Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 3, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2018 | Page 10

Global Security and Intelligence Studies • Volume 3, Number 2 • Fall / Winter 2018
Choices of Lesser Importance? Conflicting
Values Shaping Perceptions of Community
Security and Women’s Health Security
Kate Brannum 1 , Michelle Watts 2 , and Joseph Campos II 3
Abstract
In recent years, a paradigm shift among international organizations,
governments, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from a
state security perspective to a human security perspective brought
into the mainstream a gendered understanding of what it means to
be secure. However, the idea that women’s security should only be
understood in terms of community security is still seen in multiple
settings across cultures. This article is an exploration of the relationship
between women’s security and community security in two communities:
the Maya community of Guatemala and the Quiverfull
community in the United States. Specifically, this article examines
the parallels between challenges faced by indigenous women and
girls in the Lake Atitlan region of Guatemala, even with the assistance
of NGOs providing sexual education and contraception, and
challenges faced by women in a religious movement in the United
States that promotes women’s surrender of control over their sexuality
and reproduction. While both cultures include cultural and religious
arguments against contraceptives and are grounded in male
authority, the Quiverfull community provides a much more explicitly
political reason for women to follow religious mandates. How
women are asked to understand their own security is shaped by the
idea that their health needs and control of their reproduction may be
a threat to the needs of the community. A gendered human security
approach recognizes that the health needs of women are not simply
a matter of individual security; they affect security in ways that are
ultimately important to the larger community and the nation-state.
Keywords: Human security, gender, nongovernmental organizations,
reproduction, Guatemala, Quiverfull.
1 Program Director—Global Security & International Relations for the American Public University
System
2 APUS, Faculty Director for the American Public University System
3 University of Hawaii at Manoa
7
doi: 10.18278/gsis.3.2.2