Militarised Masculinities

The global arms trade doesn’t just fuel warzones, it fuels inequality, exploitation, and violence against the most vulnerable and these risks can be observed internationally. While men and boys are often portrayed as the primary actors in conflict, it is women and girls who disproportionately bear the brunt of armed violence, particularly through gender-based abuse, displacement, and systemic marginalization. From sexual violence used as a weapon of war to the underrepresentation of women in peace and disarmament processes, the consequences of unchecked arms proliferation are not only deadly but deeply gendered.

This article explores the link between military masculinity, armed conflict, and gender-based violence. Drawing on global data, case studies, and analysis from international organizations, we examine how patriarchal systems intersect with the illicit arms trade—and why current disarmament frameworks continue to exclude the voices of those most affected. In an era when conflict increasingly targets civilian populations, understanding the gendered dynamics of violence is not just a moral imperative—it’s a prerequisite for lasting peace and security.

Women and girls get impacted by arms trade differently than men and boys. Importantly, women are often victims of violence, but they can be combatants in armed conflict as well. Nonetheless there are three points to be made:

1. Patriarchal systems lead to inequitable attitudes, such as gender-based violence. Women are more likely to be impacted by domestic and gender-based violence, such as conflict-related sexual violence.

According to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination of Women “Wars, armed conflicts, and the occupation of territories, often lead to increased prostitution, trafficking in women, and sexual assault of women, which require specific protective and punitive measures”. The instability leads to armed conflict, and armed conflict leads to an increase in armed violence, including gender-based violence. There are many forms of violence, used to shame, demoralise, terrify, and humiliate the enemy:

Using women and girls is tactical, as they are seen as the bearers of cultural identity. Women and girls who have been raped, for example, often get shunned by their communities, and abandoned by their spouses. This in turn, leads the women to flee, which is discussed more in point three. Not only do they get shunned and abandoned, these women and girls often have to deal with the devastating consequences of surviving the rapes, such as medical problems like HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, physiological problems, infertility, pregnancy, and genital mutilation. Now, not only women are raped or abused, increasingly there are more and more reports coming out with men and boys being used to commit acts against family members and being abused themselves. Sexual violence has been used repeatedly in the past decennia, Columbia being an example. One could say that sexual violence is routine in conflict, as it is accepted as being ‘normal’. Women also get (forcibly) recruited as combatants, where they are abused by forces, often used as sex slaves. 

2. Women are often overlooked in disarmament programmes. Disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) programmes are often focused on young men, overlooking women’s roles in armed conflict. 

In 2019, the UN did research towards gender and gender-based in the context of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). They realised that women tend to be underrepresented in disarmament diplomacy, and especially in official meetings of the ATT. The only time women were represented about 40% is when the topic was ‘gender and Gender Based Violence’ (GBV). Moreover, women are grossly underrepresented when it comes to technical arms control roles. This is important, as between 1986 and 1996, women and children where the ones dying the most because of armed conflicts. Women therefore need to be at the table, as they’re being affected the most. 

3. Illicit arms trade feeds armed violence, disrupting communities, directly affecting women, children, men, and marginalised groups. 

With conflict, the battlefield often gets moved to villages, towns, and their surroundings, impacting communities directly. Meaning that those killed and injured are civilians, often deliberately targeted. Unfortunately, mass displacement, violence against ethnic and religious groups, war crimes, crimes against humanity, gender-based and sexual violence, and child soldiers, are all common features of conflict. Even when conflict in a region ends, GBV and violence in general, perseveres. Oxfam states that the risk of being murder by an intimate partner increase with the availability of firearms. Leading to the household and the home, what should be a safe space, being violent and dangerous.

When weapons flow unchecked, it’s not just governments that gain power—it’s abusers, traffickers, and warlords. The arms trade isn’t gender-neutral; it amplifies violence against those with the least protection, and until we embed gender in every aspect of disarmament, we’re not building peace—we’re prolonging harm.

Elisa Garbil, The International Risk Podcast

The conflict in Northern Ireland can be used as an example, with Irish women and girls having more dangerous acts of violence committed against them in their homes, because of the increased availability of guns. The normalisation of rape during conflict, as mentioned in point one, also leads to the normalisation of rape after conflict. In addition, displacement is a natural consequence of sexual violence, as well as it being a tactic to force civilians to flee their homes. Nonetheless, displacement does not minimise the threat of sexual violence, as the refugee camps tend to be dangerous places for women, where advantage is often taken from them. 

Solutions

Finally, the money spent on arms is money that could have gone to development. Money that could have gone to improve the socio-economic situation in those countries. The impoverishing of these villages, and countries, leads to more violence, more armed violence, serious human rights violations, facilitation of GBV, the undermining of peacebuilding efforts, and excessive unaccountable spending from corrupt parties. Having the money spent on arms means that public services, like education and health, are being undermined. 

The Urgency of Rethinking This International Risk

The international arms trade is not just a security issue, it’s a gendered geopolitical risk with devastating consequences for women, girls, and marginalized communities. While armed conflict is often framed in terms of borders and state power, its frontline victims are frequently civilians facing sexual violence, displacement, and long-term socio-economic collapse. These outcomes are not collateral—they are strategic, and they expose critical blind spots in how we assess and manage international risk.

To confront this reality, policymakers, risk professionals, and peacebuilders must embed gender into every layer of arms control, peace negotiations, and post-conflict recovery. This requires moving beyond traditional definitions of risk to include gender-based violence as a core metric of instability. As the world grapples with rising geopolitical tensions and increasingly blurred lines between warzones and civilian spaces, integrating a gender lens is no longer optional—it’s fundamental to effective risk mitigation, conflict prevention, and sustainable peace.