Regendering defence through a national-conservative platform? The case of Polish paramilitary organizing

ABSTRACT Following the war in Ukraine and other security challenges of non-military nature, Poland has recorded novel processes of re-militarization, with the resurgence of volunteer paramilitary organizing constituting one potent example. In the otherwise gender blind public discourse on defence developments, the latter were incidentally narrated as intrinsically entangled with patriarchal gender relations and illiberal ‘anti-gender’ politics, reflecting dominant feminist frameworks on militarization as a process entrenching gender inequality. Drawing from extensive fieldwork with paramilitary organizations, this paper explores the gender-paramilitary nexus in Poland through engaged, CMS-driven methods and frameworks. It argues that despite the paramilitary movement’s national-conservative platform, significant processes of regendering of the practice and idea of defence are nevertheless occurring on the ground. The paper traces them on three interconnected planes: women’s growing and largely uncontested presence in the movement; the revaluing of civilian-feminine lines of activity within the sector’s dual project of civil society in defence; and the largely egalitarian organizational culture, which engages both men and women in its dual, civic-martial practices, thus further destabilizing the link between defence and military masculinity. In this context, the paper suggests that the male-dominated character of paramilitary organizing is fuelled predominantly by socio-structural factors related to the feminization of social reproduction in Poland that the movement sees as unproblematic and external to its agenda. Lending analytical support to gender and CMS literature, the paper argues that uncovering gendered complexity and change in unlikely sites can aid more productive forms of feminist critique.