Women play an important role in agricultural and food systems, where food security, climate, and trade are connected and reinforce concepts that have economic and societal impacts. Recent geopolitical events and disruptions in the global supply chain have highlighted the necessity of including gender provisions in climate and trade agreements through mechanisms such as the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, which contribute to the security and well-being of women around the world.
Joelle Reimer explores the intersection of emerging technology, privacy, and women’s security in her latest article for the NATO Association of Canada, “When Surveillance Becomes Wearable: AI Smart Glasses and the New Threat to Women’s Security.” The article examines how AI-enabled smart glasses can facilitate non-consensual surveillance, including covert recording, stalking, and image-based abuse, and why addressing the gendered security implications of wearable AI is increasingly important as these technologies become more widespread.
In this article, Morgan Singer examines the evolving role of women in Canadian intelligence, situating their contemporary leadership within a longer history of espionage. While intelligence has traditionally been a male-dominated field, women have made significant contributions, particularly during the World Wars. Since, women have proven to have differentiable mobility and socioemotional skills that make them better spies. The article explores how these capabilities continue to shape women’s roles in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), where women now comprise nearly half of the workforce and hold prominent leadership positions.
NATO Mission Iraq seeks to include WPS in its longstanding operations. However, the recent killing of Iraqi-Canadian women’s rights activist Yanar Mohammed highlights that insecurity for women remains prominent in Iraq, as women’s rights lag in the face of continued instability. As it supports Iraq’s reconstruction, NATO Mission Iraq must undertake a renewed commitment to implement WPS across its operations, support a safe environment for women’s rights defenders and civil society, and foster sustainable peacebuilding and societal resilience.
NATO has just launched LeadInSecurity, its first Alliance-wide leadership accelerator for women in defence and security. In this article, Tessa McDermid explores how the program offers NATO an opportunity to close the sector’s gender gap and uphold its Women, Peace and Security (WPS) commitments. Since LeadInSecurity has no internal track record to draw on, she looks to comparable programs to argue that its long-term success depends on outcome tracking, integration into NATO’s existing accountability frameworks, setting numeric targets, and running as a recurring, multi-year initiative rather than a standalone initiative.
The 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara presented a unique opportunity to uphold the importance of NATO’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda in the pursuit of collective security. Growing concerns over Turkey’s domestic humanitarian record underscored a deeper importance to this conversation. Nonetheless, at a time where confrontation is often chosen over conversation, the Summit offered a reminder of the importance of the willingness to gather. Through an examination of key discussions on gender-responsive security at the Ankara Summit, this article contends that the willingness to gather must be matched by a willingness to act. The Alliance’s greatest strength lies in its continued capacity to choose diplomacy, have hard conversations, and hold one another accountable for transforming dialogue into durable action.
Canada’s shift to the Indo-Pacific for trade, economic, and defence opportunities is a strategic pivot away from the United States to create key partnerships and establish diplomatic ties. This also highlights an avenue for Canada to reaffirm its commitment to the broader values and principles represented by the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, where the US appears to have abandoned the cause. Isabelle Zhu argues that in this new geopolitical landscape, Canada can leverage its soft power and emerge as an engaged and dependable ally from security and defence to trade and energy, but also in principles and values, which contributes positively to Canada’s normative reputation and international visibility.
Critical minerals are growing crucial to NATO’s defence-industrial capacity, but the governance of their extraction has largely omitted gender sensitive considerations. This article argues that as NATO intensifies efforts to secure defence-critical mineral supply chains, leveraging its Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda can help develop a gender-responsive governing framework. Drawing on Canada’s emerging critical minerals framework, this article discusses the legal safeguards and inclusive governance that can strengthen supply chain resilience while embedding gender considerations. This way, NATO members can enhance both strategic mineral security and its commitments to sustainable peace and security in tandem with gender equality.
With increasing geopolitical challenges and polarized public discourse, the WPS agenda faces a reluctant political environment. As a crucial element of lasting peacebuilding,
NATO must build resilience in its WPS agenda by planning multilateral initiatives for today’s political context.
Canada and France are amongst NATO’s leading countries in advancing gender parity. With their Armed Forces compromising between 16-17% of women actively serving in the military. Despite these achievements both countries continue to face significant challenges with recruitment and retention specifically amongst women with strong backgrounds in STEM and cybersecurity. The underrepresentation of women in defence and cybersecurity presents a critical challenge to long term defence readiness and resilience.