Transformative indicators? Gender expertise and technocratic peace

In the last decade, the use of indicators to track implementation of international peacebuilding and peacekeeping programmes, policies and practices has proliferated. Indicators are criticised by many scholars for their technocratic, standardised and colonialising effects. This article follows a different line of inquiry. Can indicators be transformative? Contemporary critiques place indicators as bureaucratic artefacts in a vacuum, detached and decontextualised from the nuances of human agency developing, utilising and subverting them. I conceptualise indicators as powerful gendered technologies of knowledge creation developed, used and subverted by institutional actors. Using interviews with institutional actors and United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Reports, I trace institutional stories of one indicator (out of 26) developed to capture implementation of the UN Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The indicator investigated tracks the number of senior gender experts employed within UN Peacekeeping and Special Political Missions. Stories of progress, skill, and location in the reporting of this indicator between 2010 and 2020 highlight strategies deployed and opportunities taken by feminist-change advocates within the UN to prompt a deeper implementation of the WPS agenda. While indicators hold the danger of reinforcing neoliberal norms, the failure to conceptualise the potential for developing, utilising and/or subverting the indicators smacks of hubris, limiting opportunities for meaningful transformation.