Gender approaches to Security

" Gender is not only about individual identity or what a society teaches us a man or woman, boy or girl should be like. Gender is also a way of structuring relations of power - whether that is within families where the man is often considered the head of the household, or in societies writ large, where men tend to be the ones in whose hands political, economic, religious and other forms of cultural power are concentrated. These two phenomena - individual identity and structures of power - are significantly related to each other. Hence it is the meanings and characteristics culturally associated with masculinity that make it appear ´natural`and just for men to have the power to govern their families and their societies ".

Cohn