IIR Chapter 10 Y1S1

1. Feminist International Relations (IR)

An approach that examines how international politics is shaped by gender, how women’s experiences are excluded from traditional theories, and how gender inequalities can be challenged.

2. Social Construction of Gender

The idea that expectations about masculinity and femininity are created through social norms, institutions, and cultural practices rather than being determined entirely by biological sex.

3. Gendered Hierarchies

Social divisions that treat masculinity as superior or normal and femininity as inferior or different, reinforcing unequal power relations.

4. Intersectionality

An approach that examines how gender interacts with factors such as race, class, sexuality, age, and geography to produce different experiences of inequality.

5. “Where Are the Women?”

A key feminist question asking why women are absent or underrepresented in international politics, institutions, and traditional IR scholarship.

6. Feminist Critique of Traditional IR

Feminist scholars argue that realism, liberalism, and their variants often overlook gender and reflect a limited understanding of international politics based heavily on certain men’s experiences.

7. Constitutive Theory

An approach that argues ideas, identities, and theories help shape the social and political world rather than simply describing a world that exists independently of them.

8. Liberal Feminism

Focuses on achieving gender equality by removing discrimination and increasing women’s access to political representation, education, employment, and decision-making institutions.

9. Critical Feminism

Examines how deeper economic, political, and social structures produce gender inequality, emphasizing the need to challenge systems of power rather than merely increase women’s representation.

10. Postcolonial Feminism

Challenges Western-centered understandings of women’s experiences and highlights how colonialism, race, global inequality, and cultural differences shape gender relations.

11. Poststructural Feminism

Examines how language, discourse, and categories such as “masculine” and “feminine” create and reinforce identities, hierarchies, and relations of power.

12. The Gendered State

The idea that states are not gender-neutral institutions

13. Women in Development (WID)

An approach that seeks to improve women’s participation in economic development by making their contributions visible and increasing their access to development opportunities.

14. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

A United Nations treaty that establishes international commitments to eliminate discrimination against women.

15. Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda

An international framework recognizing women’s experiences and roles in conflict, peacebuilding, and security, including the importance of women’s participation in peace processes.

16. UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000)

The landmark resolution that formally connected women’s participation and gender perspectives with international peace and security, helping establish the WPS agenda.

17. Gender and War

Feminist IR examines how war is shaped by gendered assumptions, including the association of men with soldiers and protectors and women with civilians or those needing protection.

18. Gender-Based Violence

Violence connected to gender inequalities and power relations, which feminist scholars examine as an important part of conflict, political life, and international security.

19. Feminist International Political Economy (IPE)

An approach that reveals how the global economy depends on gendered inequalities and often undervalues unpaid care work, reproductive labor, and women’s economic contributions.

20. Deconstructive and Reconstructive Approaches

Deconstruction exposes the gendered assumptions and exclusions within established concepts and institutions; reconstruction develops alternative ways of understanding and organizing international politics.