Militarism, Global Governance, and Feminist IR Theory

A set of vocabulary flashcards based on lecture notes detailing concepts, scholars, and key dates in militarism, human security, global governance, and feminist International Relations theory.

Whitworth's Concept of Soldiering

The view that soldiers are socially created rather than born through rituals, myths, stripping of individuality, submission to hierarchy, and the obliteration of any perceived weakness or femininity within themselves.

Sylvester's Bottom-Up War Concept

An approach that challenges traditional International Relations by examining war as an experience physically and emotionally felt by ordinary people, viewing the body as a target of violence and a unit with war agency.

OSCE

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe; an organization highlighting that early warning systems must integrate a gender perspective by allowing both men and women to report on their security situation.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325

A resolution adopted in 2000 that stresses the vital role of women in conflict prevention, resolution, and peace-building, requiring the equal participation and systemic integration of a gender perspective.

Human Security (Fukuda-Parr)

A security framework focusing on downside risks and sudden changes in human well-being that threaten the vital core of human lives, challenging traditional state-centric security models.

International Women's Year

The year 1975, designated by the United Nations to focus international policy attention on women's rights and gender issues.

Decade for Women

The period spanning from 1976 to 1985, designated to advance global policy considerations regarding women and gender equality.

Creation of UN Women

The establishment of the UN entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women in 2010.

Gender Mainstreaming

A policy management tool for organizations designed to ensure that all activities and policy areas affect men and women equally and integrate gender equality practices.

Commission on the Status of Women

A global intergovernmental body formed in 1946 dedicated to promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women.

Walby's Three Principles of Gender Mainstreaming

The core tenets of gender mainstreaming identified as: regarding the individual as a whole person, democracy and participation, and justice, fairness, and equity.

Gender Budgeting

The practice of disaggregating budgets by gender to reveal the extent to which policies with gendered implications receive differential funding.

Basu's WPS Critique

An analysis highlighting that UNSCR 1325 can be used by powerful states as an imperialist tool to promote 'liberal peace' in the Global South, while emphasizing that actors in the Global South actively shape WPS implementation.

Youngs' Three Phenomena of Malestream IR

Three critiques showing that state/market structures are gendered by masculinist assumptions, political agency is conceptualized in male terms, and ignoring gender obscures the social construction of identity.

Morgenthau's Six Principles of Political Realism

Classical IR framework stating that politics is governed by objective laws, interest is defined as power, power's meaning changes, political morality differs from universal morality, no nation holds moral supremacy, and politics is an independent sphere.

Tickner's Feminist Definition of Power

The human ability to act in concert, or collective action taken in connection with others who share similar concerns, contrasting with power understood purely as domination.

Tickner's Feminist Principles of IR

A feminist reformulation asserting that objectivity reflects masculine bias, national interest requires cooperation, power includes collective empowerment, politics and morality are linked, shared moral values reduce conflict, and politics is embedded in society.

Protection Racket Analogy (Peterson)

The theory that both sovereign states and patriarchal marriage operate by creating or exaggerating external threats in order to demand obedience and extract resources from dependent populations.

Hierarchical Dualisms (Peterson)

Conceptual pairings in Western philosophy (such as reason/emotion, culture/nature, and public/private) that masculinize political authority and naturalize the subordination of women.

Fincher's Demographic Analysis

Research examining how young Chinese women delaying or shunning marriage and childbirth poses a radical challenge to the Chinese Communist Party, which blames Western feminism for population decline.