De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde
Taft Avenue, Malate, Manila

Feminism and International Relations

Submitted by:
BALIGOD, Katrina Angelica A.
LS201

Submitted to:
Sir. Francisco Noel Fernandez III

20 October 2014
I. Introduction Hans J. Morgenthau, one of the leading proponents of the approach known as Realism (also known as power politics), claims that universal standards of morality cannot be an constant guide to IR because there is an "ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action." He argues that state actors must think and act in terms of power and must do whatever it takes to defend the national interests of their state. J. Ann Tickner, commenting on the primacy of power in Morgenthau's writings, explains that what he considers to be "a realistic description of international politics is only a picture of the past and therefore not a prediction about the future", and proposes what she considers to be a feminist alternative: a world in which state actors think of power in terms of collective empowerment, not in terms of domination over one another, could produce more cooperative outcomes and pose fewer conflicts between the dictates of morality and the power of self-interest (Art & Jervis, 2005).

Emergence of Feminism Most of the early feminists in IR were IR theorists, researchers, and policy practitioners, who read syllabi full of scholarly articles by mainly or only men, and seen IR as a scholarly place often hostile to women and femininity. Feminist scholarship came into the discipline of International Relations(IR) around the 1980s and 1990s. It was not IR that produced the feminist insight, for feminism is, according to Daddow (2009), "a wider social and intellectual movement that has had a big impact in politics, society, and education" (p. 145). IR Feminist scholars began looking for gender, in the politics of IR, as a discipline and in global politics more generally, by first, differentiating the terms "sex" and ''gender", which were first understood to be synonymous: sex as something biological, and gender, psychological and social (Tickner and Sjoberg, 2011, p. 3). In International Relations, feminist scholars have added an important new term to the language of IR: gender. Gender, which is defined by Peterson as "the socially constructed dichotomy of masculine-feminine shaped only in part by biologically constructed male-female dimensions" and by Tickner and Sjoberg as "a set of socially constructed characteristics describing what men and women ought to be", is more often based on categories we commonly take to be givens. Furthermore, as Jarvis puts it, gender is an 'indispensable ingredient in the study of international politics, a means of understanding not just the systematic basis of the international system, but of the power structures embedded in those relations' (as cited in Daddow, 2009, p. 147). Therefore, with the developing of feminist scholarship, came two important things in IR. First, they have added the previously over-looked or invisible in the study of IR: woman. Second, they have reassessed definitions and re-thought of ways of studying International Relations concepts such as state, security, and sovereignty (Daddow, 2009, p. 146). With its argument that women are marginalized in IR, feminist scholarship continuously tries to highlight how International Relations operates a patriarchal system that works only for men.

Feminism's State in International Relations In 2010, women comprised only about 19 percent of the world's parliamentarians. This was true despite the increasing popularity of gender quotas(the mandate that women must constitute a certain number or percentage of the members of a body), even though most states have no sex-exclusionary rules about running for political office (Tickner and Sjoberg, 2011, p. 1), and even despite the significant advances in education and of women. Notwithstanding efforts by women to claim seats in government, politics is still a heavily male-dominated arena (Dahlerup, 2005, p.12). Feminist analysis states that the relative lack of women in high political office is usually comes as the result of disguised forms of exclusion. Although it is true that women are under-represented in top-level government positions, they encounter additional difficulties in positions having to do with international politics. According to Tickner (2011), "the military and foreign policy are arenas of policy-making least appropriate for women. Strength, power, autonomy, independence and rationality, all typically associated with men and masculinity, are characteristics we most value in those to whom we entrust the conduct of our foreign policy and the defense of our national interest."

II. Theoretical Framework Around the time that the Cold War ended, many scholars faulted neorealism, for having been unable to predict the end of the Cold War. Scholars begin to question the validity and usefulness of International Relations' traditional concepts for analyzing the post-Cold War world. This questioning is generally referred to as the "third debate" (Tickner & Sjoberg, 2011, p. 9). With this, Critical Theory, proposed by Robert Cox, then emerged. This theory, according to Cox, "looks to understand the world for the purpose of changing it for the better" (cited in Tickner & Sjoberg, 2011, p. 9). His theory goes beyond the neorealist framework that focuses on state, and climaxes out the connections between material conditions, ideas and institutions in what he terms the formation of ‘world orders’. He stresses that how people organize themselves not only determines their own life but also that of their states and the world order. Cox identifies creation of a vibrant civil society, emergence of intellectuals representing the marginalized, development of community-level solidarity, participatory democracy, non-violent methods of conflict resolution, multiculturalism and multilateralism as key elements of his transformational agenda (Moolakkattu, 2009). Cox, together with Richard Ashley, Mark Hoffman, and Andrew Linklater emphasized the need to analyze the growing multiculturalism in the field or IR and what this meant for understanding and interpreting the growing complicatedness of global politics (i.e., the rising influence of technology, human rights and democracy, and non-state actors). This then, would include a group of critical investigations into the transformation of social relations, norms, and identities in international relations (Roach, 2012). These now include, most notably, critical globalization studies, critical security studies, feminism, postmodernism, and post-colonialism. One of the matters of critical theory is between "positivism" and "post-positivism". In International Relations, positivism follows Hume's finding that "knowledge does not exist outside of what we can observe, and thus what we claim to know is simply the associations made on these observations" (cited in Loughlin, 2012). Thus, positivism is defined as 'the adoption of methodologies of the natural sciences to explain the social world'. On the other hand, according to Jim George, post-positivism states that "International Relations is not independent of wider theoretical debate in social sciences" (cited in Loughlin, 2012). Post-positivist approach to International Relations does not claim to provide universal answers, but seeks to ask questions instead. It attempts in-depth analysis of cases in order to understand international political phenomena by asking relevant questions to determine in what ways the status quo promote certain power relations. A key difference is that while positivist theories such as realism and liberalism highlight how power is exercised, post-positivist theories focus on how power is experienced resulting in a focus on both different subject matters and agents. (Devetak, 2005).

III. Methodology "Gender in the Critical perspective is another structure that shapes (often unwittingly) how men and women interacts and how relations between them are infused with power inequalities....critical theorists hope to have, in Kimberly Hutchings' words, 'a productive impact on how international politics are to be understood and judged.'" (Daddow, 2009, p. 150). Critical feminism explores the imaginative and material manifestations of gendered identities and gendered power in global politics. They take an liberate approach and are committed to trying to understand the world in order to try to change it (Dunne, Kurki, & Smith, 2014) In this paper, feminism 'in' and 'and' International Relations will be seen through the lenses of the post-positivist position of Critical Theory. Supported by some works of Tickner and Sjoberg, Buskie, and Ruiz, it will be emphasizing on the significant role of gender in shaping the society, and in a broader scope, International Relations, by moulding world policies and practices.

IV. Questions to be answered
a. How and why is politics perceived as a man's world? Our history shows that not just politics, but the world, is man-dominated. This is evident in the ratio of well- known influential men to women that we know and study in various subjects, from leaders to historians and scientists, mathematicians, even soldiers and astronauts. Why is this so? What contributions can men offer that women cannot? b. If it is considered a basis of leadership and acquiring positions in international politics, how do male and female adopt different styles? If possible, how can we say that one style is more effective that the other? Aside from bias that some theorists argue on, probably one of the reasons why the importance of feminism and gender is hardly highlighted on is the difference of styles between men and women. If this is the case, in what ways do men and women differ and how to these ways make them arguably more effective than the other?
c. Gendering International Relations: how and why is it useful? With gendered construction of the state and its implications for International Relations, how are core concepts of political and IR theory reframed through feminist lenses?

d. How and on what levels does IR marginalize women and gender? If feminist empowerment ideologies and struggles have been running on for decades already, how come feminists still find it hard to level with men in International Relations? Are there barriers, conceptions, and stereotypes that affect this? If so, how?

e. How does global restructuring affect gender and how does gender affect global restructuring?

f. How is future of feminism and its struggle viewed? To know the future, the present should have a clear picture. Then, with the current stand of Feminism in International Relations, with its developments and successes, failures and struggles, how is the future of feminism viewed in IR?
g. How important is
c. How have women become associated with peace and men with war?
d. Identify the mutually defined identity stereotypes produced by the interconnecting colonial rankings of race (including ‘whiteness’), gender and sexuality. To what extent are these hierarchies ingrained in contemporary world politics and global political economy?
g. Can IR as a discipline be reformed in feminist terms? How and why have feminists been ghettoized in the discipline of IR?
a. How was IR challenged by Feminism?

References:

Dahlerup, D., & Francisco, J. (2005). Gender, Governance, and Democracy.

http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jekantol/liitteet/JK%20Feminisms%20and%20IR.doc http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0095.xml http://isq.sagepub.com/content/46/4/439.short?rss=1&ssource=
Devetak, Richard, 2005. ‘Critical Theory’, in Burchill, Scott et al., Theories of International Relations, Third Edition. London: Palgrave MacMillan. http://global.oup.com/uk/orc/politics/ir_theory/dunne3e/01student/guide/ch11/