Part of the improvement in Liberia's tranquility is the arrival in January of an Indian, all-woman UN police unit. As a feminist, I am ambivalent about the news. There are clearly many advantages to having women working in this capacity given the shoddy record of male peacekeeping forces in the populations they are supposed to be assisting, but having an all-female SWAT team ready to swoop in and clean up man-made messes highlights just how bad the system already is. I have taken issue in the past with people claiming that one cannot change the [justice, political, patriarchal] system from within the context of the system but examples like this make me unsure that work from within is effective, or at least, sure that whatever work you do in the system better be done damn precisely and deliberately.
On the one hand, it is completely awesome that there are Indian women going to work as police protection for UN workers in Liberia. Police work has traditionally been one of the manliest of jobs , appealing to our notions of men as the strong, the protectors and those who will take care of bad guys. With women stepping into those roles, a lot of asinine assumptions must be questioned and new paradigms set, both certain good things. Gender roles that are societally enforced restrict freedom and only terrorists and liberals are really for that. As far as gender roles are to exist, they should be chosen by the individuals involved without the pressure of worrying about being too butch or too femme. I think most people who have progressed beyond the stage of 'boys wearing pink is icky' would agree with the idea that people should be able to choose their own lifestyle free from the constraints of bigots.
The other side of this coin is that it is horrifying that there is a need for a special "Lady Patrol" with their 22 male "logistical sidekicks" who come in and use their magical, vaginal powers to fix all the male fuckups and make the UN peacekeepers polite and kind. The problematic behavior of the male UN troops should be addressed on its own. If the solution involves integrating women into their ranks, then great, that non-exclusion would be good on its own terms as well. Obviously, as Abu Ghraib so poignantly displayed, mixed sex settings (the US Army is a bit under 20% women) do not assure 100% positive results. This current solution of the female squad strikes me as a "boys will be boys" type shrug on the part of those in charge of the UN's troops and a quixotic, offensive hope that women will have a civilizing effect on all those barbaric mans.
It may work, if only because women are less likely to tolerate the sexual assault of women and are less likely to be quiet about it if they are in a setting with many like-minded individuals but that is beside the point. The real problem here is that MEN SHOULD NOT TOLERATE THE SEXUAL ASSAULT OF WOMEN. Let me be the first to point the finger my own way: I do not always call out people when they say sexist things in front of me, I sometimes laugh at sexist jokes and even when I see active emotional abuse of a woman, I do not always step up as I should. And true, how much harder must it be for someone whose identity as a man is bound to the mistreatment of women or to the group ethic of protecting your fellows above all else? That remains the problem that needs to be addressed: men are willing to hush up, hide and facilitate the mistreatment of women. It is also a problem if women are excluded from military service. The two may have a deep, common root but today both are problems deserving individual attention.
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