Women in the security industry

Theresa May
flickr.com @ukhomeoffice

The security sector is one of the world’s fastest-growing industries and offers careers not only to male, military personnel but also to women with a civilian background – like me. The first fact about security that strikes me is that I get 2.490.000 Google results for “women and security”, but only 1.890.000 for “women and peace“. Why? Possibly because security has a few more semantic layers than peace. For example, while I have no interest in handling arms – other than my own two – I have a manifest interest in security, at the least in terms of peace-keeping.

By Susanne Schröder

However, most people associate the security industry with the opposite from peace – as the above reference to the abundance of military personnel working in security already implies – and they are probably right. Governments spend their good portions of their annual budget on issues such as war and terrorism and call it an investment in security and defence. But why don’t they tackle the problem at an even earlier stage? Before war is waged and defence is necessary?

Women are often referred to as “peacemakers”, and the importance of including them in peace-keeping processes has been acknowledged for decades. Like Mimi Lanfranchi concludes on the topic: “In today’s business world, the successful team is a blend of the best men and women.“ Still the percentage of female employees in the security business is far smaller than that of men, and I doubt this is because there are no good women out there. So let’s introduce some change.

With the foundation of Modern Security Consulting Group (MOSECON) I not only upped the female security employee percentage, but also took on the responsibility to stay up-to-date on all security issues and form an opinion on political affairs. Thus, I’m very much looking forward to my formal “initiation” at the Counter Terror Expo in London this week. I expect to meet very few women there (as last year’s photos suggest), but at the same time I hope that my low expectations will be positively overturned. Furthermore, I hope to experience the balance that female security professionals are supposed to bring to the sector’s table and possibly to see “inclusive security” in action (rather than tanks and armour).

I’m also curious to see in how far the divide, not only between men and women, but also between academic and military security thinking goes; whether I’ll learn reasons for interfering in other countries’ troubles and what these decisions are based on; how terrorist attacks can be analysed for prevention of further attacks, how people can be empowered to withstand terror induced fear.

Moreover though, I’m interested in what the other attendants will have to say about current hot security topics like the Boston Marathon and the effect on national security regulations, the nuclear threats from North Korea and also the late Iron Lady’s achievements. Sharing knowledge is the best way to see the bigger picture and foster policies that save lives and sustain peace.

Read more:

www.reportlinker.com/ci02408/Security-Services.html

http://www.reportlinker.com/p01091124-summary/World-Security-Services-Industry.html

http://www.oecd.org/futures/16692437.pdf

Women Waging Peace, Swanee Hunt and Cristina Posa, Foreign Policy, No. 124 (May – Jun., 2001), pp. 38-47, published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC, Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3183189

http://www.inclusivesecurity.org/

http://www.securitymanagement.com/article/women-security-sector-006567?page=0%2C1

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nach-boston-anschlag-friedrich-will-videoueberwachung-ausweiten-a-895564.html