Feminism in IR Flashcards
While women have always been players in international politics, their participation has more often taken place in a _____ setting such as social _____ rather than in inter-state _____
non-governmental
movements
policy making
what is the contradiction between women’s influence on decisions and how decisions affect them
give an example of this
- Womens voices rarely heard in the halls of state power yet women are deeply affected by decisions that their leaders make.
- Women are the majority of the worlds poorest population. Economic policies, constructed in distant centres of power, affect how resources are distributed in local communities
studies has shown that both men and women assign a more positive value to masculine characteristics. what does this show about gender?
Gender is a structure that is hierarchical in which masculine characteristics are more valued than feminine ones
world percentage of women in parliaments (2012)
15%
Percentage of Women in upper house or senate (2012)
18.4%
Percentage of women in a single or lower house of parliament (2012)
20%
Define Liberal Feminism in IR
believe that women’s equality can be achieved by removing obstacles that deny them the same rights and opportunities as men. They look for women in institutions and practises in global politics and observe how their presence or absence affects and is affected by international policy making.
why do IR feminists disagree with liberal feminists
• IR feminists disagree with liberal as they emphasize that gender inequalities continue to exist in societies that have long achieved legal equality. Post-liberal feminists suggest we must look further into the gender hierarchy to achieve equality
what is feminist critical theory? and who is a key scholar within this theory
explores both the ideational and material manifestations of gendered identities and gendered power in global politics.
Sandra Whitworth is a feminist critical theorist and suggests that understanding gender depends only in part on the conditions of men and women in particular circumstances. Suggests that differences in the meaning of gender had differing effects on institutions’ policies at various time across history.
What is feminist social constructivism? and who is a key scholar within this theory
study processes whereby ideas about gender influences global politics, as well as ways that global politics shape ideas about gender.
Prugl is a feminist constructivist and shows in her 1999 book ‘Global construction of gender’ that ideas about femininity have contributed to the international community’s debates about institutionalizing home-based workers rights.
What is feminist post structuralism? and who is a key scholar within this theory?
claim there is a link between knowledge and power. They point out that men have generally been seen as the knowers, and that what has counted as knowledge has generally been based on men lived in the public sphere. Women have generally not been seen as either as knowers or as subjects of knowledge.
Hooper’s 2001 book ‘Manly States’, claims that we cannot understand the implications of international relations unless we understand the fact that it is conducted mostly by men. She asks how international relations might shape men as much as men shape international relations.
what do post colonial feminists argue? who is a key scholar within this theory
suggests that women’s subordination must be differentially understood in terms of race, class, and geographical locations. Just as feminists have criticised western knowledge for being knowledge constructed form men’s lives, post-colonial feminists see similar problems arising from feminist knowledge being largely based on the experiences of relatively privileged western women.
Chandra Mohanty (1988) suggests that women’s subordinations must be addressed within their own cultural context, rather than some universal understanding of women’s needs.
About 90% of total casualties are civilian which questions the notion that men fight wars to protect women and children. What is this better known as?
the protection myth
In wartime, women are particularly subject to rape and prostitution. Rape is not an accident of war, but often a ____ _____ strategy. how many women were raped in the war in Bosnia during the war?
20,000-35,000 women
how do feminists define security
Feminists tend to define security broadly – as a diminution of all forms of violence, including physical, economic and ecological, they suggest that we think about security from the bottom up instead of top down, meaning we start with the security of individual or community rather than with the state or the international system
what are gendered division structures?
Women are disproportionately located at the bottom of the socio-economic scale in all societies. In average, women earn two-thirds of means earnings. Even when women do rise to the top, they almost earn always earn less than men.
Gendered constructs such as ____ and ____, have been central to modern Western definitions of masculinity, feminism and capitalism. Women are disproportionately represented in ____ professions, such as nursing, social services and primary education and choose these professions not on the basis of market rationality and profit maximization, but also because of _____ and _____ of women
breadwinner and housewife
caring
values and expectations
• In wartime the just warrior who displays heroic masculine characteristics is often contrasted with an enemy who is portrayed as dangerous, often through the use of feminized and sometimes radicalised characteristics. Give an example of this
The US invasion of Afghanistan was partially justified as a heroic intervention on behalf of presumably helpless Afghani women. The Taliban response was also shaped by gendered justification of protecting ‘their’ women form outside influence. Both sides in the conflict further justified their positions through the use of feminized imagery of the other.
When and where was the UN’s first national conference on women, and what did it spark?
1975 in mexico city and launched the UN decade for women (1976-85) which was a series of intergovernmental women’s conferences with the impact of economic issues on women taking precedence
what ear was the convention of the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women adopted by the UN general assembly
1979
what expectations contribute to the fundamental inequalities between men and women in the world of international politics
• Feminists argue that we should move beyond frameworks that construct international theory without attention to gender and ways in which gender hierarchies reinforce socially constructed institutions and practise that create unequal expectations
Feminists look to have frameworks that include gender as a central category of analysis that goes beyond simply adding women into the equation
how do feminists respond to claims that the subject matter of feminism doesnt fall into IR
they assert that structural inequalities, which are central contributors to the insecurity of individuals, are built into the historical legacy of the modern state and the international system of which it is a part. Calling into question realist boundaries between anarchy and danger on the outside and order and security on the inside, feminists believe that state-centric or structural analyses miss the interrelation of insecurity across levels of analysis
explain the private vs public hierarchy of men and women’s influence
name a key scholar around this
Public vs private hierarchy – public spheres of males influences and identification, and the home, family and social reproduction as predominantly private spheres of female influence
As Spike Peterson and other feminists have pointed out, at the time of the foundation of the modern Western state, and coincidentally with the beginnings of capitalism, women were not included as citizens but consigned to the private space of the household; thus, they were removed both from the public sphere of politics and the economic sphere of production (Peterson, 1992a:40-4). As a result, women lost much of their existing autonomy and agency, becoming more dependent on men for their economic security
The separation of the public and private spheres, reinforced by the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, has resulted in the legitimation of what are perceived as the “rational” activities (such as politics, economics, and justice) in the former while devaluing the “natural” activities (such as household management, child rearing, and care-giving) of the latter
Cynthia Enloe focuses on Core IR issues of war, militarism and security. what does she highlight?
the dependence of these concepts on gender structures – eg, dominant forms of the masculine (Warrior) subject as protector/conqueror/exploitor of the feminine/feminized object/other – and thus the fundamental importance of subjecting them to gender analysis
When enloe claimed that ‘gender makes the world go round’ she was in fact turning the abstract logic of malestream IR inside out. The abstract logic saw little need to take theoretical and analytical account of gender as a social force because in practical terms only one gender, the male, appeared to define IR
why does feminist IR stand outside the mainstream IR
concerns of gender and women continue to appear to be subsidiary to high politics and diplomacy
Charlotte Hooper’s influential book ‘Manly states’ is a description both of the ____ nature of states, traditionally the ___ ___ in IR, and of the general conditions (states) of manliness, otherwise the problems of masculinity
masculine
centre actors
what model of masculinity tend to be ‘less aggressive, more egalitarian and democratic’ than the ‘heroic warrior citizen’ model, which is oriented towards conquest of women and the ‘patriarchal’ model which ‘ignores women’
The ‘Bourgeois-rationalist’ model of masculinity
This model appears as the most ubiquitous characterisation of human action in contemporary IR
