NATO STO

Preserving the first place for worlds’ most successful alliance decades after its establishment, NATO continuously increases efforts to welcome the new generation of talents through various initiatives such as the Mentoring Programme, the Young Professional Programme (YPP) or further online campaigns such as #WeAreNATO or PROUD@NATO. The NATO Young Leaders Report states that reaching for the hearts and minds of younger generations is imperative. These younger generations such as “Millennials” born between 1981-1996 and “Gen-Z” between 1997 and 2010, differ from their precedents who have experienced the effect of the Cold War or even World War II. As this new generation enters the workforce, they come with their very unique set of habits, ways of understanding the world and expectations. How they will react to the old structure of international organizations such as NATO, needs to be analysed . Opening the 2019 NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives (NCGP) Conference, the Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg mentioned the importance of mainstreaming the three I’s: Integration, Inclusiveness, and Integrity throughout the Alliance’s daily work. While comprehensive studies of task groups such as SAS-120 on Integration of Women into Ground Combat Unit and HFM-287 on Developing a Culture and Gender Inclusive Model of Military Professionalism examine and analyse gender parity, the wider question of generational change and evolution remains untouched.