In wars fought within and ultimately for the support of civilian populations, the gender dimension becomes a vital one. Different efforts to address gender in military operations have shown increasing sophistication in the past few years. One thing that has not been satisfactorily developed, however, is an overarching theory of gender’s operational relevance that would allow it to be fully normalised in military planning and operations. To fill this gap, Jody M Prescott suggests that the gender analysis that is part of military staff products at all operational levels needs to evolve to also consider risk to the mission and its personnel.