Transcript

Can national security be fully understood through hard power alone? 

Is it time for Australia to have a broader national security strategy – one that goes beyond defence and brings in federal, state and community perspectives? 

How can women’s experiences be integrated into a more traditional understanding of national security? 

In this episode, Sharryn Parker speaks with Professor Valerie Hudson and Dr Elise Stephenson about realism, power and the perspectives often missing from traditional security debates.

(This transcript is AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.) 

Elise Stephenson  

There's a huge amount of value in looking at that data across men and women and across folk in regional communities, low socio and economic, high socioeconomic, and looking at what do they care about? What do they perceive as national security issues? Like what are they worried about? And actually crafting a national interest around that.  

Valerie Hudson 

In the year 2025, Japan had a net loss of over 900,000 persons. And what that's doing to their society has incredible national security ramifications. But I'm sorry, the laser focus on power over doesn't give you any leverage on that. So power without persistence is defeat. 

Sharryn Parker 

Realists of today have a hard power or a might is right perspective of global affairs. In Australia, there is a focus on tangible issues of national interest like economics, credible military capability, strategic alliances as the foundations of our national security. Today we're joined by two academic experts whose work aims to shift and broaden how we think about the future of global affairs through the lens of a fuller realism. Dr Elise Stevenson from the Global Institute of Women's Leadership at the Australian National University is an award-winning researcher and policy expert whose work focuses on gender equality, leadership, and emerging sectors of national security. Her research asks an important question: As we build the technologies and the institutions of the future, who gets to shape them and lead them? Alongside Elise, We're also delighted to welcome Professor Valerie Hudson, a world-leading thinker and author on women, peace and security from Texas A&M University in the US. Ladies, welcome to the podcast. 

Valerie Hudson 

Thank you very much. 

Elise Stephenson 

Yeah, thank you.  

Sharryn Parker 

Professor Hudson, you're about to publish a book titled ‘A Fuller Realism’, where your core premise is that contemporary Western culture claims to view global politics subjectively and rationally. yet often excludes the perspectives and lived realities of half the population, women. You argue that concepts central to security studies such as national interest, power, threat assessments and strategic decision making become incomplete when women's experiences and expertise are not included, and that a fuller realism, in your view, would produce a more effective and prudent national security policy. So how do you find a listenership for that perspective? And has Australia taken sound steps toward a better national security practice?  

Valerie Hudson 

Thank you for that question. I do think that there is an audience for the book or I wouldn't have written it. Specifically, I wrote it for people that I view as being in the trenches. That is, those who've been working on WPS related issues within the national security bureaucracy, as well as those who are in the bureaucracy but have not really been exposed to a persuasive case for WPS, who might view themselves as traditional IR realists working, you know, on hardcore national security interests. As far as Australia is concerned, I was able to meet with your ambassador, Michelle O’Byrne, this morning, and she gave me quite an education on what Australia is doing to further WPS. And as an American in 2026, all I can do is doff my hat to you and say, “wow, thank you for the inspiration”.  

Sharryn Parker 

It's a really interesting perspective. You know, often Australians look at America and its ideals and you know, considers it something that y we strive to be, something we strive to, you know, to enjoy as a partner and an ally. Being American, especially a Texan in 2026, how does that feel for you and what are the challenges?  

Valerie Hudson 

Yes. Well, you know, the US was already looking to Australia for WPS advice the last time I was here in 2017. You d pioneered, at least here in the Asia Pacific, a new gender advisors course. You were including gender perspectives in the Talisman Sabre exercise of that year. It was an very exciting to be around those who were tangibly practically implementing WPS insights. So even though we viewed ourselves, of course, as partners, the US and Australia, at that time period, there was a sense in which we felt there was a vigour and an energy among the Australians that we were hoping to catch fire from. Of course now today the situation is very much changed. I think you know that the Secretary of War, as we now call him, Pete Hegseth, crowed about how he was going to dismantle WPS or ignore its legal requirements under US law. He did make a second tweet about forty eight hours afterwards in which he attempted to clarify that it was only the bad parts of WPS that he objected to and not the good parts. But none of us know what he would possibly consider to be one or the other because he's never told us. And so and certainly as far as the Department of War is concerned, WPS is not on the agenda. And of course, President Trump did do away with the two other sort of major bureaucratic foci for WPS, and that was USAID and then the State Department's Office of Global Women's Issues, with its ambassador who would have been, you know, the  parallel to Ambassador O’Byrne. So we're a very a very different time period now. And in fact, as a, for example, as a state employee of Texas, you know, gender in essence is a word that I'm not supposed to use. However, we're still holding the line at women. We still believe that women can be discussed in the state of Texas and in the United States. The, ironically this has meant that the Department of, now, War has become the last standing I can't say bastion, but the last standing reservoir of WPS informed work. But even there, the Gen Ad Military Specialty has been renamed human security and resilience. Again, I think s suggesting some allergies to certain words and phrasing. Sometimes the WPS in the US context has been seen as a DEI initiative where I think of it as anything but what they're thinking about as a DEI initiative. So yeah, that's kind of where we're at. And so we we're seeing the Australians now moving even further ahead of us in terms of WPS work at this point.  

Sharryn Parker  

Wow. Elise, you've spent the week with Valerie listening to her speak on not just her book, but on all subjects, you know, women, peace and security. What are your views on some of the things that that she's been saying? 

Elise Stephenson  

Yeah, well I think it's really timely. I suppose we are at this juncture in world affairs where we have seen backsliding, and this is not just coming from the US, although the US is probably one of the most significant players in this space and certainly in Australia we're trying to shore up and make sure that when we doing initiatives around gender equality and that we are kind of prosecuting Australia's national interest and our kind of national security interests. Really, I mean, I'm concerned that we don't let things slide too. And I think that what I know from the research and what we've seen here in Australia heartens me in some degrees and worries me in others. And, you know, we've had fantastic research come out of Melbourne with Sarah Meagher and Kate Reynolds, who've studied kind of some of the growing manosphere and anti-rights activism and also just kind of what are young men and boys thinking about and what are they worried about. And I think that there's some elements of that that is deeply concerning when it comes to gender equality and backsliding and some ideas around, you know, thinking gender equality has gone too far, for instance. However, you know, I would really caveat a lot of that, you know, and listen to what it says more broadly, which is that we've got population, you know, people in our population who do feel disenfranchised, who maybe aren't seeing the full ramifications of the ways in which the world is gendered around us and the impacts that has on everyone, not just women and girls, but you know, all genders, men and non-binary genders, and you know, kind of the full spectrum. So I think kind of on the one side, you know, there's a lot of waves of anti rights movements and there's some things to be concerned about when it comes to women, peace and security. On the other, kind of flip side, you know, we have got some serious legislation in Australia which embeds gender equality is a core value of Australia and really at the centre of our national interest. You know, we're talking about things that really are just fundamental to living a good life in a society together, that we can all, you know, have access to security and stability and there's work opportunities and there's, you know, kind of peace and we have these kind of homes that we can come home to that are safe and loving spaces. You know, I think at the one hand, and this is what Valerie's research from, you know, way back has demonstrated, is things like domestic and family violence. There are direct linkages between the home to the state. And you know, we do see those correlations between, you know, higher levels of domestic and family violence in a country with a state's propensity to kind of go to war and, you know, inflict conflict in the international arena. And so for me, I suppose we've got a lot of protections here in Australia. It is clear mandated that this matters to us, but we also know that the evidence says that this is really, really important. So I think for  me to hear more about Valerie's work and for ha to have her here in Australia at this moment reinforces. We don't have to backslide. There's a lot of hope in the world. And I think that we're in the right place here, Australia, to be doing some of the leadership on this. 

Sharryn Parker 

Noting all of what you've just said, how do we actually as Australians take the idea of gender and have the conversation with other Australians who might not agree? 

Elise Stephenson  

Yeah, I mean I think at the baseline everyone has a gender. And so gender equality is fundamentally about everyone being able to have rights, opportunities, you know, a good life, be protected, you know, have you know, be able to pursue the lives in which they want to be able to pursue them and in a safe and secure way. We have seen rising kind of polarisation across Australia. And as a response, I mean you saw in the budget recently, social cohesion is a huge focus here in Australia. So I think for me, you know, really I think we have to acknowledge where there is fear, where there is uncertainty, where people don't feel like this is a movement for them. I mean, I'm here to tell you it is. Gender equality is for everyone, and that is absolutely what we want. We've got phenomenal men and boys who are, you know, absolute stalwart advocates, but also, you know, standard bearers of equality. We've got fantastic women, non binary folk who are who are the same. We're all impacted by gender inequality. I mean, you think about, you know, whether men and kind of, you know, men are able to take time off their work to do parental leave and whether that's accepted in their workplace or in broader society. I mean, fortunately we're seeing a lot of these shifts and we know that they're not irrelevant to national security. And Valerie will be able to talk a little bit more about how some of those gendered elements are and aren't related. But I think for me, you know, I never want to walk away from one of those conversations. I think, you know, it's really important to establish common ground and for me that common ground is that I think fundamentally most people want for themselves and for their families to have a good life. And I think that gender equality is a fundamental part of that. And so I think if we can kind of agree on, yeah, we want to be able to have a good life and we want to be able to have live in a stable and prosperous society, then we're already half there in starting that conversation. And then it's just about how does that actually look for everyone so that everyone is able to benefit and kind of reap the rewards of society.  

Sharryn Parker  

Valerie, your book ‘A Fuller Realism’, talks about a lot of the issues that Elise has just raised. Are you actually addressing this to Americans or to everybody generally? Do you think Americans are ready to have a conversation that allows gender to come back to the centre?  

Valerie Hudson 

That's a brilliant question. I wrote it specifically for those I knew in America in the trenches on these issues. That's true. Yet I think that Elise and others who've been exposed to the work in this new manuscript will find I think much value in in what I hope to say, because what I'm saying is that we shouldn't be discarding any of the traditional insights of classical IR realism as it has been developed, pretty largely by men, but rather we should seek to rebuild it on a sure foundation by merging what men can tell us about security with what women can tell us about security. And you know, the interesting thing to me is that for example, male officers who were deployed to Afghanistan in Iraq, when I start talking about the linkages between women's security and national security, they absolutely get it. They saw it. Right. They lived it. They had to have intel on it. In other words, it's not a hard sell at all, right? Where it's been a harder sell, I think, is with those who perhaps have not seen these dynamics play out on the ground. And so you ask whether Americans are ready to have this conversation, and you know, the subsidiary question would be well, which Americans are you talking about? Because I think there are many who are ready to have this conversation. But I think there are others who feel that for ideological reasons they cannot even talk about things such as gender or women or things of this nature. But I think most reasonable people understand that if we're talking about sex, there are roughly half the population is female, roughly half the population is male, and that women know a lot about security. They may know about it in a different way than men know about it, but they know a lot about security and that that simply cannot be wished away by anyone who purports to call themselves a realist. 

Sharryn Parker 

So let's pull that thread then. What are some of the things that women see regarding security, national security, and how can we interplay what their experience into the more traditional or realist perspective of national security?  

Valerie Hudson  

Yeah, thank you very much. Again, coming from the American perspective where these things have become very stark, you may know that the current administration in the United States is very much focused on power and what they mean by power is a dominating power. We've seen the Trump very swiftly move towards the use of how hard power instruments in places such as Venezuela, Iran. And now potentially with the DOJ indictment of Raul Castro, perhaps, in Cuba. And the idea that this is a very classical realist ideal that that the national interest is defined in terms of power, maintaining it, increasing it, displaying it, balancing it, using it directly to coerce and compel others. It is not clear to me that Trump has a glowing record of success in defining the national interest solely in terms of power. And I think that what women would be able to suggest in a broader sense, not just to Donald Trump, but to those who believe that the national interest revolves around power, is that power without persistence is defeat. And that persistence is actually now in play. As I spoke about in a presentation I gave this week at ANU, ninety-five countries in the world now have sub replacement birth rates, and many of those have what we call extremely low birth rates, that is below 1.5 children per woman. And we have never in human history seen a group recover from extremely low birth rates. Well, as I, you know, I've said before, how is Palantir technologies going to help you with that? How is the new golden naval fleet that Trump intends to build? How is that going to help? I think that those ideas, very constrained ideas of what the national interest is, stands impotent before, if you will, one of the largest, most important national security issues that many nations face.  In the year 2025, Japan had a net loss of over 900,000 persons. A net loss of almost a million. And what that's doing to their society has incredible national security ramifications. But I'm sorry, the laser focus on power over doesn't give you any leverage on that. So power without persistence is defeat, and that's a challenge I think that women broach with classical IR realists.  

Elise Stephenson 

We also see some really interesting data coming out of the National Security College, who ran a major study just recently, which was launched a bit earlier this year, Community Consultation of over around 20,000 Australians. What was really interesting about that was actually you break down the data kind of by gender and you see some really interesting trends to that data, which relate back to some of the things that Valerie's been mentioning. So for instance, what we tended to see out of that data was that those who thought themselves as authoritative on national security in Australia tended to be men, so about 46% compared to only 23% of women. So that's a twenty-three percentage point gap. But it wasn't just that women were, you know, f like they felt perhaps less credible, but they actually demonstrated much more credibility in terms of or and authority and understanding of national security issues, which was absolutely fascinating. So they were in general able to expand in quite some detail on the various national security issues that were seen, going to a level of depth that perhaps we didn't see as much from some of the men respondents, which tended to be, you know, perceiving national security in more abstract terms, thinking much more broadly about concepts of war and so on. We also sort of saw some really interesting things about kind of the national security risks that women tended to kind of note as some of the most significant or important to them were things like climate change, for instance, and some of the disasters that come alongside that. Like that does create real national security risks. Coincidentally, those are also the same sorts of national security risks which are considered to be most likely. You know, these are the things that are going to happen well and truly before, you know, conflict breaks out in our region or Australia is invaded by another nation. And so you start to see again how these perspectives really matter. It's not that we shouldn't be concerned about conflict breaking out in our region or invasion of Australia, those things also matter. However, it also then goes to, okay, well who gets to make decisions on national security? And if women do have kind of show a different and more variegated conception of what is national security, well we want that too. And but we need to see women represented in national security institutions and agencies and doing the things of this kind of hard work. And funding allocation, that's really, really important. And we still see, even though Australian public service is majority female now in Australia. We do see differences across the agencies. So in myself and Professor Susan Harris Rimmer's kind of latest analysis, which was published in 2024 in a book on national security law in Australia, which is also, you know, some one of the outputs of National Security College, we kind of looked across 14 agencies in the national security, kind of, apparatus here in Australia. And we found only 4 that had kind of achieved representation of women at kind of equal kind of parity, if you will. There was only a handful that had achieved that at executive levels. And yes, then only one agency at the time that had achieved it in senior executive service. Now that's still quite remarkable. So we do see, tend to see that women are still a little bit overrepresented when it comes to, you know, social services, health, education as opposed to the national security fields. And although Australia is leading in globally in many ways when it comes to women's representation in the military at about 21%, it's still only 21%. And we do have to think about these agencies and these institutions as significant agencies and institutions with significant rights and responsibilities. They have special immunities too, and they have enormous swathes of funding comparative to other elements of our society and, you know, contributions that we might be putting that funding towards. So we have to think about, really seriously, who's actually represented and whose interests are being represented. And I think goes back to what Valerie said before. What is the national interest? How do we define that? And I think, you know, I take heart that Foreign Minister Penny Wong defines it as security and prosperity. And I think that prosperity piece is really, really important 'cause it also talks to quality of n life, not just persistence of life. 

Sharryn Parker  

Fantastic. Yeah. Look, it's a really great roundup of the Community Consultations that we've just done. Seeing some of those figures come through was quite stunning. I guess the next question is how do we take this academic exercise as it was and turn it into something practical? So, you know, what might the differences be between the way Australia might deal with this versus how you think, Valerie, America might deal with this in the next couple of years? 

Valerie Hudson 

Well, I think the move to practicality is one that is dependent upon a move to a more inclusive of fuller language about realism. And that's sort of why after making a strong empirical case in most of my research career about why women matter to national security, I've now turned to this, sort of, more conceptual approach to looking at realism because I think you need to meet people where they're at and at least the people who are running national security and foreign policy in America at the current time have adopted very obviously the language of what we might call classical realism. And so my intent is to put new wine in old bottles. So for example, as we spoke about the national interest, I started to suggest that there's more than power, that persistence is part of it as well. And when you do that, when you put that new wine in that old bottle, it changes the whole bottle, doesn't it? And you begin to think now in terms not solely of increasing power, I mean displaying power, but also in terms of persistence, right? And as Elise has said, looking at the quality of that persistence as well. So now you've broadened what the national interest means and what would be on your national security, you know, agenda. So this current book, as contrasted with my previous books, is an attempt to reach the people that I believe exist in the American national security establishment who are open to seeing that the concepts that they've been using are fine, but have been limited and blinkered by ignoring women's perspectives, women's skills, women's experiences. So I think there is an audience that will see this not as some sort of blasted DEI accommodation of, you know, I think they will actually see it as, ‘you know, that's right. I think I have been seeing this a little too narrowly. Let's see how changing our concepts of the national interest then in a natural and organic way begin to change how we go about meeting, for example, threats’. So in the third part of the book, I talk extensively about how we can mix male and female stereotypical threat responses in order to meet threats in a much more robust and effective way. So I have examples of what I call fight and befriend, as well as examples of what I call tend and flight, that I think speak to some of the greatest debacles in US foreign policy in recent history, and how we could move forward on a sure, more secure foundation. And I do believe the conceptual becomes the practical in this way. But that's just my viewpoint. I know Australia's on a very different page with regard to these issues, and so perhaps they can be addressed in a different way.  

Sharryn Parker 

What do you think, Elise? Do you think Australia is there yet? 

Elise Stephenson 

Yes, look, I think it is in definitely in a different place to the US. Sorry, Valerie, thankfully. But I think that one of the things I would say, actually, you know, talking about kind of how can we make some of these academic exercises practical. I mean, I think that the National Security College's, you know, 20,000 person consultation, like that's impressive, right? When we talk about your average polling data, right? Like polling companies are looking at, well, you know, sometimes it's a thousand people, you know, representative of the voting population. Now 20,000 people, I mean, sure, there are there are things that we could improve, right? But I actually think there's a huge amount of value in looking at that data across men and women and across folk in regional communities, low socio and economic, high socioeconomic, and looking at what do they care about? What do they perceive as national security issues? Like what are they worried about? And actually crafting a national interest around that, I think, is really, really critical. And I think we've got lots of good ideas that flow from that. I mean, I've just spent the last week doing two analyses of the federal budget, kind of applying a bit of a gender lens, looking at how does the budget kind of provisions impact men and women and others across society. And I was focused on the climate change budgets and I was focused on defence and national security. And I mean there's some really, really easy wins in here. I mean, I think that right now, I don't know that our response to climate change, for instance, is working and that it is gender responsive and all of these other sorts of things. And then when you look at the national security, like what people worry about when it comes to national security risks, they're worried about climate change. Like we are over reliant on the ADF in disaster situations, which then opens us up to other kind of threats too, right? What if we had resourced community groups? But we what if we'd resourced mothers' groups connected across rural and, you know, urban Australia. Like why does the primary response vehicle have to be the ADF? Well, they're well-funded and they're capable and you know, they're trusted and they're equipped. That's wonderful. But we also have people out there in the community already who can do a lot of this work. I think that a gendered analysis of budgets might suggest actually it doesn't always have to be those players and we can tackle some of these national security issues in in different ways. So I think that that's, you know there's something to be kind of converted there and kind of putting our money where our mouth is or where our values are and our interest is a little bit more. But there's a lot more that we can be doing too. And I think for Australia, you know, I mean, I'm probably less so of the realist school of thought. And I think in some ways so is Australian doctrine. I think that in certainly there's the realists out there, but I think that there is also alternative approaches that arise in Australia. And we do have a more solid kind of foreign First Nations foreign policy stance, for instance, nascent, if there. And I think that for some of these concepts and hearing Valerie speak, I mean I think that it's really timely for Australia. I think that we are absolutely already on the right track. What I would like to see is just a little bit more investment and concrete attention. Like we've got the parliamentary inquiry into gender equality as a national security and economic imperative right now. I think that we need to make sure that we are ramping up our focus on both internal matters to Australia and our intern external matters in international affairs and making sure that we're filling some of those gaps that I think the US has, kind of, retracted from internationally. I think that peace and stability everywhere in the world matters for peace and stability here in Australia. Gender equality is central to that. We must make sure that our funding and our kind of standing up for what's right there is really quite solid. 

Sharryn Parker 

So, you know, if I can round out this conversation, we have, or Australia has a national defence strategy, you know, and that is a fantastic thing. I think the next conversation we need to have internal to Australia is across all the federal, state, community departments. And it might actually be time for a national security strategy, which is obviously a broader beast. Who might lead that? And is there an element of what we've just discussed today around, you know, this idea of realism in the modern world, leaning toward all of those extremely, you know, power perspectives of national security. Is there the time and is there the space for it at the moment?  

Elise Stephenson 

I mean, I would really lean on Valerie's work here, right? So her work really clearly connects what happens at a domestic level with what happens internationally. And it really c connects that gender inequality in the home with state security writ large. So for that reason, and I think that we are coming around to this. I think the hard kind of realist approach has always seen national security primarily between states. I think that we are seeing much more human security approaches, which is, well, okay, it's all very well that we're not getting invaded by, I don't know, wherever. But if I have to if I can't walk home to my car after we meet tonight 'cause I'm afraid of getting, you know, bashed, harassed, assaulted, like that's not security either. I mean, you look at the domestic violence statistics around Australia, you know, far more women are likely to be killed by domestic and family violence than your average year when it comes to terrorism or extremism in Australia. Now we've had some exceptional cases in recent history, but having a look at where some of these things are embedded and just how normalized, I suppose, we're willing to accept some breaches of security but not others, I think that that warrants a conversation. But as I said before, you know, Susan Harris Rimmer and I, we did analysis of gender across 14 different agencies that were broadly in that national security scope. This budget analysis that we've just done, similar but there were a ton of agencies that we didn't analyse that are relevant to national security. What I would say is that everyone is trying to maintain their scope and do what they do very, very well. And so I understand when, you know, national security agencies aren't that keen to view domestic violence as a national security threat, because they may perceive that as scope creep. And there are other agencies out there that can do that. By the same token, you have to recognize that it is a national security threat. So we would like to see. We've got phenomenal resourcing to a lot of our national security agencies, which is unmatched in a lot of these other areas dealing with other securitised issues. So I would love to see it's some of that sharing, but also sharing of knowledge and frameworks. And you know, we've got some really rigorous frameworks in the national security sector that could be shared with social services and the rest and vice versa. Yeah. Right. I think it does require some vision though. Maybe the timing is right though, because we are having conversations around social cohesion and everything goes from education and our schooling system right through to the national security. So I actually think that we have an opportunity. I think the timing's right. it'll be difficult though.  

Sharryn Parker 

I don't think that Australians are blind to that. You know, the National Security College is approached by Services Australia. They are approached by the Red Cross. These are all people who are concerned around what we might call, you know, of the national interest and you know, but n maybe not quite the national security banner sits over the top of them. But these people who are approaching us are very, very convinced that these are issues and if we can actually put page to some of their concerns. There might actually be more space for a national security discussion and a national security strategy that then includes all of us and allows us to be gold standard world best.  

Elise Stephenson 

Absolutely. And there's two things I'd say on that. Firstly, that is phenomenal and that's wonderful that you're getting those kind of approaches. And one other thing that's wonderful about that is a lot of those domains are female dominated. So we are s like I think that that's a huge opportunity, right? That's really fantastic. But the second point is that we don't want to securitise the whole of society either. And so I think there's that real balance between when you securitise something, you do give it a level of kind of weight, you know, like it or not, weight, respect, credence, funding, all of the things that come with it, then if we apply a securitised approach to the whole of society, I don't know that that's necessarily a good thing too. So I think there's a happy medium. I think we have to realise that all facets of society, whether it might be, you know, our access to health and education and housing and all of those things, that that does feed into social cohesion, it does feel feed into polarisation, therefore it does feed into national security. But if we over securitise it, I'm not sure that's helpful either. So it may be somewhere in the middle there.  

Valerie Hudson 

I think Australia can learn from a misstep I think that the US made was that WPS was always outward facing for the United States of America. So we were quite happy to train partner militaries in WPS and gender mainstreaming and things of this nature. But we were never willing to look inside our own borders and ask how secure from violence are women in our society? Do we have women who are able at the at the proper tables to express women's perspectives on national security? It was never inward facing because it would be way too controversial. But in my own work I've tried to suggest that we need to move away from this concept of the warrior. And the warrior is kind of a separate, sacred male figure and talk more about the defender. I often use the quote that J.R.R Tolkien had his character Faramir say in The Lord of the Rings, which is, you know, “I do not love the bright sword for its shine. I don't love the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend”. And when we start thinking then in terms of defenders and not warriors, then we begin to realise that women are extremely important defenders of the national interest. And that changes, I think, dramatically what emphasis we would place on internal issues that affect our persistence and affect the ability of women to undertake their roles as defenders and to add to the national persistence. So I think that, again, you know, conceptual shifts, WPS not as outward facing only, but as inward and outward facing is another one of those I think it's new wine that can still be put in old bottles, right? It can still be understood in the language that we currently have, but it begins to stretch it and as it stretches it, it begins to change our priorities in our programming and even our dialogues. 

Sharryn Parker 

Yeah, great. Look, if I can have, if I can pose one final question to you both, what gives you optimism about the future of global leadership and the issue of gender, women, peace and security?  

Valerie Hudson 

Have you met any young women here at ANU lately? I'm sure you have. I just sat down with about twenty of them talking about these issues and their intelligence, their passion, their skill sets are just extraordinary. We have extraordinary women in Australia. We have extraordinary women in the United States of America. And, oh, by the way, we're 51% of the population. We're not going anywhere. So I know that it is easy to be depressed about what I've called the great receding, the receding of things such as the rules-based international order or of an emphasis on human rights or you know, the value of things such as looking at women. And yet I see that that that receding is actually, is actually a more difficult task when you think about it, because the reality that all of us live is that women are extremely important. Go to any household here in Australia and ask if the woman of the house is dispensable. You know, no one will say that she is, right? And so we know from our own practical experience that women and men must stand together, merge their perspectives and their talents and experiences and that is the only way to bring security to households in our countries, but also to our country itself. 

Elise Stephenson 

Yeah, I think what gives me hope, I think we do have good, strong legislative environment here in Australia, which I think protects us on a lot of measures, but allows us to really be leading in others. You know, Australia's eSafety Commissioner is truly world leading and does phenomenal work when it comes to online violence and you know, just an absolute yeah gun. And that having that institution is just so critical in a in a realm where we're not actually seeing the kind of international regulations that we perhaps need around some of the tech use and development that's rapidly accelerating. So I think we've got some leading institutions here in Australia and we've got leading leaders of those institutions too and phenomenal policymakers. I mean, I'm an academic, you know, I do spend a fair amount of my time criticising, you know, various policy decisions, program decisions, etc. of governments globally. I am also really heartened. I do think we've got some real seeds of hope here in Australia. And I am always very proud, you know. I think myself and my fellows at the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the ANU, we really talk about being kind of a critical feminist friend. And that is, of course, we're going to critique. We're academics, you it's part of our job. But we are a friend, and we are always feminist. And that friendship piece means that by partnering with government, I think that also academics, I think that young folk, you know, we can help create a better Australia, a better globe by partnering on some of these policies that really, really matter. So I would love to see more collaboration. I think that's a really strong point. I would love to see us kind of reinforce and get behind some of the leading institutions and leaders who are really, you know, pushing against some pretty big waves that are hitting us right now. And I think that we can do a little bit more to support that. But I think that there's ultimately quite a lot of hope out there and I would love to see that just be a little bit more joined up and bring a few more people into the circle so that we can kind of grow a bit and be a bit stronger.  

Sharryn Parker 

And if we can distill that final comment, join it up, I think is really important for our listeners today. Let's find ways to actually go ahead and do that. And as a final comment, women are not at a zero balance in leadership positions across federal institutions and positions of importance in Australia. We have Jenny Wilkinson as the Secretary to the Treasury, Krissy Barrett is the AFP Commissioner, Michelle Bullock is the Governor of the RBA. And Stephanie Foster is the Secretary of Home Affairs. And very soon, Megan Quinn will step in as the Secretary of Defence, and Lieutenant General Susan Coyle will take over as the Chief of Army. So we're already seeing this style of a fuller realism in play here in Australia. These women are not taking up the positions as a symbolic gesture. These women are highly qualified, they are prepared, they are deeply ready for these roles and I hope that that Australia sees this as a new horizon and an effort to actually join it up and create what I think might actually be a fuller realism. We'll see how we go. Thank you both for joining the National Security Podcast today.  

Valerie Hudson 

Thank you very much.  

Elise Stephenson 

Thank you.