Sex and World Peace

While the security of the state affects the security of women, does it also hold that the security of women help determine the security of states? Provocatively affirming this claim, Sex and World Peace unsettles a variety of assumptions in political and security discourse, proving the situation of women to be a vital variable in the incidence of conflict and war.

The authors structure their argument around a comparison of micro-level gender violence and macro-level state peacefulness in global settings, bolstering their findings with detailed analysis and color maps. Harnessing an immense amount of data, they note discrepancies between national laws protecting women and the enforcement of those laws, abnormal sex ratios favoring males, the practice of polygamy, and inequitable family law, among other aggressions, and find that the treatment of women informs human interaction at all levels of society. Their research calls conventional definitions of security, democracy, and other terms into question and shows the true clash of civilizations will be one of gender, played out on the international stage. In terms of resolving these injustices, the authors examine top-down and bottom-up approaches to healing wounds of violence against women, as well as ways to rectify inequalities in family law and the lack of parity in decision-making councils. Emphasizing the importance of an R2PW, or state responsibility to protect women, they mount a solid campaign against women's systemic insecurity, which acts to unravel the security of all.