Description
In the last decade, the use of indicators to track implementation of international peacebuilding and peacekeeping programmes, policies and practices has proliferated. Indicators are criticised by many scholars for their technocratic, standardised and colonializing effects. This article follows a different line of inquiry: Can indicators be transformative? Contemporary critiques place indicators as bureaucratic artefacts in a vacuum, detached and decontextualized from the nuances of human agency that develop, utilise and subvert them. I draw on feminist science and technology studies to conceptualise indicators as powerful gendered technologies of knowledge creation developed, used and subverted by institutional actors. Drawing upon interviews with institutional actors and Secretary-General Reports, I track institutional narratives of one indicator (out of 26) developed to capture implementation of the United Nations’ (UN) Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The indicator investigated tracks the number of senior gender experts employed within UN peacekeeping and special political missions. Tracing the narratives of progress, skill and location in the reporting of this indicator between 2010 and 2020 highlights strategies deployed by feminist and gender advocates within the UN to prompt positive gender change. Whilst indicators hold the danger of reinforcing neoliberal norms, the failure to conceptualise the potential for feminist and gender advocates to develop, utilise and/or subvert them smacks of hubris and serve to limit opportunities for meaningful transformation.
