Sabrina Karim, assistant professor of government, has been awarded a grant to assess the barriers affecting women’s participation in military and police forces involved in peacekeeping missions.

The project is jointly funded by the governments of Canada and Norway and is part of Canada’s five-year Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace Operations, which aims to increase the number of women in United Nations peace operations. Karim’s project will help Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), a nonprofit international foundation dedicated to improving the security of states and people within a framework of democratic governance, create evidence-based policy and program recommendations to reduce barriers to the deployment of uniformed women.

The $294,843 award will fund a postdoctoral researcher for 18 months, a research assistant and time for Karim to conduct the study.

In collaboration with DCAF, Karim will develop a comprehensive framework for assessing these barriers and, together with local research partners in eight countries, apply the methodology to the armed forces and police forces of those countries. The barrier assessment methodology will be made publicly available for use by any country to better understand the barriers to uniformed women’s participation in peacekeeping.

Karim is the author of the prize-winning “Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping: Women, Peace, and Security in Post-Conflict States” (Oxford University Press), co-written with Kyle Beardsley. Her current research focuses on three themes: assessing the impact of international involvement in security assistance to post-conflict states, understanding trends in post-conflict sexual violence, and exploring the relationship between gender norms and political violence.

Linda B. Glaser is a staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.