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good morning everybody as Darrell said I'm Alex Bell I'm the senior policy director at the Center for arms control and non-proliferation and I'd like to thank arms control Association for hosting this event and adding this panel breaking barriers to gender inclusivity in the nuclear policy field to the main lineup it's not the sort of session that usually makes it into the main line up at a hard security conference even if it merits a breakout session the attendees tend to be women and that shouldn't be the case there are too many nuclear threats in this world and not enough people helping to reduce them leaving half of our population on the bench is it gonna make things any easier on us women and people of color bring their own unique perspectives to the debate and those perspectives can help us unlock solutions in fact our problems may seem so unmanageable because maybe we've never actually had enough diversity at the table fortunately our two speakers today have been working to change that it would take most of the day to outline the full biographies of ambassador Bonnie Jenkins and Heather Hobart so I will attempt to convey just a few of their tremendous accomplishments ambassador Bonnie Jenkins is the founder and executive director of women of color advancing peace security and conflict transformation everything needs an acronym in DC and W Capps is the acronym here she is a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution from 2009 to 2017 she was an ambassador at the u.s. Department of State where she served as the coordinator for Threat Reduction programs in the Bureau of international security and non-proliferation bonnie holds a PhD in international relations from the University of Virginia along with four other degrees she is a retired naval reserve officer and served as counsel on the National Commission on terrorist attacks upon the United States also called the 9/11 Commission she is also a member of the ACA Board of Directors heather Hobart is the director of the new models of policy change project at new America's political reform program previously she ran the national security network and held senior positions in the White House and State Department under President Bill Clinton and worked on Capitol Hill and for the International Crisis Group she holds degrees from brown and George Chintan universities she's in contributor to New York magazine and co-host dres Burt podcasts and frequently appears in print media and broadcast media in short I don't think we can find two better women to talk about gender inclusivity in the field of nuclear policy so first things first Heather you recently produced consensual straitjacket for decades of women in nuclear security this is a study in which both body and I participated I'll note that the launch happened just a few weeks ago Heather and Bonnie were on the panel with the highest-ranking woman at NATO ever and a woman who's also talked about as possibly being a candidate to be the first female Secretary of Defense the room was packed there were seven men there seven total I'm pretty sure in the DC security field if you had Rose Gottemoeller and Michele Flournoy and these two women discussing annex 7 section 2 Clause B the 1997 Defense Authorization Act you'd have more than seven men there for it so why is it that you had this incredible lineup talking about this incredible panel and barely a man to speak of a court there was even a reception afterwards and I don't know what was happening there um but we can get into why men tend to avoid subjects of this kind panels of this kind in the discussion but first Heather can you talk a little bit about the motivation behind consensual straitjacket Flournoy again for that title which over in public settings but I want to start out with the question of so why should this topic be a mainstream panel topic and actually ambassador Burt teed it up really well for us on the preceding panel when he said if we're going to have a future for arms control we need a new generation of talent and a new generation of interest and something you notice if you look at the field is that you've got as in many fields you've got a really quite broad interesting representation at the most junior levels although not of course at the levels it was and many of us were coming up in the field and you simply couldn't be a respected security professional without understanding nuclear deterrence but still it's not bad we have plenty of young people who express interest in the field and then they kind of trickle away and we're not retaining talent in this field and we're not retaining diverse talent and so there's a question of why second I'm actually something else that was said on the panel and something that Mort Halperin himself frequently says you know why do we still go in what other branch of security policy do we still think that the the most defining texts are from the 50s and 60s in what other field do we not think that sort of dogma and doctrine have moved on that the technological and political revolutions of the last 50 years have made changes that should be reflected in our core doctrine so are there some ways in which this field is is profoundly stuck or is profoundly missing out on opportunities and might that in some way be connected to some of the frustrations that younger people in the field have expressed about the fields failure to as Michelle puts it look more like the country that we serve so we started out to ask some of those questions and also to explore how frankly in other parts of security policy there's grown up a real strong literature over the last 20 or 30 years documenting connections between gender inclusivity and better and more stable policy outcomes so for example conflict and peace negotiations many of you may have heard the finding that peace deals are more than 30 percent more likely to last if you have women on the negotiating teams the World Bank has found that loans are much less likely to go into foreclosure when women were on the loan making committee and of course there's so much literature from Harvard Business School about how diverse boards and diverse governing structures produce more stable outcomes fewer fewer instances of groupthink in the private sector that I could sit here all day and just recite it to you so but but interestingly all of that discourse hasn't really transitioned into into the nuclear field at all so we set out to find out what's the experience of people like bonnie and alex and rose and michelle and ambassador kennedy who i saw in the audience and about two dozen women overall who have as we all know had had these jobs and you know just the point that I'll sort of stop with as an introductory point it's I think no accident that actually arms control and non-proliferation field emerge and really flourish and do amazing creative work just about at the same moment that American society and the elites of American security policy crack open and start letting in people who look like the three of us you know the moment where women are admitted to the service academies and the Ivy League's and married women are allowed to stay in the Foreign Service and people of color start pushing back against some of the discrimination that had kept them out of these settings and so you can't tell the history of innovation in nuclear policy without telling the story of the diversification of the American national security establishment and so if one of those has ground to a halt we need to worry about the other one so what do you think is one of the most interesting things you learned in doing this study the perseverance of the women who stayed in the field which I think it can be very easy to to sort of either say Oh everything is fine because there are so many great women in the field like the ones I just named off or everything is terrible and there's no in-between but that universally every single person we interviewed said there is a tax that you pay being a woman or a person of color or a twice minority in this field and that just on top of doing your job there's this other tax that you have to pay and constantly worrying am I being taken seriously will I ever be taken seriously as a policy person now that I'm up here talking to you on a gender panel do you think that I'm too nice not nice enough and that that's a finding again that we found in other areas of American life you've heard a lot about it but it had it's never been expressed in this field it's not a conversation we've had and that it was every single person whether they thought sexism had impinged on their career or hadn't all of them thought there was this extra weight that they carry which again as Alex said when you're also carrying the weight of trying to prevent nuclear war figure out how to manage weapons safely figure out how to deescalate arms races that's a big deal if some of your staffers are also carrying this extra burden Thanks so funny you've had an amazing career in and out of the government you could have done myriad things when you left the Obama administration what motivated you to found wks thanks Alex first of all I want to say thanks to agricultural Association for having me and for doing this panel I think it's really a sign of you know different discussions that we need to have in these kind of environments and of course it's an honor to be up here on the stage with my colleagues here Alex and Heather well when I left when I left government in 2017 you know like most people you take a little break you know take four months just to figure out where I am and the organization I started was really something I had been thinking about for quite some time and really it's because you know I've been in this field for many many years and I've truly enjoy the work of arms control disarmament Threat Reduction security issues very much but it was very much world where it was not very many people who look like me in terms of people of color on top of that you know having also not as many women in the field and so I felt that I wanted to do something one to give back but also to see what I could do to try to help bring more voices into this area into these areas that I've been working in but the recognition that we can all benefit from more diverse voices this is not an issue that is just for any particular group pretty particularly gender this is really an issue for all of us in terms of how do we make sure that the policies that we have are the best that we can have particularly since the issues that we're dealing with are very difficult issues and we can benefit by having people around the room who bring in different ideas and perspectives and really different ways of looking at a problem that may not be represented in the dominant viewpoint and I think one of the things that we suffer from is when you don't have people around a room who test your test your views and tests are just test the way you're thinking about something and say you know maybe you should look at it this way or maybe you know let me just give this point of view and you know and it can bring a different lens to it and so I wanted to start this organization that I did really because I wanted to have that discussion and have that space which really is not there oh that's really why I started the organization I would it's been really beneficial because it's allowed me to meet a lot of women and women of color and people of color who are young and who want to get into this field and if you're very very they have a very difficult time figuring out how to do it because they don't see a lot of people who look like themselves in the places that they go they are often questioned by their friends and parents about why are you getting into this when you probably should be doing something else and it's hard to make the argument when they don't see others like themselves or they don't get the encouragement they don't have the mentors out there to encourage them to keep at this and keep doing it and for those who may be in the field at an early age it's difficult to want to find a rationale to stay so the goal of your organization is really to have a space for these kind of discussions to to bring more people into an intervention people into it and I can say for myself I got into this field not because I plan to do it I was very lucky to be at a place where I learned about the field of art control and non-proliferation disarmament and thought it was fascinating and I said this is something I wanted to do I didn't have a lot of people of color who were mentors at the time but it's something I wanted to do and I decided to do it and I as I speak to other young people or people of color a lot of them also say you know I got into this field because a professor said I should take a course or the all these kind of random things have happened when they learned about the field and realize this is something they wanted to do so in order to diversify the discussion you have to bring more people at the table and you have to interest people earlier in their lives and to also highlight the ones who are doing it to make sure that we keep them in the field so that's basically why I started it's been really really a very rewarding effort so far right how do you feel like the the community hard security community in DC has sort of accepted this new group or are you feeling like you're being integrated or you sort of pushing your way into discussions I think it's beneficial that I work with a lot of colleagues who've been working there for very long so I've been fortunate to find that I've been accepted to in these kind of settings and you know with the with last week with Heather and and you know at the conversation we have there so I think it's helped to bring that extra perspective in there in these discussions I also think that we're seeing a lot more discussion right now on gender national security nuclear policy issues my only concern is that it continues and that it doesn't snotface and that there is a continued recognition that we need to do this in the long term and then that goes into worries of the culture so a common refrain from people who sort of maybe tend not to come to sessions like this thing making too big of a deal out of this what's the difference that's actually made people should only get things based on merit and so they do and it's fine and we really are like spending too much time why is it that improving you touched a little bit on this Heather but why is it that improving diversity will lead to better policy outcomes for specifically for the nuclear policy field well I think you have to take a step back and say it's not just it's it's important in nuclear field but it's important overall in our u.s. policies and any policy to have the voice and then we talked a little about why but I think you need to think in terms of the larger issue of you need to have people who look like America in decision-making in policies that affect Americans and affect our policies and what we do overseas which may be affecting people who look like people who are diverse and there's a better chance that our policies might actually be successful particularly for looking at Paul's foreign policy to affect people who different culture the new dominant culture here if you have people who understand that culture who are part of those discussions so I think you have to have them here for diversity here to reflect what we see here but also overseas and I think in a nuclear policy area where you really don't see very much you know these are issues that affect everyone and these are issues that in many ways things that we have done in the past a reflection of the fact that you haven't had people at the table and decisions that were made about you know where we test and you know the ramifications that many people of color are still suffering from in terms of things that we did and things that we decided if you if you're looking particularly now and we look at the conversation we just heard about a new way of looking at arms control and what we should be doing in the future is very important that if we're starting a new way of looking at it you know strengthening RF controllers it has been but looking at it in a different way we need to make sure that at this point we have those diverse voices to make sure that decisions that are made reflect different viewpoints they're not negative in terms of how they affect any particular group and that we make sure that they are the best policies they can people to really concrete points on that Alex directly for the nuclear community the women we interviewed told us over and over again that there was a particular priesthood Silverbacks sort of the idea that at the core of the nuclear community is this very small self-sustaining elite that had a particular sort of way you needed to look way you needed to act and corpus of knowledge that you needed to master before you could be taken seriously in that context and that's what Michele Flournoy refers to as the consensual straightjacket and her description of it is basically you agree that you will look and act a certain way and that you will restrict your thinking in a certain way and that is the cost of getting inside the heart of this community and number one in any field and I don't care what the characteristics are that's a recipe for failure right there and so we should be very concerned that that's such a common perception of the field and number two we heard again and again from these brilliant and accomplished professionals I have a phrase I like to use about myself that I've had a good career for a man and all of these women are people including my two colleagues on the stage are people who've had a good career for anybody of any gender or appearance and that these people were saying I opted out of hardcore nuclear deterrence doctrine work because it was too unwelcoming to me and my ideas and I moved on and that should be that should be a red flag for this community whether you care about gender and representation and you should for all the reasons Bonnie said but even if you don't you are hemorrhaging talent and that is a problem at a moment we're all across the national security field we have problems attracting talent we have problems keeping talent we have a traffic failure even though there have been women and others in the field since the beginning we don't communicate that so this is it's it's a it's a sheer at some level it's a sheer numbers and creativity problem so deep is there an inherent discomfort in the nuclear policy field for traits skills attributes that are often associated with femininity into conversations about hard security specifically in nuclear weapons the idea that that emotion should be completely separate from any discussion of nuclear deterrence well I think that I mean yes I think there definitely is certain beliefs about the way in which one acts or behaves in the field of nuclear security issues to hold emotional thing I think is very there's two ways this Cobra is looking at one is it's tied to the whole female perspective the female role and it could be you know use as a way to constrain use as a way to limit involvement by women by saying you're being so emotional that's a women trait that's a weak trait you can't have that if you're in these hard security areas and so not only is it constraining in terms of what's being said but it's also a way that can be used to make people feel as if they're not doing the right thing and they should not be participating because they cannot do it the way it's supposed to be done and I think that that's probably true and other traits as well that people may have they may not fit the stereotypical way in which one is supposed to behave and act and the problem with that is that it's an also a way of turning people off to being part of something if they feel they're who they are and the way they are is not accepted or is not well that I have to change the way I am if I'm going to be in this space and that could be a real turnoff for people so you know it's a it's a way in which you know it keeps it keeps as Heather said it keeps the priesthood one way by saying you have to conform but it has it that it has a negative effect of making the feel less diverse and that's gender yeah we heard we heard a couple different ways this this plays out and number one I'm thinking of somebody we interviewed who's still at the Defense Department who said you know one of the reasons I shifted jobs is that I did find this work emotionally very draining because I never stopped thinking about the reality of what I was talking about but there wasn't any that perspective that when we talked about it in the dry language that we use there's meaning behind that was not a welcomed perspective so I had to go home and offload it and eventually I decided I just needed to offload myself into another part of the Defense Department um second is again this this extra tax because if you feel that you're constantly under a microscope Oh is she gonna get all emotional about this that is an extra level of burden that again people who in any way don't fit the dominant paradigm carry through their days and and actually you know again if you think about some of the greatest the greatest hits and the success of American arms control it's when leaders mostly men actually we're allowed to get kind of emotional I mean think of Reagan at Reykjavik right like that's a very that's a very emotion for presentation so it's quite possible that we've been missing something the third point that I would mention because it's it there are coping strategies and one of the things all three of us on stage have worked in international negotiations mine were on the conventional arms side and we heard from our interviewees that people skills soft skills emotional Intel chuckle to negotiations we all know that right you don't you don't you don't need me to write a report to tell you that but the interest at the very same qualities that women professionals we're having to be super careful not to display in the office we're incredibly useful when going out and working with counterparts or listening to counterparts and trying to understand counterparts so you know in fact women are already using whatever skills and talents they bring and particularly the ones that they've that we've been socialized to have more of to help y'all out along the way and we might do even better the more we have systems and interestingly one of the things that really holds women back is promotion systems which are not designed to to to validate or to to score you know how good are you how good are you at getting the delegate to tell you what their what their what their instructions are sometimes because they think you're too dumb to understand but okay whatever works you know there's not something in how we rate and promote government employees that factors that in so so the emotional the women are emotional thing cuts a number of ways and I just want to add to that I mean I think Heather's right because I think the qualities that you mentioned are very good in terms of being able to be successful in negotiations which are a lot of qualities that are not highlighted but the problem is that because the narrative is not controlled by people who recognize those as being good qualities they're not they're not celebrated or they're they're put into a phrase of looking at it like it's a not a good thing in reality it is good but because we can't we don't control that narrative the narrative is being defined by those who say that's not a good thing so you know you have to know that you have those qualities and you know in yourself that these are good things that's got to make for good negotiations despite the fact that the narrative says they're not yeah I yeah just makes me think about the fact I don't think I've ever heard a colleague working in mass atrocities you know genocide prevention ever talk about being told they're being too emotional when dealing with this is very you know potentially dangerous situation I can't think of anything more dangerous than the breakout of nuclear war but yet there's this sort of wall to not talk about the human factor that would be involved switching gears a little what are the specific steps that you think that we can take to further integrate women to be at sort of equal levels in the field and specifically the cultural barriers that are inside these institutions that that may make it a little bit more difficult to make those Corrections well I mentioned performance reviews which is something we don't always think of I also want to be sure we talked about mentoring which Bonnie alluded to and one of the things that we found in our study that this and you all again you all know this instinctively this is an incredibly networked and mentorship dependent field and every one of the women we interviewed talked about mentorship relationships as being really important to her career and in most cases those were lots of men and lots of women's so the field is is very tightly knit together one of the things we didn't do that I really wanted to do is kind of draw a map because all of the women particularly the ones my age and older tended to go back to a few key nodes who you could all probably guess who they are but and again both male and female Michele Flournoy talks about the sort of negative aspect of mentoring being the mini-me and I think this is a human trait that we all have men and women that we pick people to mentor because oh she reminds me of me at that age and the challenge for all of us is to really branch out beyond that and pick people to mentor because we think they'll add something important to the field um the other point about mentoring I'm actually personally someone who was never very good at being mentored I never could figure out I never could figure out how I'm kind of stubborn those of you who know me know but the there's a model that in other sectors sort of rather than mentorship you think about it as sponsorship that explicitly you and the other person are entering into a long-term relationship where you both are gonna do things for each other I mean the dirty little secret is if you pick your mentees well it gives you a big leg up at the middle and senior levels both because they make you look really good and their information networks for you so to think about it as sort of long building long term networks which is maybe something we don't talk about enough there is a whole raft of sort of ways we can make offices more human-friendly which people are probably familiar with and there's lots of details but the third point bonnie referenced which is so important is that people coming into the field are choosing to stay in the field still don't see people who look like us as representative of the field so we can get all hung up on how many women do you hire and how many women do you promote but also who are you choosing to represent your organization at events who when you get interview requests who are you sending out who are you having talked to the media or when you write reports who are you citing sort of are we actually creating a field that looks like the field we say we want and those are steps that anybody in here can take whether you run an organization whether you're in a managerial position or whether you're not in a managerial position but we all we all have choices about as you say I was creating a culture and reflecting to the outside a culture that looks more as Bonnie said that looks more like the country and the world that we're coming from yeah and just to build on those points I mean culture is obviously a fundamental part of all of this not just a culture in the organization itself but the culture in which we all live and when you're thinking about changing the culture or organization you have to understand that we live in a culture that has certain beliefs and certain ways of looking at things and very often you will have people in a culture who who maybe even want to make a change and want to be more diverse but because we've all grown up in a culture that depicts perception as the perceptions of people and the perceptions of women and people of color you kind of have to find a way to step outside of that and and understand what's what's happening and where those beliefs come from and make a decision that I'm going to be doing something different so part of it is awareness awareness of the culture you're in the culture that you're trying to make a change and of course the culture in your organization and so you want to change that culture but you have to be first of all aware of what is in your brain that you don't even think about because that's what we've grown up in and then this you have to be also reminded regularly of things that you might be doing that you may not recognize is it's perpetuating that culture so even if you say we're going to bring in you know five women and five people who are diverse backgrounds and people who live outside DC and people who have different economic backgrounds in order to maintain that diversity and maintain a desire for people to stay in that environment you have to understand that you're gonna have to be reminded that you have to keep doing things to make them want to stay and to make them feel included because you're in a culture that tells you that you're that that's not necessarily the way it has to be and not only the culture of the US and the culture organization but the culture or the nuclear the nuclear policy you could policy world and then it's action you know all of this is based on action part you know part of us awareness understanding culture understanding what you're trying to do but a lot of its action and I one of my favorite things that I talk about what people ask me what action is I always refer to the movie hidden figures and the role that Kevin Costner played when there was a scene where one of the three women always had - there was a the woman had to always run to use a ladies restroom because it was segregation and she couldn't use a room the restroom where she was working because it's only for white women and there's a scene where Kevin Costner's he runs out he takes like a hammer or something and he knocks down the sign that says for colored only and the reason why that was a moving point in the movie is because he took an action that was totally against what everybody was saying you're supposed to do and you know and did something and he took action and everybody recognized that and by being a leader and taking that action that sent a ripple around everyone else understand that something is going to change we have to change or mindset has to change and not to say that you know you knock down something everything's going to be different because we're in a culture where you look that's what you you you're ingrained to think a certain way but I use that as an example say if you want to take action you have to do something and you have to show that you want to be different or things are going to be different or people need to think differently and you have to start somewhere so in that idea it's easy to do public naming and shaming of things like Mantle's man only panels and Marta khals which is man only articles a trademark that term along with Kelsey Davenport there in the back we had noticed that they were tons of articles in the New York Times Washington Post etc that we're quoting men from the communities sometimes four and five at a time and men were sending it around and saying oh isn't this great look at all the quotes from the community with no no recognition that there were no women and any of these articles but those are things that are easy to point out we still struggle with but you know they're very public what about the things in an organization like pay gap or leadership structure or the composition of boards of directors that are sort of more private things how do you get it those it's actually in my experience the public conversation helps you get at the private things and this is challenging because not all of us are comfortable in the public space not all of us are in positions where we can call people out in the public space and there are lots of organizations that do really great work and have really problematic policies and many of us find ourselves in this place of well I don't want to ruin organization X I don't want to ruin the career of leader why and yet this situation so I think the the trick is the the public opening of space is one critical piece and in some ways the private opening of space is even harder right because I can go to you know me tweeting something which my boss may or may not see and me putting up my hand and the senior staff meeting and saying um the situation that we have here is not paralleled with the proposals we claim to espouse out there on Twitter the private actions are much harder so you know for private actions you need you need allies and allies come in all different shapes and sizes and you know unfortunately we don't all get Kevin Costner every day I keep waiting but one of the things that we can all do is stand up for and support other people when we see them so one of the things that we heard from women who had served in the Obama administration which was really different now in general by the way administration's aren't all that different by party there's a slow steady ramp up over time so this isn't primarily a partisan issue and this is mostly to do sort of with the moment in time but you had a critical mass of women in arms control and non-proliferation Bonnie say that ten minutes let's go back to Bonnie's idea so there was an exodus oh and none of those women was gonna go and say fill in the blank prominent official X you're kind of sexist but there was a subtle way of working that that helped improve on these things so it's it's making the commitment to do it internally day after day and also just accepting that some people some you know it's just like arms control there's an outside game and an inside game and you know which which one is your role I pretty much plan to say what heather has says about said about internally I think manholes and panels and medical articles those those are good because they are disorders of value in having women on panels there's a value because it shows at least a start of a commitment by an organization and a recognition that something has to be different and you actually get to hear women who are experts who are not there because they're women but because they actually know something and so I mean I think all of that is good but I think it's important what's going on behind closed doors because I think you could also get too easy for organizations to just jump on the bandwagon and say okay well we need to do our thing everyone else is doing let's go have ours and let's go have our are our female panel thing I think it's important to see what's going on in the organization itself and so having you you see that when you look at the boards and you know what how would the board so they have diversity on the boards and what about the other you know levels of leadership I mean that's when you start to see and this stuff takes time so it's nothing's gonna happen overnight but you know you want to see that happening you want to see if an organization has a strategy that they have set forth on diversity do they have a strategy either gonna diversify their board so are they going out to look at women-owned organizations to do some of the things that they want to get done do they look for experts who are people of color to do some of the research projects that they have I mean so I think a lot depends on internally doing something and making an effort and you know always asking the extra question it's easy just to go with my friends it's easy just to go with the people I know and that keeps the old boys club thing kind of going because of the people who are making the decisions or reaching out to their friends that means it will never really get diversified but if you say take the extra step and say we need to bring a different organization or a different company or a different researcher to do this for us to research for us to you know do that survey for us you know these are kind of things that we'll show and have more diversity within the organization that will actually help to change the culture which is always very difficult to change can I jump in and say one more thing I think there's this totally understandable desire to sort of okay tell me when I've done enough tell me when we've checked the box and we can just move on and get back to talking about arms control and the bad news which is also good news is that even again if you don't care about gender and diversity at all it's going to be harder to bring in and keep good people in our field than it was in the past we're not live people are not going to have simple linear career paths and we can just pull them in and keep them as was may be the case for at least Bonnie and me so anybody working in this field is going to have to have a more intentional management strategy also this is the part of the panel where we complain about Millennials sorry Alex I'm actually like lower Gen X I think but but Millennials younger people in the workforce have a different set of expectations about what the workforce is better or worse doesn't really matter it's just different so those of us in managerial positions or who want to be in managerial positions are going to be dealing with questions of how to attract and keep talent and what our workplace culture is forever and so the sooner that you just this is part of workplace culture it's not different from workplace culture if you do it right it makes the I make it if you do it right white guys have better ideas and perform better and are happier too so just the sooner the choose sort of that we all get over the idea that this is a moment or a box and move on to this is part of a way of managing that it's just a basic necessity for the century that we live in the happier will all be great so we actually do have time for some questions there's some folks in the back with mics so if you just raise your hand there and then we'll go to Joe just right just keep your hand up sir can the jacket yeah I wondered for whatever progress has been made here in this country as far as gender inclusivity and diversity does the same amount of progress have to be made over there in Russia and China and how much how much do you have with those people well I'm glad you raised that because actually one of it was very interesting our respondents talked a lot about not so much China but how challenging both on the one hand he could be very challenging to work with Russia in particular there were a couple of other sort of most often criticised nationalities but then at the same time with once you got past a certain point you attained a sort of what we used to call honorary man status you know on the other hand there are also societies that are doing that are doing much better than the u.s. is on on these grounds and I think but I think you know the the important moment if you think back to somebody like rez Ridgeway who read whom you go did all the all of Reagan's negotiating it's net there's this excuse that's used of oh because other societies are more backward we can't put women forward because it won't and that that's just there is negative evidence for that that everywhere we've had arms control successes women have been involved in participating fully so so yes there's an opportunity to help each other and I you know Laura Holgate gender champions initiative and the International gender champions initiative that was put together by women at the UN you did have global participation and that's really interesting and to me that's the forum where women in one society can help women in other Rose Gottemoeller has a great story about during the New START negotiations actually you want to tell that you tell this story written about the permit sending so she'd send presents to the women on the Russian delegation and not to the men yeah the that I don't want to tell her stories for her but as you do there were there were a couple of incidents while she was negotiating with the Russians just sort of them adjusting to the the female lead on the US side but the Russian papers at the time when she was named by President Obama we're like oh no not rose she'll be too tough on us she like tools to whip our negotiators like and they'll give up too much so they she had sort of already established herself but I am I think the important it's not just countries like Russia and China that have problems some of our closest allies I would go to meetings and it would just be all men on the other side and I was like these are you know healthy democracies and they can't decay and bring one junior staffer in to just sit and take notes or what have you would just be completely male-dominated but I think Heather's right you just have to lead by example the u.s. can can get out there and show that you know we don't treat women and men any differently when it comes to this issue that is a priority issue for the United States and and hopefully people will start to take note Bonnie um well I think you know it's not it's I think it's important not just for the u.s. to in the u.s. to understand the importance of having well-rounded diverse policies I think it's great for other countries too as well of course they made their own decisions but you know I think that you know having diverse views is not a unique thing to the US I think it's probably good for everybody and it would behoove other countries to also think about this and other discussions like these to take place and have those kind of discussions it's also great when you're in a negotiation to see other women at the table to see other women right behind the country flag you know not only you know in in a delegation but also leading the delegations I think that gives other women in the room a sense of empowerment you know it's not just young women who need it it's other women who were in the field to see other women like themselves and I think that the entire discussion will be benefited from that one thing that I raised at a meeting last week was during a nuclear security summits there were a lot of women who were lead for the u.s. delegation and so for the u.s. you saw a long line of women maybe one one man and that that that gave a sense of and the u.s. was evil we weren't sharing their particular discussions you know the u.s. was was considered the pretty much the lead of the the whole effort and I think that said that that set a tone in the room because of that and you know having an if it's felt there's a lot of camaraderie I think with the other women who were sitting behind the flags and sitting you know behind the woman with the flag and so I think it's beneficial overall to have that from other countries as well thank you Alex and Bonnie and Heather for your leadership on this issue and for raising the visibility on how important it is and how it's in our collective self-interest to have a diverse workforce I think that's an important point to have made I wanted to come back to something that Heather you mentioned at the outset the ways in which this whole field is profoundly stuck we're still operating off of doctrine and thinking and writings from the 1950s and 1960s and then you also mentioned and I kind of connected these in my head that there's a whole cohort from your interviews of women who left the field because they didn't feel there was room for their views and that got me wondering whether that's true of men too I know the study interviewed women but this idea of a consensual straightjacket does that apply to men too in our field oh yeah most definitely most and I think I think so number one yes and I think it's it's been really gratifying for us at new America to see that the response to the report we put together has not so there's been the response of women saying oh yes thank goodness someone actually thought my experience was important enough to write about which was wonderful but also an outpouring from younger man saying yeah this exactly describes my frustrations with the field and that is something you know we hoped for but didn't didn't expect so again I I think there's a real tendency to look at this issue as oh we're sort of satisfying we're patting some people on the head over here but these women the women that we interviewed others in the room I mean deserve to be seen as in the mainstream and at the heart of this field and if they're telling us that's something that the field is stuck as you say Joan that's something we all need to listen to and I guess for me I mean I've heard some I think it's a bird it's just so it's just a perception in a way of doing work that's been the way it's been for a long time and I think that if you're not in that you're not going to feel comfortable so that's true for women and that's true for men that's true for people of color I know some young men of color who also feel very much like they don't can't figure out they're not sure they want to figure it out so I think it's just a way in which it's been done that you fit in and and then if you're in you're in the club and you stay there for as long as you want to stay there and other people have a difficult time figuring how to get in and it's a very resistant to change and I think that's the problem because as we need have we talked about we need more diversity the narrative I keep of the narrative narrative being controlled by the by the history and way was done for many years I just because I thought of an anecdote at the event that we hosted ten days ago a young woman stood up in the Q&A period and said hi I'm an Army officer and I was picking my next job and I'm really interested in nuclear weapons and I was told don't go there there's no future for you there and she went into procurement instead and I think all of I don't want to speak for Bonnie but I think we all wanted to jump off the panel and run into the audience and say no no let's find you a job I want to tell you you should have told those guys to go kick rocks you know that it that was a frustrating thing the the resistance had change as well I think is just throughout the field I made a suggestion once at state and the response was oh well we tried that already and I was like oh god did I not realize that we had just done this it was like well no it was in 1997 and I was like 97 the year I graduated from high school maybe maybe we could try it again just see how it turns out it was a Bible thing up here just just wait wait for them wait for the mic hi I'm Dee Parvez I'm a reporter with Think Progress covering foreign policy and I just want to point out that from the media's perspective like I can't even imagine what it must be like to get where you are in your field but from the outside of me it just seems like maybe some of your communications people could be better trained because I think a lot of times it seems like they're very happy to sort of distribute your work when it's you know a nice safe piece of paper somewhere an email but when you call and you say gee I'd like to really speak to this to this woman about the subject suddenly you either get oh she's not the best person so excuse me but you just you just spammed me with 35 things she's written so it does seem like I mean I've actually had conversations with I've been interviewing experts female experts just as I simultaneously get an email from their PR person saying yeah she doesn't know what she's talking about in that field we can find you know how about mister so-and-so and I'll tell the woman on the phone like this is and they just laugh it off like oh ignore Bob but perhaps Bob needs training well first of all it saddens me to hear that but I think this also goes back to the point of when we talk about a cultural change in an organization it has to go up and down you know you know it's good to have a leader that is committed to it it's good to have people who are in supervisory roles committed to it it's good to and and it has to be up and down it's like when we talk about nuclear security culture one of the big things they talk about is it has to be entire organization it can't just be you can't just teach you know one person oh you have to guess everyone has to understand that it's the same thing you know it has to everyone on the totem pole no matter where they fit has to understand it and that's why it's good for organizations I have strategy you know where they're the lay out exactly how they're gonna do it and how they're gonna get everyone on board so that you don't get the one person or maybe one of several people of the organization may not have been talked to by the supervisor saying oh you don't need to be aware this year doing communications are you doing this know everyone needs to be aware and understand that because that's like you said that's not a good experience for you and the other point just to dovetail with what Bonnie said is leadership means more than lip service and I think we all are aware of organizations and situations where the top leadership says yes diversity is really important and then nothing changes at the working level and I like to I like to quote the general Vance who's the head of the Canadian Armed Forces who talked about their own gender integration process and he said sometimes people just have to get told and there's a real visible difference between organizations that say that diversity is important in organizations that are actually sort of here knowing that someone at the top cares whether it's whether it's happening or not and just like I always say the people the people who are not the dominant culture knows if they're not welcome and I say and I always say other people because I want them to understand that you can't fake this you can't make it like we really try and no people will know if they're included they will know if it's real they would know if you're serious and if you're finding people leaving then you got to ask yourself what am I doing wrong am I committed to this enough for people to really understand that we want to make that change so it has to be it has to be something that the organization is committed to we have time for one more let's go up on the stage there a black coat mark Harrison with the United Methodist Church I just want to say that the straightjacket issue is a major concern but I just want to say I thought arms control Association made a big change when they chose Darryl I was absolutely shocked that arms control station went that way but the two people I put there two people I want to raise up who I don't think we've given them their due Ron Dellums and what I'm trying to think of the woman from pat shoulder and they were never given their due in this community I don't know they were ever asked to be on the arms control station board but I guess it's concerns that I wanted ways that we do have people women and people of color who played leading roles and they weren't giving their due because they didn't fit the straightjacket I guess that's a concern I mean I actually I know he's done a lot that he's not getting gotten a lot of credit for and so yeah thank you for for raising that know so much shoulder so thank you yeah yeah to two anecdotes to build on that which is a wonderful point when we set out to do this study we called up for advice some very prominent feminist academics of international theory it's like you know I just I'm at a think-tank I don't have a PhD I want to make sure we do this right with all the requisite academic rigor and a very prominent theorist who many of you have heard of said to me oh you can't do that because there aren't any women you won't be able to find any and you know my team had to restrain me from cursing into the phone like you didn't check my resume I know these people but there is even when people are there and doing the work this comes back exactly to the point you just raised this problem of invisibility and then the just the very last point when I think about you know I mean part of the reason I got started doing this work is that I was so stunned and shocked that younger women were reporting things that would have been outrageous when I got into the sphere and that I thought you know thirty years ago when one of my college classmates said Oh women don't usually like arms control and I thought yeah this is the last year that that's going to happen so for those of you who might be sitting there and thinking yeah you know this is all fine but it's kind of all fine and it's all steadily going along and they don't understand how bad it used to be or what Pat Schroeder and Ron Dellums went through your female colleagues and your colleagues of color are going through unacceptable things every day and I really want to thank Daryl and Alex and the team here for for doing this because I think we've had this kind of over the last two years a lot of people looking around and saying oh I had no idea and we've we haven't taken on that piece this morning and that's great I want to be positive and forward-looking just as on the previous panel but um just in case you're sitting there thinking that maybe it's not that bad anymore we interviewed two dozen women it's that bad I don't think I and I just want to add to that is the the statement that very often here about there I don't know of a woman I don't know of a person of color who could be talk about that one thing I did for my organization is I I develop these expert pages where I've listed in all the different areas of peace and security not just nuclear weapons and peace and security and conflict women who are working on these different issues many of them are young women mid-career women so that there is a place to say I don't know a woman that does stem I don't know a woman that does food security I don't know the woman that does you know infectious disease or nuclear and I think there are a number of other organizations I have done this and I've started to say there are women out there that you can reach out to who can who are experts on these many issues and so you know now I have like 35 women in the aresty Varian who are young women who are getting introduced filled women mostly women of color and so I want that I'd love to see that grow but the point I'm trying to make is that they're all women out there you know and their sources not just marbleization but there's other sources out there to locate people who our experts in these fields so I just wanted to make sure that people are aware of that and that I just want to once again say there are important people doing these things and like I said I'm really glad that our virtual Association was able to do this event today at this time of day the news writing hidden in the morning yes thank you so much to Bonnie and to heathered Kelsey and to Daryl for making this a mainstage event and for the two of you for having such a fascinating discussion today [Applause]