Camille Boutron, a doctor in sociology, is a recognised expert on the roles held by women in armed organisations and on their participation in conflicts. As these subjects lie at the heart of Wombat and that Camille says some of the things said by the women whose portraits appear on this website have guided her research at the Paris-based IRSEM (War College Institute of Strategic Research), I thought it would be very interesting to interview her. “I’m not used to being on the other side of the mirror,” she laughs. But she cheerfully answered my questions even if the day of our Skype conversation she was slowly recuperating from Covid.

A passionate horse-rider, Camille wanted to make it her profession… a dream that hasn't been totally abandoned! Not terribly enthused by studies, she nevertheless did a BA in history which is where she discovered gender studies. She continued with a Masters in history and chose to write her dissertation on a subject “that allowed me to reflect on my own path,”: the participation of women in the Olympic Games between 1896 and 1948.

It was while she was writing this dissertation that Wafa Idris blew herself up in a suicide attack in 2002 to “and that made me think about the implication of women in violence and the fact that they can actually occupy combat functions in a conflict.” But this was just a fleeting idea “not an obsession.”

Then she went to visit her mother in Montreal and continued her trip by journeying to Ecuador and to Peru. “Realising that Europe is not the centre of the world came as a huge shock,” she remarks. Her passion for South America replaced the one for horses. “I was obsessed with the idea of going back there so the postgraduate diploma that I did was just an excuse to return and do fieldwork in Latin America!” She admits with a smile that a young man from Cuzco (Peru) played no small part in her decision!

So Camille started her diploma in sociology at the Paris-based Higher Institute for Latin American Studies (IHEAL). “For the end of year dissertation I wrote about women in the Peruvian police force.” As a result, the IHEAL offered her a three-year doctoral grant. “Not to be turned down!” she laughs. So for somebody uninterested in studies, there she was working on a doctoral thesis!

“At the time I was eating, sleeping Peru.” The subject of her thesis was ready-found given that 50% of the combatants and 40% of the managers of the armed insurrection known as Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) – very active between 1980 and 1997 but almost gone in the 21st-century – were female. She studied how women became involved in the self-defence civilian patrols. Camille wanted to discover what modifications this participation had wrought in the social roles played by each gender, and how these possible changes would influence the post-conflictual reconstruction of society. 

She defended her thesis in December 2009. It became a book entitled Women at arms. Itineraries of female combatants in Peru (only available in French: Femmes en armes. Itinéraires de combattantes au Pérou).

After a first post-doctoral position in Montreal, and a second one in Lima, 2013 marked the end of Camille’s Peruvian period. In 2015 she accepted a position as a lecturer offered by the University of Los Andes in Bogotá, Columbia where she continued her studies on women and armed conflict, notably concentrating on women involved in the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia). “There were 25 to 30% of women within the FARC, organised as an army. That's what familiarised me with the army,” she explains.

But she didn't enjoy the job “even if I was earning a good salary,” her partner was having trouble adapting and she really wanted to ride horses again. “And after a dozen years in Latin America I also really needed to re-ground myself and find my place at my point of origin, France,” she explains. Thirty months later the decision had been taken to return to France where she not only integrated IRSEM but also started riding again!

Her current research is centred on international gender politics in the framework of peace and security and on the place of women in armed forces. “By being granted access to combat positions, women in the military have gained novel access to legal violence and become agents of the power of the State, whereas in the past they had been kept well away. So suddenly, women are no longer a group to protect but, just like men, can be the strong arm of the nation and that implies that they might not only give their lives, but also take them. In this sense we are confronted with a brutal rupture of the traditional representation of the role held by women in society and of an alleged, ‘feminine nature’: by becoming soldiers women are breaking this stereotype, particularly when they access combatant functions, which is why they are generally excluded from them,” she argues.

Even today this choice is hard to accept by certain people “particularly in the French army. In St Cyr [the French Army’s officers training college] there is a Catholic/traditional minority, a sort of community within the community, that makes the lives of young female cadet officers extremely difficult. In fact 100% of women have a tough time at St Cyr. Even if there are systems in place to allow them to talk about these problems, the risk of being ‘burned’ if they denounce sexism and violence is still too great, so they often prefer to keep quiet. They are torn between the constant presence of various forms of sexist discrimination in the Armed forces and their loyalty, engagement and attachment to their career and their comrades in arms. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place because they are being asked to be women but also soldiers exactly like the men. But when these female officers eventually access the highest command posts, as St Cyr graduates are expected to, they will bring changes which are not wanted by everyone,” she observes.

Camille is in high demand by round-table and conference organisers to share her knowledge with a frankness that, in all honesty, is not very academic!