Women in Security covers a wide-range of issues as it explores the link between women, security, and development. As a forum to stimulate discussion and instructive debates, the NATO Association of Canada will examine the ways in which women both contribute to and are the focus of Canadian and NATO defence and security initiatives. This program also offers a critical look at the structures and institutions that shape the role of women in security at home and abroad.
NATO has just launched LeadInSecurity, its first Alliance-wide leadership accelerator for women in defence and security. In this article, Tessa McDermid explores how the program offers NATO an opportunity to close the sector’s gender gap and uphold its Women, Peace and Security (WPS) commitments. Since LeadInSecurity has no internal track record to draw on, she looks to comparable programs to argue that its long-term success depends on outcome tracking, integration into NATO’s existing accountability frameworks, setting numeric targets, and running as a recurring, multi-year initiative rather than a standalone initiative.
The 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara presented a unique opportunity to uphold the importance of NATO’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda in the pursuit of collective security. Growing concerns over Turkey’s domestic humanitarian record underscored a deeper importance to this conversation. Nonetheless, at a time where confrontation is often chosen over conversation, the Summit offered a reminder of the importance of the willingness to gather. Through an examination of key discussions on gender-responsive security at the Ankara Summit, this article contends that the willingness to gather must be matched by a willingness to act. The Alliance’s greatest strength lies in its continued capacity to choose diplomacy, have hard conversations, and hold one another accountable for transforming dialogue into durable action.
Canada’s shift to the Indo-Pacific for trade, economic, and defence opportunities is a strategic pivot away from the United States to create key partnerships and establish diplomatic ties. This also highlights an avenue for Canada to reaffirm its commitment to the broader values and principles represented by the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, where the US appears to have abandoned the cause. Isabelle Zhu argues that in this new geopolitical landscape, Canada can leverage its soft power and emerge as an engaged and dependable ally from security and defence to trade and energy, but also in principles and values, which contributes positively to Canada’s normative reputation and international visibility.
Critical minerals are growing crucial to NATO’s defence-industrial capacity, but the governance of their extraction has largely omitted gender sensitive considerations. This article argues that as NATO intensifies efforts to secure defence-critical mineral supply chains, leveraging its Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda can help develop a gender-responsive governing framework. Drawing on Canada’s emerging critical minerals framework, this article discusses the legal safeguards and inclusive governance that can strengthen supply chain resilience while embedding gender considerations. This way, NATO members can enhance both strategic mineral security and its commitments to sustainable peace and security in tandem with gender equality.
With increasing geopolitical challenges and polarized public discourse, the WPS agenda faces a reluctant political environment. As a crucial element of lasting peacebuilding,
NATO must build resilience in its WPS agenda by planning multilateral initiatives for today’s political context.
Historically, the mobilization of hundreds of Caribbean women into vital Allied logistics and technical roles proved that non-traditional networks are indispensable during global crises. Today, as NATO adapts to a shifting security landscape, the Alliance can draw directly from the legacy of these wartime networks to modernize its recruitment strategies and structural resilience.
The manosphere is a network of communities united by opposition to feminism that has expanded from fringe corners of the internet into mainstream public discourse. In this article, Tessa McDermid presents how social media algorithms are mainstreaming manosphere ideology among Gen Z men, and how this poses threats to the safety and participation of women in NATO’s armed forces and to the Alliance’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) commitments. Addressing these risks requires NATO to update its WPS policy to explicitly incorporate manosphere produced threats, expand counter-radicalization programmes to recognize online misogyny as an extremist pathway, and to invest in digital and gender literacy training for military personnel.
Canada and France are amongst NATO’s leading countries in advancing gender parity. With their Armed Forces compromising between 16-17% of women actively serving in the military. Despite these achievements both countries continue to face significant challenges with recruitment and retention specifically amongst women with strong backgrounds in STEM and cybersecurity. The underrepresentation of women in defence and cybersecurity presents a critical challenge to long term defence readiness and resilience.
With the U.S. rollback of the Pentagon’s Women, Peace, and Security program, the global WPS agenda appears to be at a crossroads. In the context of increasing geopolitical volatility, peacebuilding initiatives such as WPS must be at the forefront of NATO’s operational goals. Canada’s National Action Plan offers a leading example of how states can reinforce the global WPS agenda through comprehensive national policy.
Canada’s new plan to name a new Women, Peace and Security (WPS) ambassador is a positive signal, considering WPS and Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) have historically been a reflection of Canadian values, as champions of peace and multilateral cooperation. Isabelle Zhu argues that Canada’s current “middle power” strategy would allow it to move forward as the new champion of FFPs and WPS, enhancing its position within the Alliance and on the international stage.
