Antinuclear

The “Consensual Straitjacket”

Our research also found that the nuclear security field tends to be insulated, hierarchical, and overwhelmingly male. The resulting emphasis on a shared “nuclear orthodoxy” limits policy design and invites groupthink. Ultimately, that nuclear orthodoxy leads to losses in talented personnel who are unable or unwilling to fit themselves in to this narrow paradigm. Individuals who might otherwise provide creative, alternative approaches instead struggle to fit into the stereotypical image of what a nuclear official should look and sound like.

Michèle Flournoy described this struggle, as well as the resulting lost creativity, as a “consensual straitjacket.” She told us, “I think women are socialized to sort of think outside the box to solve problems […] and to sometimes solve a problem by reexamining the basic assumptions and looking at it differently. And that just was not welcomed very much in the nuclear conversation.”

Participants described working very hard to learn the theory and technical details of nuclear policy and master the jargon used by this community. But they also described how they attempted to fit in to conventional modes of thinking, even as these conventions felt constraining.

Gender Diversity and International Negotiations

A lack of gender diversity at international nuclear negotiations like the Hanoi Summit could therefore limit their potential outcomes. In spite of the benefits that gender diversity brings, we found that women remain systematically under-represented in nuclear and non-proliferation international negotiations. Data developed by the International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI) and the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conferences shows that while the U.S. delegation was composed of 5 percent women in 1980, just 38 percent of U.S. delegates in 2015 were female.

U.S. delegations routinely interact with foreign counterpart delegations who also have few, if any, women delegates. At the 2015 NPT Review Conference, the Russian Federation delegation was 27 percent women, China was 30 percent, the UK 27 percent, South Korea 36 percent, and Iran did not have any women delegates.

The “Gender Tax”

Many of our interviewees also pointed out to us that much of the work of negotiations occurs through informal interactions. When they were the only or one of a few women present, women found that they were often shut out of gatherings where their male colleagues were building these social relationships. Although some women said representing the United States offered some protection and gravitas, sexist behavior and harassment were still common.

Christine Wormuth told us that in international situations, “in the early years, I certainly had lots of the whole kind of ‘are you the administrative assistant or are you the mistress?’ [Because] certainly you couldn’t be there for substantive reasons.” The women we spoke to recounted a myriad of anecdotes about the harassment and derogatory comments that they faced at work from male colleagues, through the present day.

On top of doing their already-difficult jobs, these women faced an additional “gender tax” that required them to expend additional mental and emotional energy to navigate these high-stakes situations safely and tactfully. Wormuth recounted her reaction to being asked out to dinner by a high-ranking foreign representative: “It was so deflating because I realized, oh, he wasn’t paying any attention to what I was saying, he was paying attention to how I looked.”…….https://www.cfr.org/blog/limits-orthodoxy-what-diversity-brings-nuclear-security