As we mark 25 years since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), the place of this landmark agenda on the global political stage has never been more fragile, nor more fraught. In the same breath, the importance of paying careful and critical attention to men, masculinities, and their positioning in and relationship to the WPS agenda — and peace and security writ large — has never been more apparent, nor more urgent. By calling attention to women’s diverse roles in and experiences of armed conflict within the world’s paramount security body, the unanimous adoption of UNSCR 1325 by the Security Council was groundbreaking.

Over the first quarter of the 21st century, the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda became established as the most important policy framework linking gender issues to peace and security problems. WPS work has proceeded along two tracks: a nongovernmental track comprised of women’s rights activists and gender scholars; and a policy track directed by national governments and intergovernmental organizations (Brown and de Jonge Oudraat 2025). Both tracks have been instrumental in advancing the WPS agenda, including the adoption by the UN Security Council of ten WPS resolutions—starting with Resolution 1325 in October 2000. The 25th anniversary of UNSCR 1325 is an appropriate occasion to assess WPS accomplishments to date and define WPS priorities for the years ahead.

UNSCR 1325, which in 2000 formally announced the international Women and Peace and Security (WPS) agenda for action, enjoins a battle that can never end, one in which women will always find themselves on the back foot—but one which remains worth fighting. It is the battle to make the ear of man listen to what women know about security and about peace that men might not. It is also the battle to understand that there will be no peace within and between nations until and unless there is peace between men and women. In this essay, penned in May 2025, I reflect on the current situation of the WPS agenda, with an emphasis on the United States, and what the future of that agenda may be.