Revisiting Ann Tickner

This paper refutes Ann Tickner’s (1992) statement that '[w]omen have defined security as the absence of violence whether it be military, economic or sexual'. First, the paper maintains that in the absence of a category representative of the 'general woman', and because there are categories aggregating 'particular women' who hold their unique understandings of security, this part of Tickner’s (2001) statement, which is based on the actor’s identity, must fail. Second, having examined whether the definition of security as the absence of violence—military, economic, or sexual—represents an exclusive female approach, the paper concludes that the meaning of security depends on considerations specific to particular individual persons, hence may or may not be gender specific. Third, the paper questions the existence of two types of security— a 'security redux' less a 'human' attribute versus human security. It finds that although the inception of the concept of human security may be indebted to feminist thought, its grounding in the human rights discourse has so far not led to a corresponding transformation of the security discourse. This applies equally to the emerging norm of the responsibility to protect—a direct 'sequel' to the conceptualisation of human security.