The virtual seminar will be held December 9, 2020
The nuclear weapons field is often portrayed as one of the most gendered areas of international security and reputed to be a particularly hostile workplace for women. Think tank reports criticise the absence of women and gender perspectives from nuclear policy debates while gender initiatives seek to increase the participation of women in the field. These studies and policy initiatives share two conclusions: First, women are underrepresented in the nuclear weapons field. Second, the inclusion of women, and gender perspectives, would bring a qualitative change to the nuclear policy area. Currently, academic literature fails to provide empirical support for both conclusions. Systematically collected data is missing on the number of women who are working with nuclear weapons, women’s experiences of working in the field have been recorded only anecdotally and the impact of women’s increased participation remains unclear. The ‘Women and the Bomb’ project will address these gaps by gathering and analysing the missing quantitative and qualitative data. In her talk, Dr. Jana Wattenberg will review feminist and gender perspectives on nuclear weapons, highlight gaps in existing scholarship and show how her project on ‘Women and the Bomb’ makes a unique contribution to knowledge.
About the speaker: Jana Wattenberg is a Lecturer in International Politics and Security at the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, Wales. She is also the Deputy Director of the David Davies Memorial Institute for International Studies and a fellow with Women in International Security. She was awarded a PhD from Aberystwyth University. Her PhD thesis "Ideas that Stand in the Way of Nuclear Disarmament" shows how entrenched ideas about nuclear weapons and disarmament have made global nuclear abolition more difficult. Dr. Wattenberg received a BA in Sociological European Studies from University of Bremen and a MA in International Studies/Peace and Conflict Studies from Goethe University Frankfurt. She is an active member of the EU Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Consortium network and the UK Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) network. Her current research projects focus on the roles of women in the nuclear weapons field, gendered dimensions of nuclear discourses, nuclear stigmatization processes and the role of ideas in global nuclear politics.