Sexual Misconduct, Civil–Military Relations, and the Canadian Armed Forces

Abstract

The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), like most gender-integrated militaries, has a serious issue with sexual misconduct. However, despite the ubiquity of this form of violence, civil–military relations (CMR), arguably the dominant theory for addressing the politics of the civilian control of the armed forces, has paid little attention to gendered power relations. In this article, we utilize Canada as a case study to question the utility of CMR to address sexual misconduct. We find that major changes to the approach are necessary if CMR is to remain relevant to the study of emerging and increasingly complex challenges faced by militaries, like sexual misconduct. To this end, we suggest three strategies to develop the theoretical and analytical foundations of the CMR approach.