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While any mild achievement in gendering security policy indicates progress for international peace and security, the inconsistent discourse and policies addressing women’s vulnerabilities during conflict signify that the legitimacy of feminist approaches to war and peace remains unestablished.

The relationship between mainstream international relations (IR) and feminism is complex and challenging efforts to collaborate over issues of women’s security in forums such as the United Nations (UN) have been met with both praises of success and critiques of disappointment. However, a feminist interpretation of the struggle for legitimacy reveals that such credibility is bestowed by masculine institutions reflecting the status quo of a patriarchal society. “Gender decides who goes to war and who does not who is a victim and who is not  who is peaceful and who is not  and who is legitimate within the security discipline and who is not.”įeminists in the field of international relations have long advocated for discourse, policy, and law which reflect institutionalized legitimacy of women’s security during war and peace. By parsing out the relationship between the reigning theory of realism and a feminist interpretation of security, this paper analyzes the extent to which feminists in international relations have been able to navigate women’s security within an innately patriarchal field and proposes recommendations to further improve the discourse, policy, and laws surrounding women's security during war and peace. Discourse condemning sexual violence as a tactic of war in UN Resolution 1820 serves as a case study for understanding the discrepancy between the Security Council’s intent to protect states and its intent to protect women. Inconsistency in the United Nations’ Women, Peace, and Security agenda and in the United Nations’ policies on women’s security during conflict signifies that the legitimacy of feminist approaches to war and peace remains unestablished by the United Nations Security Council. Despite feminists’ progress in advocating for the legitimization of women’s security in the international relations sphere, institutional impediments reveal that masculine structures continue to regulate a patriarchal status quo in discourse, policy, and law.