Chapter 10 Feminism

Introduction

The end of the cold war and the emergence of new theoretical debates set the broader context for the
revitalization of feminist theories of international relations. These two events, one global and the other
disciplinary, together reduced the credibility of the dominant approaches in the discipline of
International Relations in two ways. Both the unexpected political alteration in the international system
and the introduction of influential new actors in world politics—such as international networks, non-
state actors, and users of social media—required new forms of understanding and new methods of
research. Additionally, in the social sciences, explanatory theory (which holds that the world is external
to and unaffected by theories of it) was rapidly losing credence because identity and cultural politics
challenged its ontology (ways of being), epistemology (ways of knowing), and methodology (ways of
study ing) (see Ch. 1). Instead, what is often called constitutive theory (which holds that the world is
intrinsic to and affected by theories about it) was deemed the better choice, because it eschews
ahistorical and transcendental explanation. It also allows for the study of language, identity, and
difference—all of which seemed necessary for understanding the complexity of world politics in which
struggles over social identities and cultural meanings are inextricable from demands for reforms in
institutions and law. Feminist International Relations theories are constitutive, interdisciplinary theories,
and the only ones in the field of International Relations that consistently prioritize the study of women
and/or engage in significant debates over the meaning of gender (see Box 10.1). The meaning(s) of
gender is (are) contested in feminist theories and in feminist International Relations theories. For now,
we can start with Terrell Carver’s (1996) statement that ‘gender is not a synonym for women’. Although
more will be said on definitions of gender (see Ch. 17), it is fair to say that at the start of feminist
International Relations theorizing, gender was under stood to be primarily about social construction of
bio logical sex differences.

What is feminism?

An introduction to feminist International Relations theories must begin with a working definition of
feminism. There is no single definition of feminism, just as there is no single definition of liberalism or
Marxism. Notwithstanding this, it would be correct to say that feminism is fundamentally rooted in an
analysis of the global subordination of women—which can occur economically, politically, physically,
and socially—and is dedicated to its elimination. Feminism promotes equality and justice for all women,
so that women’s expectations and opportunities in life are not unfairly curtailed solely on the basis of
being a woman. Consequently, feminism is also an analysis of power and its effects. Feminism has
contributed to the development of new methods of research and forms of knowledge.

Making women’s diverse experiences, roles, and status visible required that feminists re-examine and
rewrite histories which either excluded women altogether or treated them as incidental, and that they
reformulate basic concepts to address their gendered definitions. For example, feminist historians re-
conceptualized conceptions of power to demonstrate how women exercised indirect, personal, or
private forms of power when denied the opportunity to exercise power directly, socially, or publicly. In
doing so, feminists have tried to understand what women are saying and doing, rather than relying on
what men are saying about, and doing to, women. This effort had the effect of denaturalizing women’s
experience, roles, and status as simply given by their biological sex, instead exposing the ways in which
social, political, economic, and cultural rela tions constructed interpretations of women’s identities,
experiences, status, and worth. Feminism informs both theories and vibrant social movements, making
the interplay among theorists, practitioners, policies, and practice a vital part of its definition and
generating an evolving sense of what it means to be a feminist or to practise feminism. Consequently,
definitions of feminism have changed over time, reflecting changes in both social contexts and
understandings of the situation and status of women. Issues of race, imperialism, and sexuality emerged
in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as they had in earlier decades of women’s international thought—e.g.
the early twentieth-century writings of Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman, and Merze Tate bring this into
particularly sharp focus, and they continue to inflect feminist theories and feminist movements today
(see Chs 11, 17, and 18). During the late 1970s and early 1980s, both Global South and Global North
feminisms struggled to accept and incorporate the experiences of lesbian/ bisexual women into their
analyses of subordination and into their movements for liberation, while women of colour (in both the
Global North and South) challenged white women (in both the Global North and South) to confront their
racism and their privileging of white experiences as a template for feminist action. Although it may be
harder to imagine now, lesbian/ bisexual women were explicitly and implicitly asked to hide their
sexuality for fear that it would jeopardize the credibility of the feminist movement. Cast as ‘abnormal’
and ‘deviant’, lesbian/bisexual women confronted the homophobia of the feminist movement and
questioned its claim to universal ‘sisterhood’. Transwomen have been forced to do the same,
confronting the exclusionary elements of feminist thought and holding feminism accountable to its claim
of an inclusive, intersectional politics. Barbara Smith, an influential political activist and a founder of the
powerful Black feminist Combahee River Collective (see Box 10.2), wrote in the 1990s: ‘Feminism is the
political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of colour, working-class women,
poor women, disabled women, lesbians, old women, as well as white, economically privileged
heterosexual women. Anything less than this vision of total freedom is not feminism’ (B. Smith 1998:
96). Twenty-one years later, she notes, ‘gaining rights for some while ignoring the violation and suffering
of others does not lead to justice. At best it results in privilege’ (B. Smith 2019). Similarly, women from
the Global South argued that ‘feminism as appropriated and defined by the west has too often become
a tool of cultural imperialism’. In the words of Madhu Kishwar, a pioneering Indian scholar and activist,
‘the definitions, the terminology, the assumptions . . . even the issues are exported west to east . . . and
we are expected to be the echo of what are assumed to be the more advanced movements of the west’
(Kishwar 1990: 3). These critiques challenged the presumptions of particular Western, European
feminisms that perjured, rejected, or colonized indigenous forms of feminism, and ignored the legacies
of imperialism and exploitation. Many women from the Global South were loath to define themselves as
feminist. The great Nigerian novelist Buchi Emecheta explained it this way: ‘I do believe in the African
type of feminism. They call it womanism because, you see, Europeans don’t worry about water . . . you
are so well off’ (Emecheta1990). The words of Kishwar and Emecheta also high light the disconnect that
many women from the Global South felt about the agendas of Global North feminism. Who decides on
the priorities of a feminist agenda? Is there just one? Who shares in it? One answer is found in the
Women’s Manifesto for Ghana (2016 [2004]) which identified a ‘set of demands for the achievement of
gender equality and equity and sustainable national development’, drawn from the experiences of
African feminists. It is difficult to convey the depth and intensity of these earlier debates among women
and the intensity and nuance they expressed. Yet these tensions and debates informed the evolution of
feminism and femi nist movements as—in a process not yet ended nor fully successful—each strove for
a more integrative under standing of women’s experiences and status and, in particular, strove to gain
purchase on the ways in which they intersected with other elements of identity—such as race, sexuality,
class, geographical location, and age. To understand women’s experiences, status, and roles, the
differences among women, as well their similarities, had to be at the forefront of any organizing. Thus,
feminism is not only about asking, in the words of feminist International Relations theorist Cynthia
Enloe, ‘where are the women?’, but also ensuring that her question is nuanced to ask which women are
where? It was not until the 1970s that we were even able to begin to answer these questions, for until
then we lacked the information to do so. The International Women’s Year conference of 1975, held in
Mexico City, was the most visible origin of women’s global organizing for the twentieth century. As a
result, in 1975 the United Nations formally designated 1976–85 as the United Nations Decade for
Women. This was pivotal because it encouraged and legitimized research and action on the experiences,
roles, and status of women globally, highlighting not only the stark absence of attention to women, but
also the magnitude of women’s contributions. Research on women’s lives and opportunities signalled
the validity and importance of women’s issues. If at the start of the Decade for Women ‘study after
study revealed the lack of statistical data and information about women’, by its end this was less true
(Fraser 1987: 21). It was during this decade that the United Nations Development Fund for Women (now
known as UN Women) and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of
Women (INstraw) were founded, and the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) entered into force. Think about that: it was only about 50 years
ago that the international community accepted—and somewhat grudgingly at that—that knowledge
and understanding of women’s experiences, status, contributions, and concerns were worth pursuing.
The knowledge subsequently gained was ground breaking, revelatory, and revolutionary. For instance,
Ester Boserup’s book Women’s Role in Economic Development, published in 1970, challenged
conventional economic and social development programmes by proving that women were essential to
productive—as well as reproductive—processes and to developing nations’ economic and social
progress. This led to an entirely new development agenda at the United Nations, ‘Women in
Development’. Until that time, international and national actors and organizations did not recognize or
support women’s essential economic roles, productive and/or reproductive. Moreover, the waged and
unwaged work of women was seen as incidental to the overall progress and development of the state.
Most significantly, the work under taken during this decade exposed the fundamental inequalities of
women’s status and experience, both globally and domestically. To be clear, it was not that there were
no international movements or organizations dedicated to increasing the opportunities and status of
women before this time (for example, see Case Study 10.1). Rather, it was because the United Nations
Decade for Women was the first extended period of time when the United Nations and its member
states were forced to grapple with the experiences, status, and roles of women globally, as a direct
result of lobbying by women, and ultimately to take responsibility for alleviating the subordination of
women.

Thus, we can argue that women suffer global subordination because we now know, through data
collected over several decades, that neither states nor households distribute resources and
opportunities equally between men and women. Consider some relevant statistics. Globally, women
earn 19 per cent less than men, and while it was previously estimated it would take 257 years to close
the global gender pay gap, the impact of Covid-19 added decades to that estimate (ILO 2018, 2022; UN
Women 2020a). In the United States, women make approximately 82 cents for every dollar that men
make. When this figure is broken down in terms of race, African American women earn 62 cents for
every dollar that white men make, Native American women 57 cents, and Latinas only 54 cents.
Worldwide, women do three times as much unpaid and care work as men, which directly impacts their
capacity to engage in waged work. Further, 40 per cent of global economies have gender specific job
restrictions which impede women’s ability to earn an income outside of the home (World Bank 2021b).
In 2020 only 26 women were heads of state, while violence against women human rights defenders and
women in politics has increased with the rise in authoritarian governments (UN Women 2020a; Kishi
2021). Gathering statistics such as these was and is crucial to feminist knowledge, politics, and practice.
Thus in 2011, due to feminist organizations’ work and lobbying, the United Nations recommitted itself to
researching and collecting accurate statistics on women. This commitment is all the more crucial
considering the regressive gendered and racialized impact Covid-19 has had on equality and equity, and
the particular burden borne by women of colour globally (Oxfam 2021b). The United Nations Decade for
Women sparked an outpouring of resources and information through the work of women’s
organizations, networks, and gatherings, as well as the flourishing of research and analysis on women’s
experiences, roles, and status. It could no longer be said that women did not matter to the study of
international relations, or that feminists had no claim on influencing and explaining the events of
international politics. And yet the discipline of International Relations was silent. It was in this context
that feminist International Relations theorists began to make their mark on the discipline of
International Relations. Importantly, the revitalization of feminism and of attention to women in
international politics that occurred during the United Nations Decade for Women does not mean that
forms of feminism or active women scholars were utterly absent prior to this. As International Relations
scholars have demonstrated, the histories of feminist international relations and of women scholars
were erased after the Second World War (Ashworth 2011; Owens 2018). Thus, the UN Decade for
Women marked a revitalization of feminism and recognition of female scholars of international
relations.

What is feminist International Relations theory?

Feminist International Relations theories that emerged in the late 1980s arose from a disciplinary
dissatisfac tion with the conventional and dominant theories and methods of International Relations.
Feminist schol ars had no interest in advocating or defending any particular dominant approach. Rather,
the positivist, rationalist theories of realism/neorealism and liberal ism/neoliberalism were seen as
restricting the pursuit of knowledge about international politics writ large, as well as excluding different
post-positivist approaches to international politics, such as interpretive, ideational, or sociological
approaches (see Chs 7, 9, and 13). Feminist International Relations scholars pointed out that neither the
positivist nor post-positivist approaches paid particular attention to women, much less to gen der. To
remedy this, feminist International Relations scholars were intent on identifying and explaining how the
essential theories, concepts, and case studies of International Relations were, at the very least, partial,
biased, and limited because they reflected only (cer tain) men’s experiences, roles, and status. As
Charlotte Hooper explains, feminist scholars made obvious how ‘the range of subjects studied, the
boundaries of the discipline, its central concerns and motifs, the content of empirical research, the
assumptions of theoretical models, and the corresponding lack of female practitio ners both in academic
and elite political and economic circles all combine and reinforce each other to mar ginalize and often
make invisible women’s roles and women’s concerns in the international arena’ (Hooper 2001: 1). While
feminist International Relations theorists f irst advocated, at a minimum, for including women in the
study of international politics, it was with the full recognition that to do so was not simply to expand the
scope of the field, but also to radically alter its predi cates. The study of women would not only
introduce a new subject, it would also demand a critical analysis of the presuppositions and
presumptions of the exist ing discipline. V. Spike Peterson (1992) describes these initial efforts as
simultaneously deconstructive, in their critique of the state of the field, and reconstructive, in
introducing new methods and theories for understand ing international politics. One of the most
obvious examples of feminist International Relations theorists’ deconstructive and reconstructive work
is their analysis of the concept and practice of the state. Women have long been absent from, or sorely
underrepresented in, institutions of state and global governance. Representation of women is one of the
ways that the United Nations measures the degree of inequality within and across states (see the United
Nations Development Programme Gender Inequality Index). The absence of women and/or low
numbers of women in positions of government indicates a state that is gender unequal. Gender unequal
means that not only are women underrepresented empirically, they are also neglected conceptually as
their particular experiences and skills are not integrated into the practice of gov ernment. In addition,
women are denied the social and political, and sometimes economic, power imparted by these
positions. Once this was empirically demon strated, feminist International Relations scholars que ried:
why and how had this occurred? And why had the discipline, through liberalism or realism and its deriva
tives, not previously addressed these questions? One of multiple, complex answers pivoted on the very
concept of the state itself: how it had been theorized and defined historically and politically. Drawing on
feminist work in history, anthropology, and political theory, international feminist theorists
demonstrated how the concept and practices of the state in its emergence, and even as it changed over
time, consistently excluded women from full participation. In addition, feminist International Relations
scholars cri tiqued the discipline’s uncritical reliance on such texts and scholars as Hobbes’s Leviathan
and Machiavelli’s T he Prince in articulating its basic precepts. Most imme diately, as feminist
philosophers and theorists made clear, these authors wrote at a time and in a context in which women
lacked full legal status and were consid ered the property of a male guardian. Women were rel egated to
ancillary, privatized, and apolitical roles that undermined their economic and social stature and cen
tralized male control. Broadly speaking, this relegation was justified through recourse to arguments that
held that women were to be protected from politics due to their innate weakness and emotionality,
rooted in their reproductive capacity. Feminist political theorists agree ‘the tradition of Western political
thought rests on a conception of “politics” that is constructed through the exclusion of women and all
that is represented by femininity and women’s bodies’ (Shanley and Pateman 2007: 3). Feminist
theorists demonstrated that this tra dition of thought, to which conventional International Relations
scholars turn, was fundamentally predicated on the absence and insignificance of women, as well as
highly constructed interpretations of women’s charac ter and, essentially, reproductive heterosexuality.
In fact, as Carol Pateman underscores, according to Hobbes, the subordination of women through het
erosexual marriage is a necessary step in the estab lishment of civil society and eventually the state. She
writes ‘through the civil institution of marriage men can lawfully obtain the familiar “helpmeet” and gain
the sexual and domestic services of a wife, whose per manent servitude is guaranteed by the law and
sword’ (Pateman 2007: 67). Thus, the state regulated that men were rulers and women were to be ruled
through a con stant state of legal and social violence. Consequently, the state could not be said to be a
neutral concept or institution, but is a ‘main organizer of the power rela tions of gender’ in both its
formal expression and effects (Peterson 1992: 9). Evidence of this organization of the power relations of
gender emerges through an examination of how gen der affects the beliefs about, and the institutions
and actions of, soldiering and the military. Feminist schol ars study how beliefs about masculinity and
the roles men are expected to play as protectors of women and as rulers of the state directly impact
conceptions of sol diers as male and militaries as masculine. Expectations and beliefs about masculinity
are constitutive with expectations and beliefs about soldiers, such that states institutionalize militaries
to reflect and consolidate men as soldiers, in part by excluding women from combat as incapable. As
Megan MacKenzie demon strates through her research in Sierra Leone and the United States, holding to
this premise requires that we ignore the history and evidence of women’s participa tion in combat. She
argues that women’s forceful exclu sion from the military simply reaffirms male prowess in combat and
persists ‘primarily because of myths and stereotypes associated with female and male capa bilities and
the military’s “band of brothers” culture’ (MacKenzie 2015: 1). As Aaron Belkin points out, this
construction of masculinity through the military also has repercussions on men who are not, in effect,
sol diers in the band of brothers. These men must justify and defend their own manifestations of
masculinity. Soldiers ‘attain masculine status by showing that they are not-feminine, not-weak, not-
queer, not-emotional’ (Belkin 2012: 4). In this way, masculinity is dissoci ated from some men and is no
longer their property by birth, and the fixed binary distinction of men (protec tors/rulers) and women
(protected/ruled) is shown to be constructed through the interaction of beliefs, insti tutions, and
politics, which in turn informs and reflects gendered states. Now, the inclusion of women and the
relaxation of the norms and requirement of heterosexu ality in many state militaries points to the
possibility of new configurations of the relationship among military, state, and gender. T he simple
empirical question initially posed— where are the women?—led to a re-examination of the historical,
conceptual question of the state’s formation and emergence. This, in turn, prompted investigation of
the effects of the state’s historical and conceptual evo lution, which ultimately helped to explain the
absence of women in state governance and the fundamental gendering of the state. The regulation of
social and political relations that ground the state (marriage and the subordination of women) and
structure the state (military) are fundamentally relations of power which take women and gender as
central to their operation. T his analysis also suggests that International Relations scholars’ theorizing
about state and militaries must deconstruct any facile notions of protector/protected as a natural
relationship. Such a conception is decidedly not natural but legislated; and its effects lead to, for
example, the erasure of violence done in the name of protection and violence wielded by women, as
well as, as post-colonial feminist scholars detail, the intersec tion of gender and race in state formation
and schemas of protection (Kapur 2018).

Gender and power

Among scholars of gender, how gender and power are defined and understood to be related varies
according to the conceptualization of gender itself. Birgit Locher and Elisabeth Prügl (2001) distinguish
the use of gen der in at least three ways, each of which has implications for understandings of power. As
they note, some scholars treat gender as an empirical variable that explains social, political, and
economic inequalities, whereby gender is understood as the biological (sex) difference between men
and women. Power, then, rests in social, political, and economic hierarchies. This is the approach of
liberal feminist international relations. Others identify gender as a social construct that exists in social
practices, identities, and institutions. Gender becomes the social interpretation of biological (sex)
differences, and power rests in the practices, identities, and institutions that interpret and fix those
differences. This is the approach of critical feminist international relations. Finally, some argue that gen
der is an effect of discourses of power. In this reading, gender is neither biological difference, nor is it
the social interpretation of biological difference, but is itself constitutive of that difference. This
understand ing of gender identifies it as ‘code’ for the operation of power, and gender becomes an
analytical category that is not necessarily linked to male and female bod ies. This understanding of
gender requires thinking of gender as a useful analytic even if male and female bodies are absent. This is
the approach of poststruc tural feminist international relations (see Ch. 12). Postcolonial feminism is
defined less by its theoriza tion of gender, as it encompasses at least two of the approaches—critical and
poststructural—in its scope (see Ch. 11). Considering these differences in interpreting gen der, it is
logical that gender scholars rely on a diverse range of methodological approaches that examine
institutions, agents, discourses, and symbols in the production and reproduction of gender in interna
tional politics. And, although this chapter discusses four types of feminist International Relations
theories, this is an analytic separation for ease of explanation; it does not mean that there are only four,
or indeed that these four are wholly conceptually distinct.

10.5 Four feminist International Relations theories 10.5.1 Liberal feminist international relations Liberal
feminism challenges the content of International Relations, but it does not challenge its fundamental
epis temological assumptions (see Ch. 7). Liberal feminist International Relations theorists advocate that
the rights and representation conventionally granted to men be extended to women. To correct gender
inequality, liberal feminists focus on changing institutions, in particular increasing the representation of
women in positions of power in the primary institutions of national and inter national governance. They
also highlight the need to change laws to allow for women’s participation, which they believe will also
correct the distribution of power between the sexes. A recent global initiative to achieve gender parity
in international tribunals and monitoring bodies exemplifies this approach. Noting that lack of gender
parity has ‘serious consequences for international and national justice . . . [and] the under-
representation of women in these spaces affects democracies and the guarantee of people’s rights’,
Gqual was founded in 2015 to advocate for change (Gqual n.d.). According to liberal feminist
International Relations theorists, gender inequality is a major barrier to human development and leads
to greater incidences of war and violence. In their book, Hudson et al. (2012) maintain that gender
inequality, by which they mean the subor dination of women, is itself a form of violence. Through a
collation of quantitative data (available at [Link] [Link]/), the authors argue that the
higher the domestic index of social, political, and economic inequality between men and women in a
state, the more likely it is that force and violence will be used to settle disputes both within and among
states. They contend: ‘the fate of nations is tied to the status of women’. Mary Caprioli (2004) similarly
claims that gender inequal ity makes conflict both within and among states more likely. For these
authors, systemic gender inequality and discrimination against women are the root causes of violence. T
hese are fascinating studies and are well received by policy-makers and the discipline of International
Relations. They also raise important questions regarding what exactly is the mechanism by which gender
inequal ity increases risks of violence. Is it, as Hudson et al. (2012) and Hudson and den Boer (2004)
suggest, rooted in male sexuality (and a surplus male population) and the evo lutionary heterosexual
reproductive practices? Caprioli cautions that ‘rather than focusing on the genesis of, or justification for
differences between the sexes, the more important question should concentrate on how those dif
ferences are used to create a society primed for violence’ (Caprioli 2005: 161). Other feminists comment
that these scholars do not make clear why both questions cannot be investigated simultaneously. They
suggest that a more comprehensive approach addresses questions regard ing the genesis, justification,
and use of the differences between the sexes, rather than presuming that we know in advance what
these differences are and that accepting them is the necessary starting point. 10.5.2 Critical feminist
international relations Critical feminists question liberal feminisms for relying too faithfully on the
neutrality of their methods, and for their vision of power as a positive social good that can be
successfully redistributed without fundamental social change. Many of these feminists highlight the
broader social, economic, and political relationships that struc ture relational power, and they often
draw from Marxist theories to prioritize the role of the economy, specifically critiquing the dominance of
capitalism as the desired mode of exchange. Critical international relations femi nists, drawing on
socialist ideas, pay particular attention to the unequal diffusion of global capital accumulation. As Iris
Young puts it, ‘women’s oppression arises from two distinct and relatively autonomous systems. The sys
tem of male domination, most often called “patriarchy”, produces the specific gender oppression of
women; the system of the mode of production and class relations produces the class oppression and
work alienation of most women’ (I. Young 1990: 21). Therefore, drawing from both Marxist and socialist
thought, critical femi nist scholars identify gender and class oppressions as interdependent and
intertwined (see Ch. 8). Scholars including Sandra Whitworth (1994) and Elisabeth Prügl (1999, 2017),
studying international institutions such as the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International
Planned Parenthood Federation, and the World Bank, demonstrate how gender is produced and
reproduced through the institutionalization of divisions of ‘paid’ and ‘unpaid’ labour. V. Spike Peterson’s
innova tion of ‘triad analytics’ broadens the view of institutions and economies by analysing
globalization through the intersection of reproductive, productive, and virtual eco nomics on which the
global economy rests. In her analy sis, Peterson draws attention to the ‘explosive growth in f inancial
markets that shape business decision-making and flexible work arrangements’ and the ‘dramatic growth
in informal and flexible work arrangements that shapes income generation and family well being’
(Peterson 2003: 1). The devaluation of women’s work; the still extant differential valuing of reproductive
and productive work; the ‘double burden’ of household labour and waged labour that women carry
dispropor tionately; and the massive global shifts in the structure of work itself all influence the
worldwide feminization and racialization of poverty. Indeed, these factors help to explain why,
worldwide, women and especially women of colour were those who were most hard hit economi cally
by Covid-19 (UN Women 2020b, 2021a). During Covid-19, women were particularly hit by the double
burden of household labour and waged labour © coolmilo / iStock Like postcolonial feminist theories,
these critical feminist theories are wary of gender essentialism, which is the assumption of the sameness
of all women’s experiences by virtue of being female. They critique the normalization of white, affluent
women’s experi ences as universal and instead highlight the dynamic and intersectional facets of
identity, of which gender and sex are but two elements. Like postcolonial femi nist theorists, critical
feminist theorists also emphasize the tight link between feminist theorizing and feminist actions, in part
due to their recognition that the mar ginalized, exploited, and colonized have much to teach about the
violent practices of global politics in particu lar locations. Maria Stern (2005) illuminates how the
violence of war affects the intimacies of self and family. Stern questions why the experiences of Mayan
women are not considered ‘valid texts of world politics’, as they illuminate the constitutive topics of
war, violence, and security central to the discipline of International Relations (Stern 2005: 56). Critical
and postcolonial feminists were united in their excoriation of the use of feminism, specifically liberal
feminism, by former President George W. Bush and his administration to justify the ground wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan; to distinguish the United States from those whom it targeted; and, subsequently, to
appropriate the putative emancipation of Afghan and Iraqi women as evidence of their victories.
According to many feminists, however, not only did this ‘embedded feminism’ falsely claim a monolithic
feminism to be wielded against a supposedly savage Islam, in order to once again ‘save’ Muslim women,
it distracted from the detailed empirical evidence that Afghan women are not now free from violence
but rather continue to experi ence it in other forms (K. Hunt 2006: 53; Kinsella 2019). 10.5.3 Postcolonial
feminist international relations Postcolonial feminism ‘link(s) everyday life and local gendered contexts
and ideologies to the larger, trans national political and economic structures and ideolo gies of
capitalism’ (Mohanty 2003: 504). Focusing on the particular situations, experiences, and histories as
materializing colonialism within these larger patterns is a means to confront the universalizing tendency
found in much of feminist theorizing. Postcolonial feminism seeks to situate historical knowledge of the
contours of colonialism and postco lonialism as intersecting with economic, social, and political
oppression and change, highlighting the cen trality of conceptions of gender and of women to colo nial
regimes and their continuing effects. Imperialism demanded ‘complex household arrangements where
white colonizers officially mandated a system of superior ity and disdain against’ local communities and
peoples. ‘Yet colonization would not have functioned without these local communities and peoples—
especially nan nies, maids, houseboys, gardeners, prostitutes, pimps, soldiers, and other coerced
workers for the colonial state’ (Agathangelou and Ling 2004: 518). Rules governing proper and improper
sex were key to the maintenance of difference between the colo nized and the colonizer, and control of
sexualities was fundamentally differentiated according to race and position. Only white men were free
to have sex with whomever they so desired, often in exploitative propri etary relations of rape and
concubinage with women of colour. In contrast, men of colour were policed as savage sexual libertines
against whom white women were to be protected and preserved. Highlighting the link between
individual households, materiality, and sexuality, postcolonial feminists remind feminism that not all
women are colonized equally. Women from the Global North benefited from imperialism as the ‘inferior
sex within the “superior race”’ (quoted in Pettman 1996: 30). Postcolonial feminism takes as its point of
entry the recognition that the feminism of the Global North is rooted in and dependent on discourses of
rights and equality that were, and arguably are, of pre-eminent concern to and defined by Western
Europe. Rey Chow describes this as the Eurocentric ‘hierarchizing frame of comparison’ (Chow 2006:
80). Postcolonial feminists also underscore that while colonialism and imperial ism may be formally past,
their effects are not. Norma Alarcón describes this as the ‘cultural and psychic dis memberment . . .
linked to imperialist racist and sex ist practices [that are] not a thing of the past’ (Alarcón 1999: 67).
Certainly, the expansion of characteristics said to identify the enemy in a time of global war reju venates
and vivifies racial and colonial characteriza tions. For example, in the contemporary war on terror, the
freedom of Muslim and Arab men and women, or those who appear to be so, is subject to increased
scru tiny through policing and surveillance. The number of traits said to identify the threat—‘travelling
while brown’—intensifies the alliances consolidated by race and class, while testing those made only by
sex (Sharma 2006: 135). Additionally, women from the Global South are all too often depicted and
treated as ‘an object of protec tion from her own kind’, to justify the concerted efforts of ‘white men
saving brown women from brown men’ (Spivak 1988: 296). Thus, as feminist scholars note, the
existence of those so designated as in need of protec tion frequently becomes a rationale for violence,
as it did when the United States launched its ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For this reason,
postcolonial feminists resist the imposition of women’s rights as ‘all too often conceived in terms of
paternal relations of protection and benign salvation rather than exer cises of agency and sovereignty of
women for them selves’ (Kinsella 2007: 218; see Case Study 10.2). The embedded feminism of the
United States’ efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan obscured the decades of agency and mobilization of Iraqi
and Afghan peoples on their own behalf. Instead, former President Bush and his admin istration
(standing in for the Global North) portrayed such efforts as the exclusive actions of the United States. In
addition, postcolonial feminists suggest that the individualism and autonomy implicit in the definitions
of rights and liberties are culturally ill-suited, and that collective and relational rights are a better fit.
Lastly, with the international community only now beginning to respond to climate change and the
devastating impacts of resource extraction and envi ronmental exploitation, postcolonial feminists call
attention to it as another manifestation of the legacies of imperialism (see Ch. 24). They highlight its
differ ential impact on the Global South, the global poor, and specifically women and girls within those
categories. Among the global poor, climate change dispropor tionately affects women and girls. They
comprise the majority of the globe’s small-scale farmers and are primarily responsible for producing
food to feed their families and their communities. Yet women and girls are struggling due to climate-
induced changes affect ing temperatures, rainfall, disease, weather patterns, and crop failure which
cause widespread food, water, health, and physical insecurities. For this reason, the 2015 Paris
Agreement on Climate Change specifically identified gender equity and empowerment of women as
fundamental to combating climate change (IPCC 2015). While recognizing this fact, postcolonial femi
nism cautions against the construction of women and girls as especially responsible for conservation, as
being ‘closer to nature’, and as especially vulnerable, with out any corresponding increases in their
authority or agency (Arora-Jonsson 2011). 10.5.4 Poststructural feminist international relations
Poststructural feminism draws most specifically from the scholarship of Judith Butler. Butler argued,
contrary to the commonplace and accepted definition that gender is the social construction of sex, that
sex is in fact con structed by gender. As might be imagined, her argument caused no end of
consternation, for it challenged the seemingly stable and shared attribute of a biological sex of all
women. Without this fixed and permanent referent in sex itself, how could it be that ‘women’ could
exist, much less be united across differences of class, sexuality, race, and location? Butler explains that
‘originally intended to dispute the “biology is destiny” formulation, the distinc tion between sex and
gender’ in fact masks the cultural construction of sex itself. In other words, sex is not the foundation or
origin of gender, but is itself an effect. To understand gender as ‘a social category imposed on a sexed
body’ assumes that the sexed body is itself not an effect of power (Scott 1999: 32). To help us grasp this
argument, Butler introduces the concept of gender per formativity, which simply means that gender is
not what we are, but rather what we do. Cautioning against mis interpretation, Butler points out that
gender is not sim ply what one freely chooses to do (it is not an unfettered performance), but that
performativity occurs in highly regulated contexts including that of normative hetero sexuality. Socially,
one becomes a woman by taking on the imperative to identify with the female/femininity and to desire
the male/masculinity. This production of iden tity is not accomplished in one act, but rather requires
constant iteration and bears with it the constant possi bility of failure. As Sarah Salih (2002: 58) explains,
‘gen der is a “corporeal style”, an act (or a sequence of acts), a “strategy” which has cultural survival as
its end, since those who do not “do” their gender correctly are pun ished by society’. Evidence of this is
seen in the worry, discussed previously in Section 10.2 with regard to the United Nations Decade for
Women, that the presence of lesbian/bisexual women, and now transwomen, would undermine the
credibility or coherency of the feminist movement. Cynthia Weber (2015), along with other queer
theorists, draws from the insight about norma tive heterosexuality, or the ‘heterosexual matrix’, to con
tinue to analyse how bodies are never merely described, but are constituted in the act of description,
calling on International Relations theories to recognize the punitive and productive circulation and
regulation of homo/het erosexualities as fundamental to world politics. As well as subversively
reworking gender, poststruc tural feminism illuminates the constitutive role of lan guage in creating
gendered knowledge and experiences. Laura Shepherd (2008) shows this in her analysis of the
constitutive effects of the discourses formalized in UN Security Council Resolution 1325. While
purporting an emancipatory intent, the resolution consistently reifies women and girls as passive victims
of violence even as it seeks to promote them as agents of change. In a slightly different vein, Kathy
Moon (1997) uses interviews, archival research, and discourse analysis to demonstrate how the sexual
economy of sex work ers figured in the US–Korean security relationships of the mid-1970s. Charlotte
Hooper (2001) examines the masculinization of states and states’ masculinization of men through a
rereading of central economic texts and journals. Overall, what these scholars demonstrate is how
gender is created through the workings of interna tional politics and, in turn, how paying attention to
this construction reveals relations of power that are other wise overlooked. See Opposing Opinions 10.1
for discussion on whether feminism influences states’ foreign policy decision-making.

10.6 Conclusion Feminist International Relations theories have been present in the discipline of
International Relations in var ious forms since its inception (Tickner and True 2018). In its incarnations
since the UN Decade for Women, feminist International Relations theories have demon strated the
crucial importance of including women, and theorizing gender, when attempting to make sense of
international politics. Feminist International Relations theories draw from a long history of feminist
theoriz ing and actions to make specific claims about the con cepts of International Relations—such as
security, the economy, war, and trade—as well as its methods of study. Feminist International Relations
theories employ a wide range of methodological approaches, but they share a focus on understanding
gender as an analytical Questions • Each approach has different historical origins and developments,
and all continue to evolve. category, not simply a descriptive one. In addition, fem inist International
Relations scholars straightforwardly examine how gender is a relationship of power, one that affects all
individuals, institutions, and interactions in international politics. Bringing this to the fore of their
research and methods, feminist International Relations scholars demonstrate the difference that gender
makes. Looking ahead, like all scholars of international poli tics, feminist International Relations scholars
must continue to do more to include and heed ‘the voices of feminist IR theorists who are people of
color, disabled, from Indigenous backgrounds, and/or from the global South (as well as those whose first
language may not be English or another western European language)’ (Weerawardhana 2018: 192).