Feminism

Feminism

1. Normative Feminism

   • sustain connections to practical feminist politics and the concrete workings of gendered power.
     • the association of women with peace, cooperation, subjectivism and ‘soft’ domestic politics and men with war, competition, objectivity and ‘high’ international politics
       • gender hierarchies are reproduced in International Relations theories and how they serve to naturalize other forms of power in world politics
   • normative feminist theories contextualize gender as an analytical device that harbours its own exclusions and, like International Relations theories, must also be deconstructed
     • gender relations are culturally and historically constructed, then it also follows that they cannot be the same everywhere
       • the social and cultural practices which construct gender are now increasingly global, but they are altered at local levels and in specific historical and discursive contexts.
   • They explore the specific cultural and historical constructions of gender and sexuality in the sending and receiving countries, which in turn depend upon particular constructions of class, ethnicity, nationality, race and so on.
     • argues that ‘all places to speak and act as women are problematic’, because they are socially and historically constructed and exclude other identities.

2. Analytical Feminism

   • The hegemonic Western brand of masculinity is associated with autonomy, sovereignty, the capacity for reason and objectivity and universalism
     • the dominant notion of femininity is associated with the absence or lack of these characteristics
       • A common assumption is that gender identities are natural or ‘human nature’ and not subject to social constitution or human agency.
   • International Relations’ key concepts are neither natural nor genderneutral: they are derived from a social and political context where masculine hegemony has been institutionalized.
     • identified specifically with masculinity and men’s experiences and knowledge derived from an exclusive, male-dominated public sphere.
       • The lower being, represented by women, the body and the anarchical system, must be subordinated to the higher being, represented by men, the rational mind and state
   • Gender analysis undermines the divisions between the individual, state and international system by showing how each level is preconditioned by an image of rational man that excludes women and femininity.
     • Feminist theorists interpret the state as the centralized, main organizer of gendered power, working in part through the manipulation of public and private spheres
       • the state manipulates gender identities for its own internal unity and external legitimacy.
         • Women, on the other hand, are taught to defer, as wives and daughters, to the protection and stronger will of men, while providing the private emotional, economic and social support systems for men’s war activities.
           • feminist analysts view states as implicated in a range of forms of violence against women.
   • ideas and key concepts such as ‘rationality’, ‘security’ and ‘power’ might be building blocks of explanation for a feminist theory of international politics.
     • For International Relations feminists, these conceptual opposites reproduce the self-fulfilling security dilemma and reinforce masculine power politics, thus limiting the possibilities for feminist alternatives.

3. Empirical Feminism

   • corrects the denial or misrepresentation of women in world politics due to false assumptions that male experiences can count for both men and women, and that women are either absent from international political activities or not relevant to global processes.
     • it is in part because women’s lives and experiences have not been empirically researched in the context of world politics
       • Empirical studies reveal that the most efficient allocation of development assistance is often to provide women with appropriate agricultural technology, credit financing, education and health resources.
   • Economic globalization has intensified social and economic polarization, both within and across states
     • has increased the world-wide inequality between men and women, with disproportionate numbers of women in poverty – frequently referred to as the ‘feminisation of poverty’
       • But in order to make gender an important dimension of the study of international relations, it is necessary to challenge the conceptual framework which has excluded women from this study in the first place.