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🌐 Core Themes +
- Analyzes IR from a gender lens; masculine worldview dominates IR theory and practice.
- National interest defined as power; power interpreted as domination, security as maximum power.
- States are power-seeking, rational, amoral entities.
- International processes are gendered; gender relations not insulated from IR.
- “Personal is International” – all IR aspects relate to gendered relations in society/family.
- Questions invisibility/marginalization of women in IR: “Where are the women?”
- Overemphasis on militarization, brute power, conflict pushes women to margins of IR.
- Redefining IR concepts from feminist perspective promotes peace, cooperation, morality, equality.
⚙️ Features +
- Critical theory that reveals gendered aspects of IR.
- Multiple strands: Liberal Feminism, Radical Feminism, Marxist Feminism, 3rd World Feminism, Eco-feminism.
🎓 Main Thinkers +
- Liberal: Mary Wollstonecraft (“Vindication of the Rights of Women”), J.S. Mill (“Subjection of Women”), Raja Ram Mohan Roy
- Radical: Simone de Beauvoir (“The Second Sex”)
- Marxist: Rosa Luxemburg, Alexandra Kollontai
- Prominent IR feminists:
- Judith Ann Tickner – most influential; reformulated Morgenthau’s 6 principles of IR from feminist perspective; books: “Feminism and International Relations”, “Gender in International Relations”
- Cynthia Enloe – “Where are the women in IR?”; books: “Bananas, Beaches and Bases”, “Personal is International”
- Carol Cohn – books: “Women and Wars”
- Laura Sjoberg – “Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War”