Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Feminist Theories and International Relations

  • Chapter
Feminism and International Relations

Part of the book series: International Political Economy Series ((IPES))

  • 418 Accesses

Abstract

The Introduction suggested that there has been considerable resistance to bringing together IR and studies of women and gender relations. Few women become IR scholars, and fewer still (women or men) become feminist IR scholars. Despite some reluctance, and structural impediments, to identifying with International Relations as an academic discipline, feminists have long discussed many of the questions which are central to IR scholars. Feminist analyses of war, peace and development provide a substantive literature devoted to the study of women and international relations. Moreover, a small but growing literature has begun to emerge which examines directly the issue of women and gender in both the study and practice of international relations. This chapter will outline some of the various ways in which feminists have discussed these questions, and through a critical review of such approaches it will begin to develop a feminist account of international relations which takes into account gender relations.1

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 44.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Marysia Zalewski, ‘Feminist Theory and International Relations’, in Mike Bowker and Robin Brown (eds), From Cold War to Collapse: Theory and World Politics in the 1980s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 115–44

    Google Scholar 

  2. Alison M. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1983)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989).

    Google Scholar 

  4. These categories have been suggested by Sandra Harding in The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Christine Sylvester, ‘The Emperors’ Theories and Transformations: Looking at the Field Through Feminist Lenses’, in Dennis C. Pirages and Christine Sylvester (eds), Transformations in the Global Political Economy (London: Macmillan, 1990)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Maude Barlow and Shannon Selin, ‘Women and Arms Control in Canada’, Issue Brief No. 8, Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament, October 1987, p. 2. See also Betsy Thorn, ‘Women in International Organizations: Room at the Top — The Situation in Some United Nations Organizations’, in C.F. Epstein and R.L. Coser (eds), Access to Power: Cross-National Studies of Women and Elites (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Carol Riegelman Lubin and Anne Winslow Social Justice for Women: The International Labor Organization and Women (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990).

    Google Scholar 

  8. For a critique of the socialisation argument, and explanation of structural impediments in party and electoral politics in Canada, see Janine Brodie, Women and Politics in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd, 1985).

    Google Scholar 

  9. J. Ann Tickner, ‘Hans Morgenthau’s Principles of Political Realism: A Feminist Reformulation’, Millennium, 17(3), Winter 1988, p. 429

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Sarah Brown, ‘Feminism, International Theory, and International Relations of Gender Inequality’, Millennium, 17(3), Winter 1988, p. 464.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Joni Lovenduski, ‘Toward the Emasculation of Political Science: The Impact of Feminism’, in Dale Spender (ed.), Men’s Studies Modified: The Impact of Feminism on the Academic Disciplines (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981), p. 89

    Google Scholar 

  13. Susan C. Bourque and Jean Grossholtz, ‘Politics an Unnatural Practice: Political Science Looks at Female Participation’, Politics and Society, 4(2), Winter 1974, p. 258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. See Jane Flax, ‘Post-modernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory’, in Linda J. Nicholson, (ed.), Feminism/Post-modernism (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 45.

    Google Scholar 

  15. 19. Margaret R. Higonnet et al. (eds), ‘ Introduction’, Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 3.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives (London: Pluto Press, 1983), p. 1.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Judith Hicks Stiehm, Arms and the Enlisted Woman, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989).

    Google Scholar 

  18. Burton Hacker, ‘Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe: A Reconnaissance’, Signs, 6(4), Summer 1981, p. 653

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Vera Laska, Women in the Resistance and the Holocaust: The Voice of Emptiness (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983)

    Google Scholar 

  20. June A. Willenz, Women Veterans: America’s Forgotten Heroines (New York: Continuum, 1983)

    Google Scholar 

  21. K.J. Cottam, Soviet Airwomen in Combat in World War II (Manhattan, Kansas: MA/AH Publishing, 1983)

    Google Scholar 

  22. K.J. Cottam (ed. and trans.), The Golden-Tressed Soldier (Manhattan, Kansas: MA/AH Publishing, 1983)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Carol R. Berkin and Clara M. Lovett, Women, War and Revolution (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, Inc., 1980).

    Google Scholar 

  24. Ruth Roach Pierson, ‘They’re Still Women After All’ The Second World War and Canadian Womanhood (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Renate Bridenthal et al. (eds), When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  26. Leila Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  28. Anne Wiltsher, Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War (London: Pandora Press, 1985).

    Google Scholar 

  29. Ruth Roach Pierson (ed.), Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives (London: Croom Helm, 1987)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Barbara Harford and Sarah Hopkins, Greenham Common: Women at the Wire (London: The Women’s Press, 1984)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Lynne Jones (ed.), Keeping the Peace: A Women’s Peace Handbook (London: The Women’s Press, 1983)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Dorothy Thompson (ed.), Over Our Dead Bodies: Women Against the Bomb (London: Virago, 1983).

    Google Scholar 

  33. Ester Boserup, Woman’s Role in Economic Development (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970).

    Google Scholar 

  34. Asoka Bandarage, ‘Women in Development: Liberalism, Marxism and Marxist-Feminism’, Development and Change, 15, (1984), p. 497.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Ibid. See also Barbara Rogers, The Domestication of Women: Discrimination in Developing Countries (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Lourdes Beneria and Gita Sen, ‘Accumulation, Reproduction, and Women’s Role in Economic Development: Boserup Revisited’, Signs, 7(2), 1981, pp. 279–98

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Mary Rodkowsky, ‘Women and Development: A Survey of the Literature’, in Women in Development: A Resource Guide for Organization and Action (Stockholm: ISIS, 1984), pp. 13–21

    Google Scholar 

  38. Nüket Kardam, ‘Social Theory and Women in Development Policy,’ Women and Politics, 7(4), Winter 1987, pp. 67–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Mary E. Hawkesworth, ‘Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims of Truth’, Signs, 14(3), Spring 1989, p. 535.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. This form of epistemological critique parallels closely that made by other ‘post-modern, anti-foundational’ theorists. For a summary of these arguments, and how feminists have also taken them up, see Susan Hekman, ‘The Feminization of Epistemology: Gender and the Social Sciences’, Women and Politics, 7(3), Fall 1987, pp. 69–71.

    Google Scholar 

  41. V. Spike Peterson, ‘Transgressing Boundaries: Theories of Knowledge, Gender and International Relations’, Millennium, 21(2), 1992, pp. 183–206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. See Tickner, ‘Hans Morgenthau’s Principles of Political Realism’, pp. 430-7 and Gender in International Relations. For summaries of these approaches see also Kathy E. Ferguson, ‘Male-Ordered Politics: Feminism and Political Science’, in Terence Ball (ed.), Idioms of Inquiry (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987), pp. 220–3

    Google Scholar 

  43. Lynne Segal, Is the Future Female? (London: Virago Press, 1987)

    Google Scholar 

  44. Berenice A. Carroll, ‘Peace Research: The Cult of Power’, Conflict Resolution, 16(4), 1972, pp. 585–616.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. See for example, Pam McAllister (ed.), Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1982)

    Google Scholar 

  46. Robin Morgan, The Anatomy of Freedom: Feminism, Physics and Global Politics (New York: Anchor Press, 1982)

    Google Scholar 

  47. Betty A. Reardon, Sexism and the War System (New York: Teachers College Press, 1985)

    Google Scholar 

  48. Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1938)

    Google Scholar 

  49. Elise Boulding, Women in the Twentieth Century World (New York: Sage Publications, 1977)

    Google Scholar 

  50. Brigit Brock-Utne, Educating for Peace: A Feminist Perspective (New York: Pergamon Press, 1985)

    Google Scholar 

  51. Brian Easlea, Fathering the Unthinkable: Masculinity, Scientists and the Nuclear Arms Race (London: Pluto Press, 1983), pp. 5

    Google Scholar 

  52. Diana E.H. Russell, ‘The Nuclear Mentality: An Outgrowth of the Masculine Mentality’, Atlantis, 12(1), 1987, pp. 10–17

    Google Scholar 

  53. See summaries of this work in V. Spike Peterson, ‘Introduction’, in V. Spike Peterson (ed.), Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory, (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1992), p. 12

    Google Scholar 

  54. Sara Ruddick, ‘Pacifying the Forces: Drafting Women in the Interests of Peace’, Signs, 8(3), 1983, pp. 478–9

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. R.W. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’, in R.O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 207.

    Google Scholar 

  56. See Teresa de Lauretis, ‘Feminist Studies/Critical Studies: Issues, Terms, and Contexts’, in T. de Lauretis (ed.), Feminist Studies/Critical Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), p. 9

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  57. Segal, Is The Future Female? p. 37. See also Michele Barrett, ‘The Concept of “Difference”’, Feminist Review, 26, July 1987, p. 31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  58. Nancy Fraser and Linda J. Nicholson, ‘Social Criticism without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Post-modernism’, in L.J. Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1990), pp. 29–30.

    Google Scholar 

  59. For one example of such work, see J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  60. Sandra Harding, ‘The Instability of the Analytical Categories of Feminist Theory’, Signs, 11(4), 1986, p. 646.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  61. Linda Alcoff, ‘Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory’, Signs, 13(3), 1988, p. 413.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Judith Grant, ‘I Feel Therefore I Am: A Critique of Female Experience as the Basis for a Feminist Epistemology’, Women and Politics, 7(3), Fall 1987, p. 103

    Google Scholar 

  63. For a critique of this, see Christine Sylvester, ‘Some Dangers in Merging Feminist and Peace Projects’, Alternatives, XII, 1987, p. 499

    Google Scholar 

  64. See for example some of the commentary from V. Spike Peterson, ‘Clarification and Contestation: A Conference Report on Woman, the State and War: What Difference Does Gender Make?’ (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Center for International Studies, 1989)

    Google Scholar 

  65. Christine Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Post-modern Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  66. See Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’, in Chandra Talpade Mohandy, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 55

    Google Scholar 

  67. Michel Foucault, ‘Why Study Power?: The Question of the Subject’, in H.L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (eds), Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics: Michel Foucault (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 212

    Google Scholar 

  68. Julia Kristeva, ‘Woman can never be defined’, in Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (eds), New French Feminisms (New York: Schocken, 1981), p. 137

    Google Scholar 

  69. Anne Marie Goetz, ‘Feminism and the Limits of the Claim to Know: Contradictions in the Feminist Approach to Women in Development’, Millennium, 17(3), Winter 1988, p. 489.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  70. Catharine A. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 234.

    Google Scholar 

  71. Joan Wallach Scott, ‘Rewriting History’, in M. Randolph Higonnet et al., Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 153.

    Google Scholar 

  72. R.W. Cox, ‘Postscript’, in R.O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 242.

    Google Scholar 

  73. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (London: Pandora, 1989), p. 4.

    Google Scholar 

  74. This section draws on Abigail Bakan, ‘Whither Woman’s Place? A Reconsideration of Units of Analysis in International Political Economy’, Paper Presented at the Annual Meetings of the Canadian Political Science Association, Victoria, British Columbia, May 1990. See also, Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour (London: Zed Books, 1986)

    Google Scholar 

  75. Gita Sen and Caren Grown, Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions: Third World Women’s Perspectives (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986)

    Google Scholar 

  76. June Nash and Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly (eds), Women, Men and the International Division of Labor (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983).

    Google Scholar 

  77. See Betsy Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control and Contraceptive Choice (New York: Harper and Row, 1987)

    Google Scholar 

  78. G.A. Johnston, The International Labour Organisation: Its Work for Social and Economic Progress (London: Europa Publications, 1970), p. 227.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. York University, Ontario, Canada

    Sandra Whitworth (Associate Professor of Political Science)

Authors
  1. Sandra Whitworth
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 1997 Sandra Whitworth

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Whitworth, S. (1997). Feminist Theories and International Relations. In: Feminism and International Relations. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-37162-0_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation