Patrick Morgan, is that our conception of [IR acts

as a] map for directing our attention and distributing our efforts, and using
the wrong map can lead us into a swamp instead of into higher ground.

However, what the feminist approach reminds us of

from the beginning is that we need to be aware of the role of women, of the
impact of decisions on the people within the nation-state, and the ways in
which women and gender affect our theoretical understanding of the international
system.

When we speak of gender and international relations, or gendering world

politics, what we are referring to is the introduction of the concept of gender,
which refers to socially learned behavior and expectations that distinguish
between masculinity and femininity.

So what does this have to do with international politics? According to political

scientists V. Spike Peterson and Ann Sisson Runyan, The dominant
masculinity in Western culture is associated with qualities of rationality,
hardheadedness, ambition, and strength. . . . Similarly, women who appear
hard-headed and ambitious are often described as masculine. Also, the traits
associated with masculinity are perceived as positive and admired traits that
are in contrast to less desirable feminine qualities

Strength, power, autonomy, independence, and rationality, all typically

associated with men and masculinity, are characteristics we most value in
those to whom we trust the conduct of our foreign policy and national interest.

By looking at the world through gender-sensitive lenses, we are able to

understand how women are also present, even though they are often obscured
by the focus on men.

The introduction of the feminist perspective has its origin in the 1980s,
and it has become more prominent in the last ten-plus years.

the set of assumptions that have swirled

around the study of international relations, which in many ways grow out of
social beliefs about the nature of men and women: Men are warlike, militaristic,
and competitive, while women are peace loving and inherently cooperative
by nature. All of this obscures or muddles our understanding of
international relations.

What Ann Tickner and other feminist thinkers have done is to force us to
consider the presence and roles of women in international relations.

They ask how womens voices can be heard within a political

system that is generally patriarchal as well as hierarchical, and how the
lack of womens voices affects the decisions that are made.

When we discuss feminist IR and understanding the role that gender plays
in the field, it is also important to note that not all work that deals with
women is inherently feminist, nor do we need to assume that all womens
political action is feminist. there are groups of women who
work for peace at the community level in countries in conflicto
They simply look at it as
working to make their community and their country a better place in which
to live and to raise their children.

Like the other theoretical approaches in the field, Tickner notes there are
many strains of feminist thought within IR. There is liberal feminism, which
claims that discrimination deprives women of equal rights to pursue their
self-interest;

assumes that women have the potential to be participants in the political system Furthermore,
liberal feminists do not necessarily agree that the inclusion of women
would change the nature of the political system.

Radical feminists claim that women were oppressed because of patriarchy

or a pervasive system of male dominance, rooted in the biological inequality
between the sexes and in womens reproductive roles, that assigns
them to the household to take care of men and children.56 Thus, women
are blocked from participating in the public sphere, where policy is made,

The main point here is the acknowledgment that womens lives, roles, and
experiences are different from those of men,

Therefore, understanding
the structure of the state and the political system, and specifically
introducing gender as a concept, should give us another and broader understanding
of the state and therefore of the international system.