Women's security needs versus feminist agenda? Implications of the security-environment-gender nexus

Abstract

The beginning of the 1990s witnessed a dramatic shift in consciousness away from concerns regarding military security. The placement of the environment on the agenda of high politics is intrinsically linked to the shift in consciousness as to how security, peace, conflict, war and politics are viewed in the post-Cold War era
Dissatisfaction with narrow military concerns was partly stimulated by the rise of economic and environmental international concerns and agendas during the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, it was also argued that a military definition of security confined the debate to the realms of the developed world and negated the consequences for the majority of the world's population. In the developed world old
threats have largely been replaced by new ones, but in the developing world new threats are added to existing military threats. Thus, a concern with new meanings of security has become central to the agenda of International Relations.