Meeting Report: Militainment, the Arms Industry and the Marketing of Militarized Masculinities

From 15 to 17 July 2024, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the Gender Equality Network for Small Arms Control (GENSAC), and the Small Arms Survey brought together 40 participants from the United Nations (UN), policy think tanks, civil society and academia in Geneva, Switzerland.

This report lays out the highlights and findings from the meeting, which sought to “understand and explore strategies to counter widely used marketing practices that exploit ideas about manhood and masculinities to increase demand for weapons and normalized their misuse.”

Themes covered during the report include:

• Militainment, or the behind-the-scenes collusion between militaries, film and television.
• Video games, product placement, and military recruitment.
• Gun advertising.
• Social media, guns and platform governance.
• Fear-based marketing by the gun lobby.

Download the report, WILPF, GENSAC, and Pathfinders Meeting Report on Militainment, the Arms Industry and the Marketing of Militarized Masculinities.