Gender in Ir

GENDER
IN
(for a summary of perspectives, see Sylvester 2002, Shepherd 2010, Sjoberg 2010, and
Tickner and Sjoberg 2011).
Agamben, Giorgio. (1998) Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford. Stanford
University Press.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2004) Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma, in J. C. Alexander, R.
Eyerman, B. Giesen, N. Smelser and P. Sztompka (eds) Cultural Trauma and Collective
Identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
Javier Pereira Bruno; January 2006; The University of Texas at Austin
J. Ann Tickner; 1992; Columbia University Press.
Alexandra Buskie, Mar 17 2013
Enloe, Cynthia, (1989), Bananas, Beaches and Bases, Pandora: London.
Enloe, Cynthia, (2002), Masculinity as a foreign policy issue, in Hawthorne, Susan and
Winter, Bronwyn (eds), September 2001: Feminist Perspectives, Spirifex: Melbourne
Richard W. MAnsbach and Kirsten L. Taylor; Introduction to global Politics; second
edition
Bina Agarawal The Gender and Environment debate: Lessons from India
Prakash Chander and Prem Arora International Relations for civil Services
Rajeev Bhargava ; Political Theory ;An Introduction; Gender; Nivedita Menon
INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
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VIDUSHI VERMA
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HINDU COLLEGE
ROLL NO. 3233
Examination roll no. 1507544
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QUESTION:
Why is applying a
gendered lens imperative for a
comprehensive understanding of
world politics ?
Apply a gender
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lens
to
understand
any
international event in the
decade.(2005 onwards)
one
past
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INTRODUCTION
Though the declaration of Human Rights proclaimed
that all human beings are entitled to all the rights and
freedoms set forth in the Universal Declaration without
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distinction of any kind, in actual practice women have

been treated as inferiors on account of their gender. In
most of the countries women are paid less salaries than
their counterparts; they are physically assaulted by
members of their own families; they get less
opportunities to serve in the governments in senior
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positions; they face greater health problems than men;

they secure less participation in the community and
political life due to lack of access to financial resources
and education. No doubt, different governments have
passed laws to improve their status and tried to accord
them equal status with men, but much could not be
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achieved due to prevailing attitudes, traditions and

beliefs.
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SEX AND GENDER DEBATE

One of the key contributions of feminist theory is
the creation of a distinction between sex and
gender; a distinction that has subsequently
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been developed differently by various strands of

feminist thought. The initial move was to use the
term sex to refer to the biological differences between
men and women, while gender indicated the vast
range of cultural meanings attached to that basic
difference. This distinction is important for feminism to
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make because the subordination of women has been

fundamentally justified on the grounds of the biological
differences
between
men
and
women.
The
philosophical reasoning legitimizes various forms of
oppression as natural and inescapable, because the
oppression that arises supposedly from nature is
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unchangeable,
determinism.
therefore
it
is
called
biological
Biological determinism has also been one of the

most important legitimising mechanisms of
womens oppression over the centuries. The
challenge to biological determinism is thus
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crucial to feminist politics in international

relations. MARGARET MEAD, a feminist anthropologist
has demonstrated
that the understanding of
masculinity and femininity varies across cultures. Not
only do different societies identify a certain set of
characteristics as feminine and another set as
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masculine, but also, these characteristics are not the

same across different cultures. Thus, feminists have
argued that there is no necessary correlation between
biology of men and women and the qualities that are
thought to be masculine and feminine. Rather it is
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child-rearing practices that try to establish

perpetuate certain differences between the sexes.
and
Alison Jaggar argues that sex and gender are

dialectically inseperably related.Human biology is
constituted by a complex interaction between the
human body, the physical environment and the
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state of development of technology and society.

When we apply the understanding that biology and
culture are interrelated, to the sex/gender
distinction, the relevant implication is that
womens bodies have been shaped by social
restrictions and by norms of beauty i.e. the bodies
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have been formed as much by culture as by

nature.
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GENDER QUESTION IN
INTERNATIONAL RELATONS
An evaluation of the contribution of feminist
International Relations(IR) theory to the discipline as a
whole is fraught with complexitites; not only is
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feminist discourse a multifaceted branch of

competing
theories
employing
separate
epistemologies,
it
is
also
a
somewhat
marginalised field within the study of IR. In their
different ways, feminist theorists aim to expose gender
biases embedded in conventional IR theories, such as
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realism and liberal institutionalism, and to reconstruct

gender-neutral outlooks of international politics. Their
findings have transformative implications for key
concepts in the discipline. However, feminist IR theory
remains on the margins of the discipline, with
mainstream IR scholars rarely engaging in productive
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debate about the questions raised by feminist critiques.

While conventional positivist theorists are perplexed
with the post-positivist feminist agenda and how it
relates to their own research programme, feminists
themselves fear cooption and are reluctant to allow
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their theories to be subsumed by other bodies of

thought.
Feminist theory was applied to IR relatively late in
comparison to other streams of the social sciences.
Theorists began to examine how gender affected
international relations theory and practice in the late
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1980s, during the third debate between positivists

and post-positivists. Like post-positivist critiques of
conventional approaches to IR, feminist theorist
contend that paradigms like realism, neo-realism and
liberal institutionalism, present a partial view rooted in
unacknowledged political assumptions that do not tell
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the whole story of international politics. Conventional

theories were censured for failing to explain the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the sudden and peaceful
end to Cold War, and the defuse security threats of the
1990s.
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Eleanor Roosevelt and countless others have

observed that international politics is a mans
world. It is a world inhabited by diplomats, soldiers,
and international civil servants most of whom are
men. Apart from the occasional head of the state,
there is little evidence to suggest that women have
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played much of a role in shaping foreign policy in

any country in the 20th century. In the United
States in 1987, women constituted less than 5
percent of the senior Foreign Service Ranks, and in
the same year, less than 4 percent of the executive
positions in the Department of Defense were held
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by women. Although it is true that women are

underrepresented in all top-level government
positions in the United States and elsewhere,
they encounter additional difficulties in
positions having to do with international
politics.
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VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN:

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In Egypt, 35percent of women reported being

beaten by their husband at some point in their
marriage (UNICEF, 2000).
Up to 47percent of women report that their first
sexual intercourse was forced (WHO, 2002).
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In Canada, the costs of violence against the family

amount to $1.6 billion per year, including medical
care and lost productivity (UNICEF, 2000).
In the US, a woman is battered, usually by her
husband/partner, every 15 seconds (UN Study on
the Worlds Women, 2000).
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Various Strands of feminism and their analysis

of world politics
Feminists claim that women are oppressed in a

multiplicity of ways that depend on culture, class,
and race as well as on gender. While Marxist
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feminists believe that capitalism is the source of

womens oppression, Radical feminists claim
that women are oppressed by the system of
patriarchy that has existed under almost all modes
of production. Feminists in psychoanalytical
tradition look for the source of womens
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oppression deep in the psyche, in gender

relationships into which we are socialized from
birth.
Socialist feminists have tried to weave these
various approaches together into some kind of a
comprehensive
explanation
of
womens
oppression. Socialist feminists claim that womens
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position in society is determined both by structures

of production in the economy and by structures of
reproduction in the household, structures that are
reinforced by the early socialisation of children into
gender roles.
However, postmodern feminists argue that a
unified representation of women across class,
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racial and cultural lines is an impossibility. Just as

feminists more generally have criticized
existing knowledge that is grounded in the
experience
of
white
western
males,
postmodernists
claim
that
feminists
themselves are in danger of essentializing
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the meaning of woman when they draw

exclusively on the experience of white
western women: such an approach runs the
additional risk of reproducing the same
dualizing distinctions that feminists object to
in patriarchal discourse. Postmodernists
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believe that a multiplicity of womens voices

must be heard lest feminism itself will
become one more hierarchial system of
knowledge construction.
Gender and the third world critique in the

Post Development era
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Historically, the emphasis on the practical

implications
that
broader
theoretical
discussions have for the advancement in
women rights has been typical of feminist
theorists in all parts of the world and
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particularly in the US. Waves of feminist

activism and organization were paralleled by
varieties of feminist theorization that
contributed to nurture the objectives and
delineate the strategies for womens
movements.
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The upsurge of feminist activism in the

1970s and 1980s was accompanied by a
prolific reflective activity among a
variety of feminist scholars which led to
the emergence of different theoretical
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perspectives, al sharing a common

feminist
background.
It
was
the
encounter of this multifaceted current
with the already institutionalised field
of modernisation and development that
created
the
conditions
for
the
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emergence of the hegemonic Women in

Development field. ( Saunders, 2002).
Underlying assumptions from modernization
theory, the WID perspective assessed
womens oppressive situation as the result of
traditional
societies
characterised
by
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authoritarianism
and
male-dominance
(Vishvanathan, 2002)
It was maybe the liberal feminists in the West
the ones who were better theoretically
equipped to articulate the promises of
development with improvements in womens
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conditions. Through the tools of economic

efficiency, welfare, appropriate policies and
planning, modernisation would bring social
change promoting women emancipation and
delivering even greater benefits for women
than men (Lewis, 1955). However, Esther
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Boserups seminal work in the 1970s

challenged this visison within the boundaries
of liberal feminism. Contrary to what
modernization theory has predicted, she
supported the idea that development in the
third World didnt trickle down the poor
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exhibiting- instead- harmful effects on

women
status.
Boserups
view
on
modernisation seems to reinforce women
dependency and lessen the conditions for
empowerment and autonomy. Criticisms
introduced
from
Caroline
Mosers
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evaluation of welfare programs in the Third

World, suggest that many of these initiatives
harden dependency of women from the
patriarchal structures of the State and family
and had little impact on altering existing
gender roles. (Saunders, 2002). Marxist
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feminists
like
Beneria
and
Sen
(2000),criticised Boserups work for failing to
integrate the implications of the capitalist
mode of development into her analysis,
ignoring the insights of class division. The
problem for women as they see it, is not
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only the lack of participation in this process

as equal partn4ers with men but their
participation in a system that generates and
intensifies inequalities, making use of
existing gender hierarchies to place women
in subordinate positions at each different
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level of interactions between class and

gender(Beneria and Sen, 2000).
Neo-marxist and dependence theorists such
as Beneria and Sen are usually grouped
under the label Women and Development
(WAD)/, implying that women are not
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excluded from development process .In

response to WAD and WID a third major
theoretical track emerged agglutinating
several feminists who promoted a focus on
gender relations as the unit of analysis for
understanding the role of women in
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developmental process. By emphasizing

gender relations more than women per se,
Gender and Development (GAD) scholars
embrace
a
more
holistic
perspective
overcoming
the
narrow
focus
on
productive(economic)
or
reproductive
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(motherhood) aspects of women lives.

Instead they focus on the fit between family,
household or the domestic life and the
organisation of both political and economic
spheres(Young, 2000).Notions such as
emancipation, organisation, and self(for a summary of perspectives, see Sylvester 2002, Shepherd 2010, Sjoberg 2010, and
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consciousness become extremely important

under this approach for the study of womens
participation in development. Also, the
debate about the role of the state in
promoting womens emancipation is a
significant one within this framework, not
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only as a major employer but also as

provider of health, education and training
services.
Criticisms to Western feminist theories have
come
from
different
theoretical
and
geographical backgrounds. Diversity in
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feminist theories in the US has also been

paralleled by a prolific production of non
Western feminist thought. The multifaceted
nature of feminism that has characterised
both sides- the developed and developing
world-makes
difficult
any
sort
of
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simplification
or
generalisation
about
coincidences and differences. Few of the
critiques pointed out by feminist scholars are:
The alternative construction of women as
subjects in the Third World feminist
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literature,
as
discussed
in
Saunders(2002),
The differentiated approach to the State
in the strategies of Latin American
feminist movement as analysed by
Molyneux (2002),
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The limitations of Western change from

below paradigm. (Htun 2003; Charrad
2001)
The debates around the notion of
sisterhood as stated in Bergeron(2001)
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The colonialist implications of Western

feminist
as
suggested
by
Moler
Olkin(1999) and Aguilar(1995),
The need to bring the actors perspective
back .(Long 2001; Kandiyoti 2000 and
Hoodfar 1997).
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BINA AGARWAL AND ECOFEMINISM (gender

and environment debate)
Ecofeminism embodies within it several
different strands of discourse, many of
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which have yet to be spelled out fully, and

which reflect, among other things, different
positions within the Western feminist
movement (radical, liberal, socialist). As a
body of thought, ecofeminism is as yet
underdeveloped and still evolving, but
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carries a growing advocacy, My purpose is

not to critique ecofeminist discourse in
detail, but rather to focus on some of its
major elements. Ecofeminism might feed
into the formulation of a third World
perspective on Gender and Environment.
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Disentangling the various threads in the

debate, provides us with the following
picture of ecofeminist argument:
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There
are
important
connections
between domination and explitation by
nature.
In patriarchal thought, women are
identified as being closer to nature and
men as being closer to culture. Nature
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is seen as inferior to culture, hence ,

women are seen as inferior to men.
Because the domination of women and
domination of nature have occurred
together, women have a particular
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stake in ending the domination of

nature( King 1989);
The
feminist
movement
and
environmental movement both stand
for
egalitarian, non-hierarchial
systems. They have a good deal in
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common and need to work together to

evolve a common perspective, theory
and practice.
In the eco-feminist argument, therefore,
the connection between the domination of
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women and that of nature is basically seen

as Ideological, as rooted in a system of
ideas and representations, values and
beliefs, that places women and the nonhuman world hierarchically below men.
And it calls upon women and men to
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reconceptualise themselves, and their

relationships to one another and to the
non-human world, in non-hierarchial ways.
POST STRUCTURALISM( language, power,
and the gendered construction of reality)
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The value of Foucaults conception of discourse, and its

interplay with power, lies in its historical and social
account of their definition, delimitation and control.
Indeed, this Poststructural analysis, which reveals the
logical correlation between power and the construction
of our intelligible reality through knowledge, is
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incredibly important for feminist analysis. For if

discourses are historically and socially contingent, and
controlled by those institutions and individuals who
control the dissemination of knowledge at a particular
moment in time, then what this means is that practical
change can be normatively imagined through a
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modification of power relations and thus discourses. If

we impose gender as an analytical category, to help
elucidate the way that people think about the world,
while appreciating that reality is a product of power.
Thus if we are to more adequately examine and
remedy discrimination and oppression, both of which
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are symptomatic of violence, we must reveal that the

discourses that construct the world are inherently
masculine.
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Specifically if we engage in a deconstruction of the

word power, we can see that the largely
institutionalised discourse purpoting to objectively
describe the behaviour of states is actually an
intrinsically masculine construct. For the traditional
Waltzian analysis puts explicit emphasis upon power
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over, yet this definition of power is a masculine

construction
based
upon
the
valorization
of
characteristics such as strength, courage and
independence. As Tickner points out, If one utilizes
those characteristics defined as feminine, then power
can just as easily be defined as mutual enablement
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rather than domination; the ability to envisage agency

in terms of empowerment for oneself and others. The
definition of power in relation to states thus depends
upon a masculine control over the discourse. To expand
this, the world is not structurally and objectively
comprised of power seeking, self-help, aggressive
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egoist states; the world is constructed of such states

because the dominance of valorised masculine traits
both within IR theory and reality, construct the world in
such a way. This dominanace of masculinity in
relation to language can furthermore be
elucidated
through
everyday
terminology,
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especially within the workplace. This is given the

occupational stereotyping and androcentric
assumptions surrounding work generally.
Gender is composed of two independent componenets:
it is a constitutive element of social relationships based
on perceived differences, and a primary way of
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signifying relationships of power. Specifically these

relationships are signified through the hierarchial
structuring of norms, characteristics, and practices that
are socially imprinted upon the respective genders.
Indeed, historically gender-based dichotomies and
linguistic
constructions,
such
as
strong/weak,
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rational/emotional, and war/peace have been socially

normalized, especially within Politics, which given
masculinity is assigned as higher value, empowers
masculinities and devalorizes instrumental femininities.
Thus characteristics such as , sovereign individuality,
objectivity, instrumental rationality and power over
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that are perceived to be implicit within the model of

masculinity entrenched in the western tradition were
historically attributed to the public sphere: the arena of
politics, the mens world. As the work of Tickner then
establishes, the respective binary categories that were
associated with femininity were then less valued.
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The nature of this hierarchial structure of gender means

that the concept of masculinity is simultaneously
embedded in the logics of contrast and contradiction.
Indeed it is the logic of difference that gives masculinity
its flexibility, and which enables changes in dominant
types of masculinity to make sense in terms of familiar
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contrasts between higher and lower, normal and

deviant and hegemonic and counter-hegemonic. Put
simply, each temporally and spatially specific version of
hegemonic masculinity can be defined by what it is not;
which is feminine.
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Using Gender lens to decolonise

trauma
and
memory
in
International Relations
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Similar themes war traumas, including rape,

construction of masculinity and femininity in relation to
militarism, and representations of lived experiences in
mass media to mention just a few- are explored in a
rich and growing feminist literature in IR. Although it is
impossible to make generalizations about this diverse
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body of literature, it is probably fair to suggest that the

authors who are not afraid to embrace a feminist
label are likely to ask questions about silences with
silences in the study of trauma in global politics. In
other words, they highlight the role of gender and
culture in conceptualizing memory and trauma. Most
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importantly, they ask how the concept of trauma is

constructed differently in various cultures, including the
so-called non-western cultures, as well as how gender
articulate the way suffering ranked( e.g. why are some
traumas- in this case, male-dominated one, perceived
as more important than others?).
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The connections between memory, trauma and gender

become visible in the feminist studies of post-conflict
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societies. In any conflict, the notion of collective

memory can superimpose discourses around the
remembrance of some experiences and the forgetting
of others. As a result, it silences and makes invisible the
individual experiences that can question and destabilize the dominant political narrative of sacrifice
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and victimhood in times of conflict and violence. More

often than not, a gendered perspective is applicable
here, where many womens voices are excluded so that
the nation can retain its patriarchal values, gendered
hierarchies and norms. Collective memory is closely
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associated with a collective forgetting of what many

ordinary women did during the war.
They become the ordinary lives, the bare life innocent victims as characterized
by Agamben (1998), and collective memory serves as consent for a politics that values
male sacrifice as paramount in wars.
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Should women have Equal rights

.everywhere?
The relativist claim that human rights are culture bound
appears frequently in the context of womens equality.
Thus Muslims, whose practices toward women are
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criticized in the West, contend that they are victims of

cultural bias. They argue that instead of perpetuating
inequality and repression, traditional Muslim customs
towards women encourage modesty and family
stability. In addition, such practices, they contend,
provide women with protection. Furthermore, they note,
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women are treated differently in different Muslim

societies, and Westerners tend to focus on extreme
cases like Afghanistans Taliban rather than moderate
Islamic regimes. Indeed, many Muslim women do not
regard themselves as oppressed. A 2005 poll revealed
that , although majority of muslim women want to be
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able to vote and serve in government, most regarded

gendered equality as an issue of western women ,
while they saw other issues as more important.
Arguments based on cultural relativism fall on deaf ears
among western feminists. The Convention on the
Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against
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Women recognizes that cultural norms have an impact

on human rights and are partly responsible for the
inequalities that women face. Thus, in its preamble the
UN convention declares the need for a change in the
traditional role of men as well as the role of women in
society and in the family . Furthermore, Article 5 of the
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convention stresses the importance of modifying the

social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and
women, with a view to achieving the elimination of
prejudices and customary and all other practices which
are based on the idea of the inferiority or the
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superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped

roles for men and women.
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GENDER

distinction of any kind, in actual practice women have

positions; they face greater health problems than men;

achieved due to prevailing attitudes, traditions and

SEX AND GENDER DEBATE

been developed differently by various strands of

make because the subordination of women has been

Biological determinism has also been one of the

crucial to feminist politics in international

masculine, but also, these characteristics are not the

child-rearing practices that try to establish

Alison Jaggar argues that sex and gender are

state of development of technology and society.

have been formed as much by culture as by

feminist discourse a multifaceted branch of

realism and liberal institutionalism, and to reconstruct

debate about the questions raised by feminist critiques.

their theories to be subsumed by other bodies of

1980s, during the third debate between positivists

the whole story of international politics. Conventional

Eleanor Roosevelt and countless others have

played much of a role in shaping foreign policy in

by women. Although it is true that women are

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN:

In Egypt, 35percent of women reported being

In Canada, the costs of violence against the family

Various Strands of feminism and their analysis

Feminists claim that women are oppressed in a

feminists believe that capitalism is the source of

oppression deep in the psyche, in gender

position in society is determined both by structures

racial and cultural lines is an impossibility. Just as

the meaning of woman when they draw

believe that a multiplicity of womens voices

Gender and the third world critique in the

Historically, the emphasis on the practical

particularly in the US. Waves of feminist

The upsurge of feminist activism in the

perspectives, al sharing a common

emergence of the hegemonic Women in

conditions. Through the tools of economic

Boserups seminal work in the 1970s

exhibiting- instead- harmful effects on

evaluation of welfare programs in the Third

only the lack of participation in this process

level of interactions between class and

excluded from development process .In

developmental process. By emphasizing

(motherhood) aspects of women lives.

consciousness become extremely important

only as a major employer but also as

feminist theories in the US has also been

The limitations of Western change from

The colonialist implications of Western

BINA AGARWAL AND ECOFEMINISM (gender

which have yet to be spelled out fully, and

carries a growing advocacy, My purpose is

Disentangling the various threads in the

is seen as inferior to culture, hence ,

stake in ending the domination of

common and need to work together to

women and that of nature is basically seen

reconceptualise themselves, and their

The value of Foucaults conception of discourse, and its