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Women peacekeepers and genderaware leaders are not sufficient to change the male-dominated structure of peacekeeping. Even so, their presence positively affects aspects of local populations interactions and perceptions towards peacekeeping operations. In this paper I evaluate some roles, influences and consequences of women's participation in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations. I examine these characteristics within police, military and civilian components. For over 50 years UN peacekeeping has been a means of international intervention in armed conflict. Yet, few women participated in designing or carrying out these operations. Although the UN can request, Member States ultimately decide who to send for police, military, and government peacekeeping assignments. The UN did not issue specific requests for women peacekeepers until 1994, corresponding with a high demand for peacekeepers--78,500 in 1993, 76,500 in 1994, and 68,900 in 1995 (Kaufholz; Renner). When the call did go out, Member States largely ignored it (Helland, Karame, Kristensen and Skjelsbaek).
Between 1957 and 1989, Jill Beilstein concluded that 20 women served as UN peacekeepers out of 26,250 troops. For the same time period, William Durch and Michael Renner record 426,600 peacekeepers. Regardless of the source, the inclusion of women peacekeepers is rare. In 1993, in 11 of the 15 ongoing peacekeeping operations, women represented 33 percent of all civilian staff (Beilstein), with the percentage of women in civilian police and military unknown because of lack of record keeping. At the end of 2000, women constituted 25 percent of the 38,900 peacekeepers active as professional staff, 51 percent of general service staff, 15 percent of field staff, 26 percent of local staff, three percent of military personnel, and four percent of civilian police personnel (UN DPKO).
Table 1, "Women in Active United Nations Peacekeeping Operations," provides the percentage of women all UN peacekeeping operations as of Spring 2001. Of the peacekeeping operations for which data are available (13 of 16), women represent a small percentage of personnel in these peacekeeping operations and constitute fewer than ten percent in over half of the operations. In particular, women represent a small proportion of military and civilian police personnel. Never did they exceed six percent of military personnel or 16 percent of civilian police, representing five percent or less in five of the six operations using civilian...