Feminist Perspectives on International Relations

Feminism

Feminism critiques traditional International Relations (IR) for not adequately considering women's experiences.
Feminists highlight “…women’s invisibility and gender subordination in international politics and global economy” (J. Ann Tickner and Laura Sjoberg “Feminism” in Tim Dunne et al, International Relations Theories. 4th ed. OUP: 2016).
A “gendered lens” offers a different perspective from the state-centric approach of realism.
Key concepts include gender and patriarchy.
Masculinism is another important concept.

Feminists view masculism as an ideology associated with strength, rationality, and independence, while femininity is associated with weakness and emotionality.
States' foreign policies often emphasize masculinist characteristics, such as strength.
The study of war and state security is often seen as “manly”.
Mary Caprioli and Mark Boyer (in “Gender, Violence and International Crisis” in Journal of Conflict Resolution 45.44 2001) found that the severity of violence used by states in international crises decreases as domestic gender equality increases.

Feminists argue that the concept of security needs to be rethought.
Realists define security in terms of the security of the state.
Since the 1980s, various IR scholars, including feminists, have challenged this perception.
Security began to be defined in terms of threats to human well-being, including the security of the individual person as well as that of the state.
Feminists include domestic violence, poverty, gender subordination, and environmental degradation as threats to human security.

In recent wars, women and children have constituted a majority of casualties (increasing from around 10% at the beginning of the 20th century to around 90% at the end of the 20th century), according to Tickner and Sjoberg.
They criticize the “myth of protection”: the idea that wars are fought to protect the “vulnerable”.
Sjoberg highlights how violence against women, such as rape, is often a deliberate military strategy.
Bringing war to an end is associated with “feminine” characteristics (weakness, concession) and is thereby “delegitimized”.

The concept of structural violence widens the perspective from state-sanctioned military confrontation to other forms of violence, such as poverty, environmental injustice, and gender inequality.
Focusing on these also uncovers the key role of women in as “subsistence producers and providers of basic needs” (Jaqui True “Feminism” in Scott Burchill et al, Theories of International Relations 5th ed. 2013).
For example, women’s farming accounts for 50% of food production in the developing world, but 75% of the domestic food supply for family households.
Investing in girls' education is one of the most cost-effective international development policies, raising incomes and lowering population rates.

In 1991, Iraq invaded Kuwait, precipitating the First Gulf War.
At the end of the war, the UN imposed sanctions on Iraq; the sanctions regime lasted for 13 years.
This led to tragic humanitarian consequences, including food shortages resulting in widespread malnutrition.
Iraq lacked clean water, baby milk, and healthcare supplies, and child mortality rose dramatically.
It is estimated that the sanctions led to the deaths of about 1 million Iraqis (half of them children and another 30% women).

For realists, sanctions are a way of imposing costs on a regime to try to compel compliance, falling short of waging war.
Feminists pointed to the way in which sanctions differentially affected women and children.
They argue that sanctions were a form of violence.
From a ground-level perspective, it looked like a war, and indeed a war on Iraq’s most vulnerable citizens.
The UN hoped that sanctions would lead to discontent against the Iraqi regime (in other words, the UN deliberately hurt civilians to encourage them to change their government).
Essentially, they were killing women and children in an attempt to punish the government.

Feminism widens one’s perspective to focus on things that were neglected or excluded from IR in the past.
It shifts the focus away from a singular focus on inter-state relations towards non-state actors, marginalized people, and alternative conceptions of power.
It emphasizes the role of women in unpaid work (childrearing and homecare), problems such as domestic abuse, “honour” killings, and so on.
In the past, these things did not really feature as part of IR.
Now, in part because of the work of feminist scholars, that has changed.