Abstract
In a review appearing on the back cover of Jindy Pettman’s 1996 book Worlding Women, Cynthia Enloe suggests that the value of the work is its brazen courage to ask simple questions about international relations. Worlding Women poses questions like, “What can a Filipina mail-order bride living in Sydney, Australia tell us about lofty theorizing in international politics?” The answer, Enloe replies, is “a lot.” Through Worlding Women, Jindy Pettman is one of the pioneers of the project “to make visible places and ways that women are in the world.”1 Like Enloe’s own work, and the work of many since, the straightforward, yet extraordinary value of critical feminist investigations into international relations demonstrates a curiosity regarding how international relations affects and is affected by gendered identities. To those outside the discipline of international relations (IR) this may seem a simple task, yet feminists working inside the discipline know that that is exactly what it is not. It is a testament to the foundationally unsettling nature of critical feminist IR that feminists have faced decades of difficulties in having questions of gender taken seriously. This is because such an enquiry encourages us to challenge the boundaries of the discipline of ‘international relations’ by exploring the totality of ‘global politics.’ While the discipline of international relations reserves its reference for the ‘high politics’ of statecraft in the international system, critical feminist IR scholars concern themselves with the breadth of global politics.
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Notes
Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1996), xi.
For an excellent discussion see, Mary E. Hawkesworth, Globalization and Feminist Activism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, Inc. 2006), 25–28.
Jill Steans, “Engaging from the Margins: Feminist Encounters with the ‘Mainstream’ of International Relations,” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 5, no. 3 (August 2003): 435.
Katrina Lee-Koo, “Feminism,” in An Introduction to International Relations: Australian Perspectives, ed. Richard Devetak, Anthony Burke, and Jim George (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 75–77.
Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (London: Pandora, 1989).
J. Ann Tickner, “You Just Don’t Understand: Troubled Engagements Between Feminists and IR Theorists,” International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 4 (December 1997): 616.
V. Spike Peterson, “Feminist Theories Within, Invisible to, and Beyond IR,” Brown Journal of World Affairs X, no. 2 (Winter/Spring 2004): 39.
J. Ann Tickner, “Feminism Meets International Relations: Some Methodological Issues,” in Feminist Methodologies for International Relations, ed. Brooke A Ackerly, Maria Stern, and Jacqui True (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 25.
Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland, Gender and International Relations (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1991);
J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations: A Feminist Perspective on Achieving Global Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992);
V. Spike Peterson, Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1992);
V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan, ed., Global Gender Issues (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993);
Christine Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994);
Pettman, Worlding Women; Marysia Zalewski and Jane Parpart, ed., The “Man Question” in International Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998);
J. Ann Tickner, Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001);
Christine Sylvester, Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
For a review of feminist scholarship in IR see Jill Steans, Gender and International Relations (London: Polity Press, 2006), chapters 1 and 2.
For thematic contributions see, for example, Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988);
Tickner, Gender in International Relations; Zillah Eisenstein, The Color of Gender: Reimaging Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994);
Mary K. Meyer and Elisabeth Priigl, Gender Politics in Global Governance (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999);
Zillah Eisenstein, Against Empire: Feminisms, Race and the West (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Amrita Basu, ed., The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women’s Movements in Global Perspective (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995);
Kumari Jayawardena and Malathi de Alwis, ed., Embodied Violence: Communalising Women’s Sexuality in South Asia (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1996).
Lois Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin, ed., The Women and War Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1998);
Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998);
Caroline Moser and Fiona Clark, ed., Victims, Perpetrators or Actors: Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence (London: Zed Books, 2001);
Geeta Chowdhury and Sheila Nair. ed., Power in a Postcolonial World: Race, Gender and Class in International Relations (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Georgina Waylen, Gender in Third World Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996);
Georgina Waylen, “You Still Don’t Understand: Why Troubled Engagements Continue between Feminists and (Critical) IPE,” Review of International Studies 32, no. 1 (2006): 145–64;
Sonia Alvarez, Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women’s Movements in Transition Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990);
Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Transnational Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
Nira Yuval-Davis and Floia Anthias, ed., Woman, Nation, State (Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989);
Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1997);
Rita Manchanda, ed., Women, War and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agency (New Delhi: Sage Publishers, 2001);
Deniz Kandiyoti, ed., Women, Islam and the State (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991);
Haleh Afshar, ed., Women and Politics in the Third World (London: Routledge, 1996).
Catherine M. Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh, and Stephan F. Miescher, ed., Africa After Gender: (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007);
Dong-Sook S. Gills and Nicola Piper, ed., Women and Work in Globalising Asia (London: Routledge, 2002);
Myra Marx Ferree and Aili Mari Tripp, ed., Global Feminism: Transnational Women’s Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights (New York: New York University Press, 2006).
Anne-Marie Goetz, Women Development Workers: Implementing Rural Credit Programmes in Bangladesh (New Delhi: Sage, 2001).
Naila Kabeer, Mainstreaming Gender in Social Protection for the Informal Economy, Gender Mainstreaming in Development Series (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 2008);
Shirin M. Rai, Gender and the Political Economy of Development: From Nationalism to Globalization (Cambridge: Polity, 2002).
Rebecca Cook, ed., Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994);
Kelly D. Askin and Dorean M. Koenig, ed., Women and International Human Rights Law: Introduction to Women’s Human Rights Issues (Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, 1999);
Hilary Charlesworth and Christine Chinkin, Boundaries of International Law: A Feminist Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).
Hawkesworth, Globalization and Feminist Activism, 2006; Jutta Joachim, Agenda Setting, the UN, and NGOs: Gender Violence and Reproductive Rights (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007); Ferree and Tripp, ed., Global Feminism.
While they have their limitations, some examples are the activism for women’s rights, the UNSC 1325, gender-mainstreaming, seeking justice for war crimes, and gender budgeting strategies. For various analyses see, Charlotte Bunch and Niamh Reilly, Demanding Accountability: The Global Campaign and Vienna Tribunal for Women’s Human Rights (New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Women’s Global Leadership, and New York: UN Development Fund for Women, UNIFEM, 1994);
Jacqui True and Michael Mintrom, “Transnational Networks and Policy Diffusion: The Case of Gender Mainstreaming,” International Studies Quarterly 45, no. 1 (March 2001): 27–57;
Brooke Ackerly, “Women’s Human Rights Activists as Cross-Cultural Theorists,” International Journal of Feminist Politics 3, no. 3 (2001): 1–36;
Jacqui True, “Mainstreaming Gender in Global Public Policy,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 5, no. 3 (November 2003): 368–96;
Rhonda Sharp and Ray Broomhill, “Budgeting for Equality: The Australian Experience,” Feminist Economics 8, no.1 (2002): 25–47;
Bina D’Costa, “Coming to Terms with the Past: Forming Feminist Alliance across Borders,” in Women, Power and Justice: Global Feminist Perspectives, Volume I: Politics and Activism: Ensuring the Protection of Women’s Fundamental Human Rights, ed. Luciana Ricciutelli, Angela Miles, and Margaret McFadden (London: Zed Books, 2005), 227–47.
See Nicole George in this volume; see also Lynn Wilson, Speaking to Power: Gender and Politics in the Western Pacific (New York: Routledge, 1995); Teresia K. Teaiwa, “Globalizing and Gendered Forces: The Contemporary Militarization of Pacific/Oceania,” in Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific, ed. Kathy E. Ferguson and Monique Mironescu (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, forthcoming). A group of women organized anti-nuclear activism under the banner of Otil a Beluad, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in late eighties.
Nicola Piper, “Feminization of Labor Migration as Violence Against Women: International, Regional, and Local Nongovernmental Organization Responses in Asia,” Violence Against Women 9, no. 6 (2003): 723–45.
See, for example, Barbara Earth, “Globalization and Human Rights as Gendered Ideologies: A Case Study from Northeast Thailand,” Gender, Technology and Development 9, no.1 (2005): 104–22.
Naila Kabeer, “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment,” in Gendered Poverty and Well-Being, ed. Shahra Razavi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 27–56.
Katherine Lepani, “Everything Has Come up to the Open Space: Talking about Sex in an Epidemic,” Working paper No. 15 (Canberra: Gender Relations Center, ANU, 2005).
Andrea Whittaker, ed., Women’s Health in Mainland Southeast Asia (Binghamton, NY: Haworth, 2002).
This scholarship drew upon critical feminist voices rising in the West. Both Black and Indian feminists in the United States provided a vibrant and critical contribution focused on race and gender. Whereas, bell hooks, Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981) discussed race and class; Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes, Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Boundary 2—An International Journal of Literature and Culture 13, no. 1 (1984): 333–58, pointed out the connections between nonwestern feminism and race.
It is important to note that African feminists have also focused on this, see, for example, Joyce M. Chadya, “Mother Politics: Anti-Colonial Nationalism and the Woman Question in Africa,” Journal of Women’s History 15, no. 3 (2003): 153–57.
Patty O’Brien, The Pacific Muse: Exotic Femininity and the Colonial Pacific (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2006).
Numerous examples from Indonesia, Malaysia, India; see also Pyong Gap Min, “Korean ‘Comfort Women’: The Intersection of Colonial Power, Gender and Class,” Gender and Society 17, no. 6 (December 2003): 938–57;
Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, “Whose Security? State-Building and the ‘Emancipation’ of Women in Central Asia,” International Relations 18, no. 1 (2004): 91–107;
Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Katie Willis, ed., State/Nation/Transnation: Perspectives on Transnationalism in the Asia-Pacific (London: Routledge, 2004);
Barbara Earth, “Globalization and Human Rights as Gendered Ideologies: A Case Study from Northeast Thailand,” Gender, Technology and Development 9, no. 1 (2005): 104–23.
For example, in South Asia during the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. Veena Das, Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India (Delhi: Oxford India, 1996).
Urvashi Butalia, Other Side of Silence (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998).
Bina D’Costa, “Marginalized Identities: New Frontiers of Research for IR?” in Feminist Methodologies for International Relations, ed. Brooke A Ackerly, Maria Stern, and Jacqui True (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 129–52.
See, for example, Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998);
Ken Booth and Russell Trood, ed., Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific Region (London: Palgrave McMillan, 1999);
William T. Tow, Ramesh Thakur, and In-Taek Hyun, ed., Asia’s Emerging Regional Order: Reconciling Traditional and Human Security (New York: United Nations University Press, 2000).
William T. Tow, Asia-Pacific Strategic Relations: Seeking Convergent Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); security sector reform in post-conflict states or recent police trainings in the Solomon Islands (RAMSI).
Jindy Pettman, “Questions of Identity: Australia and Asia,” in Critical Security Studies and World Politics, ed. Ken Booth (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005), 159–77.
See Stephen Chan, Peter G. Mandaville, and Roland Bleiker, ed., The Zen of International Relations: IR Theory from East to West (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001);
Anthony Burke and Matt McDonald, ed., Critical Security in the Asia-Pacific (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007);
Roland Bleiker, Divided Korea: Toward A Culture of Reconciliation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).
In India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and New Zealand; see also Mark R. Thompson, “Female Leadership of Democratic Transitions in Asia,” Pacific Affairs 75, no. 4 (Winter 2002/2003): 535–55. The lowest representation of women in Parliament is in PNG, Bangladesh (which had two female heads) and Vanuatu. Thalif Deen, New York: Global Information Network, April 23, 2007.
Popularized by the feminist discourse of development and women’s networks such as DAWN; see also Jane Parpart, Shirin M. Rai, and Kathleen Staudt, ed., Rethinking Empowerment: Gender and Development in a Global/Local World (London: Routledge, 2002).
Bernadette Resurrecion, “Women’s Politics in Asia—Conference Report,” Gender, Technology and Development 7, no. 3, 2003: 441–42.
See Shakira Hussein, “The War on Terror and the Rescue of Muslim Women,” in Islam in World Politics, ed. Nelly Lahoud and Anthony Johns (London: Routledge, 2003), 93–103.
Jindy Pettman, “Feminist International Relations After 9/11,” Brown Journal of World Affairs X, no. 2 (2004): 89.
Katrina Lee-Koo, “Security as Enslavement/Security as Emancipation: Gendered Legacies and Feminist Futures in the Asia-Pacific,” in Critical Security in the Asia-Pacific, ed. Anthony Burke and Matt McDonald (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 231–46.
For details see “Violence against Women in War, Network, Japan,” http://wwwl.jca.apc.org/vaww-net-japan/english/womenstribunal2000/whatstribunal.html (accessed January 29, 2008); Katharina R. Mendoza, “Freeing the ‘Slaves of Destiny’: The Lolas of the Filipino Comfort Women Movement,” Cultural Dynamics 15, no. 3 (2003): 247–66.
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D’Costa, B., Lee-Koo, K. (2009). Critical Feminist International Relations in the Asia-Pacific. In: D’Costa, B., Lee-Koo, K. (eds) Gender and Global Politics in the Asia-Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230617742_1
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