Perspectives on International Relations and

World History

Q- Critically analyze international relations theories

INTRODUCTION
One of the important achievements of the feminist contribution to international relations has
been to disclose the extent to which the whole field is gender biased. The range of subjects
studied within the boundaries of the discipline, its central concerns and motives, the content of
empirical research, the assumptions of theoretical models and the corresponding lack of female
participation, both in academic and elite circles, all combined to marginalize women. It makes
women’s role and concerns in the international arena invisible. The discipline of international
relations is evidently clear that it is a man’s world due to the dominance of men and their world
view.

WHAT IS FEMINISM?
Feminism is the name given to a conglomeration of movements that fight for gender equality.
It involves theories, philosophies, activism and social movements that fight for equal and
specific rights for women. It also aims at constructively criticizing the existing social order that
discriminates against women. This existing social order where men dominate is referred to as
patriarchy. Just as Marxists provide a criticism against capitalism, so do feminists against
‘patriarchy’. Feminists, thus, argue that the men dominate women through this institution of
family. Feminism, temporally speaking, can be classified into first-wave and second wave
feminism. First-wave feminism was concerned with legal and civil rights and the right to
education. The most important characteristic feature of this period is their fight for universal
adult suffrage. The second wave of feminism had a very different politics that affected their
understanding of sexual difference. They debated on the concept of formal citizenship to
expose the contradictions between states’ constitutional declarations of equal citizenship and
treatment of women as the possessions of their husbands or communities. They argued that
women were relegated to the ambiguous space of personal law. Feminists make a distinction
between sex and gender: Sex is seen as biology, we are born male or female; while gender is
seen as a social construct, what it means to be a male or a female in a particular place or time.
This distinction is politically important. The distinction between sex and gender made room for
the feminist project. If gender is a social construction, it can be changed. It also enabled
feminists to explore different meanings of gender. By the 1980s, feminist academics began to
challenge the gendered assumptions of international relations (IR). They argued that the study
of IR, which was largely dominated by men, was deeply entrenched with ontologies and
perspectives that are male centric.

HISTORY OF FEMINIST INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Gender took considerable time to enter the field of IR. This intellectual transformation had
been generated by a network of women’s scholars along with some men working together to
reform university curricula to reimagine professional associations and to launch new, scholarly
journals. The UN Decade for Women (1975–85) helped make mobilizations international. Many
women studying for their doctorates and those who had academic posts took part in
conferences that brought together feminist activists and researchers. By late 1980s, women
studies’ courses were launched in Australia, the Philippines, India, Canada, Britain, Germany,
Ireland, the US, and so on. While some courses in ‘women and politics had been created by
individual academics as early as mid-1970s, there have also been moves by political scientists to
organize women’s caucus inside professional groups such as The American Political Science
Association. By early 1990s, several feminist editors began to accept articles and book
manuscripts that put these growing feminist ideas about IR into print so that they could be
widely debated, applied and assigned to students. Fifteen years later, several things have been
accomplished by the International Studies Association (ISA), Montreal, Quebec. There was a
women’s group operating within ISA to monitor and challenge sexism by academics in the ISA.
Next, the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section (FTGS) of the ISA had been established
for helping younger scholars to encourage participation by feminists in running of the ISA.
Meanwhile, courses on ‘gender and IR’, ‘IR feminist theory’, ‘Women and Human Rights’,
‘Gender in International Relations’, ‘Gender in Globalization’ were becoming popular in
universities across the globe. In 1999, FTGS also launched a new journal, International Feminist
Journal of Politics (IFJP). Feminist research in IR still remains a work in progress, as the
aforementioned facts only signify the onset of the development of feminist explorations in this
field.

FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Feminist approaches to International Relations have introduced gender as an essential tool for
analysing the interactions between states in the international framework. However, in spite of
these efforts to construct a better International Relations Theory, feminist analysis has had
little impact on international politics; policy-makers and decision-makers seem confident in
dismissing feminist ideas. Furthermore, women's roles in creating and sustaining international
politics have been treated as if they were natural and not worthy of investigation. (Tickner,
1992; True, 2001; Hutchings, 1999). Feminist analysts argue that perhaps this lack of feminist
ideas in international politics has been because for many years it has been thought that the
international politics elite is just for men. Therefore, only men and not women are capable of
dealing with the issues of international politics, under those circumstances, foreign policy
actors and decision-makers are male (Enloe, 1993).

In the sense of this debate, we have Professor Ann Tickner, who represents one of the most
radical feminist authors who defend the incorporation of the issue of women as a study in
international relations. Its importance lies in the fact that it takes up one of the classical authors
of the realist view of international relations, Morgenthau, and complicates it in such a way that
it shows that the international system is structured and understood by a male, partial, and
incomplete vision therefore proposes to add a female perspective which help to conceptualize
a world different from the existing view and generate a feminist epistemology of international
relations which proposes to build an alternative feminist allowing to make it more accessible to
the field of international relations to women, which would then permit overcome this partial
view of the debate on international relations, building a more complex vision but
comprehensive while in the world. This author tries to build a more epistemological vision of
the nature of international relations, and not concentrate so much on elements of realpolitik,
allowing you to remove access barriers to the women, since for her, this would not change
substantially the way in which relations have been built man-woman in the theoretical debate
of international relations as a scientific discipline. The central argument lies in the fact that the
items on the international agenda are constructed from problems that matter in primary way
men. Despite these criticisms to the realistic vision of the power of Morgenthau, Tickner not
discredits in your same theory, but that argument simply that it was very limited, since he
lacked a feminine approach in terms of its epistemological perspective and therefore in the
construction of the international agenda. The central argument is that Morgenthau use
definitions agreed upon under a male tradition, so your rational theory of politics, responds
mostly under the parameters of the male values, therefore proposes redefining the principles
of political realism from define masculinity and femininity from feminist theories of the time.

Another point of discussion, is the fact that part of the reflection, that the vision of the conflict
as a fundamental part of international relations, could change under the logic of a vision of
feminist, since it could move from the idea of an abstract to a concrete, morality in which
sensitivity, tolerance could become a bridge towards building an international community
under the parameters of the construction of social consensus and States.

In deconstructing international relations theory, feminist analysts argue that the theoretical
foundations of International Relations are male-defined, and are constructed around male-
female dichotomies, which define female as "other" and assign gender-specific roles that
exclude women from the public sphere. Tickner (1992), Grant (1991) and Sylvester (1994) argue
that, although largely ignored, these issues shape and are shaped by international forces. Using
a "gender lens", these writers have broken down the discipline into its largely social science
components, and have then reconstructed them with a feminist understanding of the discipline
of International Relations.
Tickner (1992), states that the world of international relations is a masculine domain, therefore
many male scholars suggest that a change in the way world politics is conducted is needed.
Because all the knowledge about the behaviour of states in international relations depends on
assumptions that come out of men's experiences, "it ignores a large body of human
experiences that has potential for increasing the range of options and opening up new ways of
thinking about interstate practices" (Tickner, 1992, pp. 17-18).

Feminist contributions to international relations are not just about adding women to the study
of international politics, they are deeper. During the late 1980's in the third debate "feminist
scholars contested the exclusionary state-centric and positivist nature of the discipline
primarily at the metatheoretical level" (True, 2001, p. 243). Many of those feminist
contributions sought to deconstruct and subvert realism, one of the dominant power politics
explanations for post-war international relations (Tickner, 1992). These new theoretical and
epistemological challenges to international relations opened the space for critical scholarship,
in where "they begged the question of what a feminist perspective of world politics would look
like substantively and how different would be" (True, 2001, p. 235).

During the 1970's and 1980's a huge amount of material on women's lives and the role of
women in international economic development (mainly in the third world) was generated. That
provided a base for themes of peace, justice, development and among others. As a result of
this, a new field was emerged known as Women in Development (WID), which documented
how male bias in the development process has led to poor implementations of projects and
unsatisfactory policy outcomes. WID seek the empowerment of women, including through
participation in development decisions that affect their own lives (Pettman, 2001). From this
point of view, women are not outside of development; rather, women's contribution is central
to development.

In the realm of environment, feminist scholars suggest that "it is masculine national and global
institutions dominated by instrumental rationally, including science, the state, and the eco
conservationist establishment, that structure the relationship (of domination) to the
environmental calamities" (True, 2001, p. 234). As a respond of this issue, eco-feminist
critiques deconstruct the masculine gender bias of those institutions and suggest
environmentally sustainable alternatives, which stress women's autonomy and local self-
reliance within and in relation of eco-systems (Tickner, 1992).

In the area of foreign policy, feminist analyses reveal gender as a variable by exposing the
dominant male gender of policy-makers and the gender assumption that these policy-makers
are strategically rational actors who make life and death decisions in the name of abstract
conception of the national interest. Some scholars claim that women are rarely insiders of
those actual institutions that make and implement foreign policy (Randal, 1982). Feminist
foreign policy analyses have opened new substantive areas of policy-making and research in the
relation between states. In addition, feminist empiricists analyse the persistent gender-gap in
the foreign policy beliefs of men and women foreign policy-making elites and citizens, some
researchers argue that women leaders in western states are more likely to oppose the use of
force in international actions and are typically more supportive of humanitarian interventions
(Kofman, 2008; Tickner, 1992; Rosenau et al., 1982).

The sphere of security, have attracted sustained scrutiny from feminist scholars because of
their centrality to international relations theory and practice, and because of their particularly
strong masculine bias. Many, including Grant (1991), have identified national security
structures and the attendant ways of thinking as the sources of much of the gender bias in
inter-national relations theory as a whole. She argues that the initial gendered separation of the
public and private spheres in the organization of state and society produced an exclusively male
concept of citizenship. Men were given the military role of defenders of the state, thereby
acquiring a privileged and active status in national life. Women were invisible, did not have
access to the state machinery and did not participate in national decision-making. Domestic
concerns played little part in shaping "the national interest".

Zalewski (1995) and Enloe (1993) point out the extent to which beliefs about gender
differences have been deliberately constructed in the security sphere. The ideas of the
masculinity of war and the image of the macho soldier have reinforced the patriarchal order.
The traditional exclusion of women from armed combat was a mechanism designed not
primarily to protect them, but to protect male privileges (Zalewski, 1995). Beliefs and myths
about masculinity and femininity act on their own, or are consciously manipulated by the
authorities, in the process of escalating or terminating armed conflict.

Ann Tickner (1992) states "since women are frequently the first causalities in terms of
economic hardship, it is possible to gain some new insights into relationship between
militarism and structural violence" (p. 18). Nevertheless, feminist's theories would have to
challenge the core concepts of international relations such as power, sovereignty and security
that are associated with masculinity. If these concepts are examined and criticized by a feminist
perspective, it would be helpful to reformulate those concepts in order to see new possibilities
for resolve current insecurities (Tickner, 1992).

Feminist international relations scholars generally agree on the need to provide more holistic
definitions of security, applicable to all of humanity. Tickner (1992), Peterson (1992) and
Sylvester (1994), all point out the contradictions between state-centric projects of national
security and global security. Human rights abuses and military threats are usually generated by
the nation state itself. Effective environmental protection and management are beyond the
capabilities of any one state. Finally, inequitable national and international economic systems
are a fundamental source of human insecurity and suffering. However, the feminist critiques go
beyond these observations to emphasize the structural violence that produces gender
inequalities and point out that "women's systemic insecurity is ... an internal as well as external
dimension of state systems" (Peterson, 1992, p. 32).

Some scholars have shown that 80 per cent of all refugees and displaced persons are women
and children who are vulnerable not only to the insecurity as refugees, but also to sexual
violence and forced prostitution. Since 1985, gender considerations have been increasingly
integrated into the design of refugee relief programs (Todaro, 2001; Ingham, 1995). The
influence of these ideas of is much evident in the United Nations Development Program's
concept of "Human Security", which includes economic security, access to food and health
services, personal security, political security and participation in community life (Todaro, 2001;
Kardam, 1991). Now feminist perspectives are called to expose gender biases and research
aspects of human behavior that are usually ignored in security studies.

In the case of some Latin American and Caribbean countries, from the early 1970s onwards,
"there was some preoccupation with Cold War ideological issues, the security dimensions of
US-Caribbean relations, regime security and territorial integrity. More recently, there has been
growing recognition of the non-military threats to security, notably narcotrafficking,
environmental disasters and destabilizing shifts in the global market economy" (Byron et al.,
1998, p.218). In addition, Caribbean societies are increasingly aware of the pressures of their
external environment on their internal security. Women's experiences indicate that the major
sources of insecurity for them are internal (within the state and within the family). Feminist
activist groups and researchers in the region have extensively documented the structural
insecurity for many women those results from poverty, underdevelopment and the gendered
division of labors (Byron et al., 1998).

Despite these experiences in Latin America that can be said, is the same pattern in most of the
Less Developed Countries (LDC), there have been few attempts to integrate gender
perspectives into explicitly international relations analyses of LDC's security issues.

From this view of the dichotomy of the relation man-woman in the vision of international
relations, can make a series of reflections that encompasses the idea of the why approaches of
gender contribute to the idea of an elective distribution of the prosperity of the global
economy, which leads also to reflect the theme of feminine joins basically from the logic of
inequality, and the effects on social cohesion.

The principle is based on the logic of social exclusion, and is by definition tends to be
associated to factors over which outsiders have no control: ethno-racial origin, characteristics
such as gender, age and physical capacity, and geographic location, for example: gender and
ethnoracial origin are those which affect the greatest number of people excluded in the world.
In terms of gender there have been significant advances in recent decades, especially in terms
of access and educational attainment of the female population, gender remains an important
variable of exclusion, particularly with regard to political and economic opportunities. Domestic
violence, she herself many times product of the social pathologies of exclusion, affects
disproportionately women and children, with the aggravating circumstance that the violence
may spread then to the street, becoming a domestic phenomenon in a social phenomenon, and
reproduces from generation to generation.

In terms of economic participation, although there has been a growing incorporation of women
in the labor market due in part to advances in education, the conditions of employment of
women are often relatively unfavorable: they face unemployment rates higher than men, they
are concentrated in a small number of occupations, they are over-represented in the informal
sector with low levels of social protection, and continue to face significant wage gaps with
respect to men. In many cases the labor laws that protect women rights of maternity and of
access to certain occupations at high risk has produced unwanted effects, reducing their
economic opportunities. There has also been an increase in the gaps between the women,
being particularly of indigenous and African descent faced a worse situation.

Then that makes the vision of the incorporation of women in the public sphere in is made from
the study of public policy and not through an integrated approach, therefore, a feminist
perspective on security will prioritise issues associated with the achievement of justice,
gendered militarism, human rights and social protection, therefore, it can be said that security
under this perspective is more inclusive because it contemplate issues that are frequently
neglected in the conventional International Relations Theory, which principally are focused on
themes such as balance of power and prevention of war. This gendered point of view, will offer
important alternatives for the achievement of a more comprehensive and complete security
concept.

CRITICISM

The most widely levelled criticism against the feminist IR scholarship is that it focusses on
women. In gender studies there is too much focus on women that gender is taken
synonymously for women. There is less focus on ‘men and masculinity’ as a subject of study.
However, more IR feminists like Tickner have examined both masculinity and femininity in her
work. Feminists are working on intersectionality and alternative forms of knowledge for
example indigenous knowledge tradition. The argument is that when feminist started its
intellectual engagement with international relations it focusses on women because it was the
largest marginalised group that major IR theories didn’t take into consideration. Another
criticism against the feminist IR scholars is that, while offering important insights, they have
failed to construct a theory of their own. Feminist analysis of international relations is largely
considered as a meta-theory since they do not have grand theories about international politics
like traditional IR theories like Liberalism and Realism. The immediate response from the
feminist community was that it was not possible to reduce multiple realities into a single theory
nor it is desirable. Feminist IR scholars are also challenged by the assumption of a universal
category of woman. Women’s experiences are different; it differs from society to society and
from culture to culture. There is a general acknowledgement of this ‘difference’ politics among
the feminist but they maintain while working towards it one shouldn’t lose the continued
existence of gender inequalities and violence on women across all cultures and societies.

CONCLUSION

Feminist research has demonstrated the value in taking women’s experiences and contributions
seriously and used that as a base to demonstrate how IR rests on, and perpetuates, gendered
ideas about who does what, who experiences what – and why – in global politics. Beyond this
there is also recognition that women are important agents in political, economic and social
processes. Despite its designation, feminism does more than focus on women, or what are
considered women’s issues. In highlighting both inequality and relations of power, feminism
reveals gendered power and what it does in global politics. Being concerned with women’s
subordination to men, gendered inequality and the construction of gendered identities,
feminism has challenged a homogenous concept of ‘women’ in IR and exposed gendered logics
as powerful organising frameworks.