Feminism at the Margins of Militarism: Security and Defence Policy in Canada

“I wouldn’t describe our foreign policy as feminist foreign policy,” declared Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the 2025 G20 Summit in Johannesburg. His statement marked a sharp departure from his predecessor’s emphasis on Canada’s commitment to progressive and gender-inclusive policymaking. 

Immediately after this death knell announcement, Carney attempted to reaffirm that Canada remains committed to many of the same gender-conscious policies established under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ‘feminist foreign policy’. While some of us may hope that this turn of phrase is merely superficial, it nevertheless invites us to take stock of the gender-inclusive policies that Canada has cultivated over the past decade, and what the likelihood is of continuing on a ‘feminist’ path that the government is now unwilling to name as such.

A Decade of Gender-Inclusive Policy

Feminist foreign policy in Canada is linked to the 2017 release of the Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP), updated in 2021, to advance gender equality and empower women and girls through international assistance programs. The FIAP addresses issues including poverty reduction, inclusive growth, governance, climate action, and peace and security. However, the FIAP is not the only source of gender-sensitive foreign policy. In tandem with other countries that championed the United Nations Women, Peace, and Security Agenda (WPS), Canada implemented a series of WPS national action plans, starting in 2011, along with other initiatives aimed at promoting gender sensitivity and feminist values across its foreign policy. Such initiatives include gender chapters in trade agreements, statements in the 2019 (Strong, Secure, and Engaged) and 2024 (Our North, Strong, and Free) defence policies, the Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace Operations, and the 2019 appointment of a WPS ambassador. Taken together, these initiatives show Canada’s foreign policy institutions’ wide-ranging outward commitment to promote gender equality and feminist values.

Despite this breadth, these policies often blur the line between gender equality and women’s empowerment (thus ignoring issues of gender equity), neglect intersectional forms of discrimination (such as race, age, disability, sexuality, and class), and support a neoliberal economic agenda through gender-targeted growth strategies. The outcomes of these policies have not meaningfully shifted gendered power relations, either within Canada or beyond, over the past eight years.

Inclusion in the Canadian Forces

Canada’s security and defence sector illustrates how federal efforts to advance gender equality and feminist principles produce mixed results, at best. The Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), for example, have adopted Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) to incorporate gender perspectives into their policies and formally recognize the role of gender inequality in fueling conflict. Recruitment and retention efforts have also aimed to make the CAF a more equitable space for women, Indigenous peoples, and other marginalized groups. These initiatives include changes to recruitment and deployment practices, as well as investments in family supports such as housing and childcare to better accommodate the realities of military personnel. Concrete targets have been set to improve diversity within the CAF, including increasing the proportion of women to 25 percent of personnel. 

The Canadian security sector presents itself as a leader in diversity, arguing that being inclusive makes the forces stronger and more effective. This inclusivity, in turn, is expected to improve planning, strengthen community engagement, and enhance the military’s ability to respond to crises. 

Representation Without Accountability

While promising in theory, in practice, these approaches focus on meeting representation and diversity targets without addressing the deep-rooted hierarchies that produce and sustain inequality for women and other minority groups within the security and defence sector. Importantly, these policies do not address the ways that forms of inequality overlap. For example, while efforts exist to increase the number of woman-identifying personnel, there is little to no focus on inclusion initiatives for Indigenous women, queer people, or non-binary individuals specifically. Support for those who fall outside the gender binary, or those who do not benefit from it, is practically absent. 

Increasing the representation of women in Canada’s defence and security sectors has often proven to be more symbolic than substantive. Programs like the Elsie Initiative assume, for instance, that adding more women to peacekeeping will reduce sexual and gender-based violence, although existing research does not support these claims. Rather, the research shows that increasing the number of women or minority groups within hierarchical power structures of the military can, in fact, create vulnerabilities or increase opportunities for further exploitation and abuse. It can also place undue pressure on service members to conform to rigid norms not conducive to inclusion. Sexual violence and misconduct in security forces disproportionately affects women and marginalized people, with ongoing complaints that individuals in positions of power overlook or permit gender and sex-based abuses, as outlined by the Dechamps 2015 Report on Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Harassment in the Canadian Armed Forces and the Arbour 2022 Independent External Comprehensive Review Final Report and Culture Change Reforms in the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces to Address Sexual Harassment and Misconduct. 

While DND and CAF have adopted zero-tolerance policies for sexual violence and misconduct, which is an important step, meaningful structural change that addresses internal culture and liability for offenders has yet to materialize. Increasing representation of women and diverse persons in security institutions, without accountability or systemic reform, risks subjecting these employees to patterns of violence that are pervasive in the sector.  

Persistent Barriers for Racialized and Indigenous Peoples

Meeting diversity quotas is not a linear path to meaningful inclusivity. The systemic barriers faced by racialized and Indigenous peoples persist, leaving these spaces deeply inhospitable to them. While security institutions desire to recruit diverse populations, there is little policy directed to ensure cultural safety or anti-racism once employed. While the federal government acknowledges the impact of colonialism on these populations, these acknowledgements are often framed as elements of the past rather than ongoing realities. Canada’s WPS action plan treats violence as an issue that security and government actors merely respond to, overlooking how these actors are continuing to be implicated in gendered and racialized violence in Canada. Examples include the well-documented mistreatment of Indigenous and racialized people by security actors, including the implication of the RCMP (and the CAF) in historical land dispossessions and in contemporary challenges such as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG2) or unlawful surveillance of Indigenous land protectors. 

The Militarism Problem

Recognizing gender inequality in Canada’s security and defence institutions is one thing; challenging the militarized structures that sustain it is another. These institutions are built on a foundation of militarism, which rests on the belief that armed conflict is inevitable. As a result, Canada prioritizes funding for military equipment and war-waging capacities over gender-sensitive and feminist policies, even though it acknowledges that gender inequality is a root cause of conflict and that crises deepen existing inequalities. 

As militaries are grounded in histories of gender inequality, colonial violence, and systemic racism, it is not feasible to simply layer on progressive policies and expect meaningful change. Any efforts that fail to address these foundational structures will inevitably fall short and can often reproduce harm against marginalized populations. Given that conflict and war often lead to violence against marginalized groups, human rights violations, poor health outcomes, and gender-based violence, it is misguided to assume that military solutions will reduce these harms rather than exacerbate them.

As it stands today, Canada’s previous efforts under the Trudeau government (2015-2024) to spotlight inclusivity and diversity have continued to dwindle and be replaced by a return to militarism. While increasing military preparedness and war-fighting capacities are treated as common sense, it limits our ability to question when, where, and how military force is used, as well as the billions in tax dollars that sustain it. In a new era of strongman politics and “might makes right” mentality, the prioritization of gender-sensitive policy making is more essential than ever. 

This op-ed is adapted from “Inclusive militarism? Canada’s feminist policy-making in security and defence,” and is published in International Journal, which won the 2025 Marcel Cadieux prize for best article on Canadian foreign policy. It is available here.