On the second day of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, after learning the dramatic extent of the Israeli losses from the previous day’s fighting, Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan proposed the unthinkable. As nuclear historian Avner Cohen recounts, “Mr. Dayan, casually leaning against the door and talking as if he were raising only a minor point, asked the prime minister to authorize […] the necessary preparations for a ‘demonstration option’—that is, a demonstration of Israel’s nuclear weapons capability.”

In response, Golda Meir, Israel’s first and only female prime minister, told him to “forget it.”

Although Meir’s was the only female voice in the room, it was also the only one that mattered. This remains one of the only instances of absolute female authority over critical nuclear policy decisions—and therefore represents a highly illuminating case study.

In an interview months before the war, Meir acknowledged, “It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head.” This type of gendered critique—often always aimed at women—is not uncommon, especially in military circles. As Polina Sinovets notes, “In the world of nuclear policy, men see their own supposed rationality as more important than women’s supposed sensitivity.”

It is evident that the gendered contrast between pragmatism and emotion exists well outside the insular field of nuclear policy. Any woman who dares to challenge the patriarchal status quo is often labelled too loud, too bossy, too bitchy, too “nasty.” Nuclear weapons, however, are the most powerful weapons ever created. Therefore, empowering women with a central role in nuclear policy might do more to enact a feminist societal shift than perhaps any other initiative. To that end, Canada has laudably pledged to introduce a feminist approach into its foreign and international assistance policies—including its commitments to non-proliferation and disarmament. But what form should this intersection between gender and disarmament take?

This author argues that empowering female voices at every level of the policymaking process is the most crucial and most effective form of establishing feminist non-proliferation and disarmament policies. Not only will this help establish equality, diversity, and subsequent improvements in policymaking, but doing so will ultimately contribute to a gradual change in nuclear discourse, shifting from the masculine-coded “pragmatism” —which underpins the current nuclear order—to the feminine-coded “sensitivity” which would underpin a future disarmament regime.