Women’s agency in the Boko Haram Conflict: examining gender roles and bargaining in the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF)

This research looks beyond the calls for the ‘addition’ of women into the security sector to examine the different forms of masculinity and femininity that women in the security sector experienced because of their gender. Through em-pirical research conducted through field interviews, this paper discovered that gender relations within the Civilian Joint Task Force are patriarchal and hierar-chical being that, masculine identity was used by the CJTF men to demand gen-der roles and legitimize authority over the CJTF women. The CJTF organization also undermined feminine qualities by limiting the meaningful participation of the CJTF women in security operations. This article further noticed that the fe-male CJTF even though faced with masculine subjugation, the women were not powerless individuals but are agents of action who used different techniques such as personal, bonded and socially mediated agency to bargain patriarchal domination to achieve their personal aim thereby exercising agency. The re-search recommends restructuring the Civilian Joint Task Force particularly de-veloping effective organizational policy to address the domination of female members by male members.