the dissemination and realization of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 in Australia and abroad in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. She has been central to the development of Australia’s NAP and has keen insights into the difficulties in advancing WPS in the ADF. During the 2015 International Feminist Journal of Politics (IFJP) annual conference at the University of Queensland, Australia, Captain Wittwer joined scholars, practitioners and students to discuss the conference theme: “The difference that gender makes to international peace and security.” Here, we discuss some of the points she raised in her keynote address about the past and future of gender issues in the ADF, specifically the two major challenges that the ADF continues to confront: addressing discrimination and violence against women within the ADF, and promotion of the WPS agenda in the ADF. Captain Wittwer’s experiences offer insights into the functioning and operationalization of WPS concerns within national defense settings.