Gender and International Relations

1. Gender and International Relations www.abdn.ac.uk/.../IR2501/IR2501.%20Gender%20and%20IR%20II.ppt -

2. 3 different approaches to studying gender in IR Cynthia Enloe • Where are the women? • What work are masculinity and femininity doing? J. Ann Tickner • How gender biased is the discipline of IR? • How can we convince the mainstream of the significance of gender/feminism? Carol Cohn • How does gender work in language? • What can’t we say/think/conceptualise and does gender have anything to do with this?

3. Cynthia Enloe‘For an explanation/theory to be useful, a great deal of human dignity has to be left on the cutting room floor’ • When we ask ‘where are the women’? in relation to International Politics Enloe says that we often see men for the first time – as we scarcely notice (or care) that governments looks like men’s clubs (see G8 summit photos next 2 slides) - often get ‘blinded’ by what we see right in front of us … • ‘Seeing men for the first time’ makes us question why women seem so unimportant in the realm of international politics … • Especially when women are so essential in keeping the wheels of the in international system moving • It takes an awful lot of power to make some things seem trivial or unimportant (never believe anyone who tells you things are just natural or obvious … see next Enloe quote on next slide)

4. No individual or social group finds itself on the “margins” of any web of relationships – a football league, an industry, an empire, a military alliance, a state – without some other individual or group having accumulated enough power to create the “center” somewhere else (Enloe, Curious Feminist, p.19). G8 Summit: Gleneagles 2005

5. G8 Summit: Russia 2006

6. What women do in IP? (not just in obvious foreign policy or heads of govt roles) • Diplomatic wives/loyal politicians wives – hundreds of years of unpaid labour of ‘diplomatic wives – smoothing and oiling the wheels of diplomacy (see chapter 5 in Bananas, Beaches and Bases) – clearly some changes in the 21st century – but still a politician/world leader needs a ‘wife’ – and preferably a traditional one – like Laura Bush – more on her in a moment • Militarization– the gendered idea/ideal of the protector/protected has been crucial to keeping the ideology of militarization going – defending the country – one of the reason having women in combat roles is so strongly resisted …

7. Military women • Women have always serviced military bases – it is regularly official military policy to have a supply of prostitutes – Japanese/Korean ‘comfort’ women in the second world war. Hundreds of thousands of women and girls abducted and forced into prostitution to ‘service’ Japanese soldiers. • In the early 1990s this was finally acknowledged by the Japanese government – but it has still to formally apologise or offer compensation (and is backtracking on admitting it) • So women are consistently involved in many ways in the workings of international politics – but in ways that are largely ignored/dismissed/trivialised … • But let’s look at conventional understandings of what counts in or as international politics

8. How women are affected differently in IP Security(whose?) • Billions spent on the arms race and nuclear technologies (see latest attempt at a ‘star war’s idea: Missile shield plan in Poland) http://www.spacewar.com/reports/United_States_Poland_Hold_Missile_Shield_Talks_999.html- – does any of that really make anyone feel safe? – In regard to women - women are more likely to be attacked by a man they know (not a nuclear missile) • Most common cause of death internationally? - Poverty …(disease) Human Rights (whose?) • 60 million females world-wide have died or not been allowed to be born because of a world-wide preference for boy children (malnutrition, infanticide, aborting female fetuses) The world of international relations is much more complex and multi-layered than we imagine – without thinking about women and gender- we fail to see this adequately think or the current ‘war on terror’ …

9. Women/Gender and the War on Terror • Major use of the rhetoric of “women’s rights” in Afghanistan to ‘justify’ the invasion both by George W. Bush but also ‘through’ his wife – the ‘first lady’ • Laura Bush – fight the cause for Afghani women … (Zillah Eisenstein ‘Against Empire’ p. 157) • Racialized and sexualised abuse in Abu Ghraib – using sex/gender to add ‘humiliation’ to the physical abuse. • Also – the publication of the photos of Lynddie England – a woman – being involved in this abuse. • Bush’s own masculinized “western film ” rhetoric in response to the attacks on the World Trace Center in 2001 – see Fahrenheit 9/11 Using/selling gender … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y8I37BMOQc

10. Women – gender – IP. 3 points • Women are integrally involved in oiling the wheels and practices of international politics - but often in unseen/invisible ways. What gets categorised as trivial? • Women are affected differently by conventionally understood international political practices – but if we put women at the centre we would get a very different picture of what is important to look at in IP. • Gender is constantly invoked and used in the practices and theories of international politics – but what are the consequences of using these ideas about masculinity and femininity? – Tickner on Morgenthau ..

11. J. Ann Tickner Rather than discussing strategies for bringing more women into the international relations discipline … I shall seek answers to my questions by bringing to light what I believe to be the masculinist underpinnings of the field (1992: xi). Her 2 main questions: • How gender biased – or masculinist - is the discipline of IR? • How can we convince the mainstream of the significance of scholarship on gender and feminism? • She engages the discipline of IR in a big way (not like Enloe) • Started (in 1991 – Grant & Newland) by looking at Hans Morgenthau’s 6 principles of political realism to show how BIASED they were – based on typically male lives – casting out or trashing anything associated with femininity/women • http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/tickner13.html

12. Hans Morgenthau: 6 principles Morgenthau’s 6 principles of political realism (see Lecture 3) • Politics governed by objective laws • Interest defined in terms of power - stresses the rational, objective and unemotional aspects of this • Nature of power can change – but (self) interest remains consistent • Universal moral principles do not govern state behaviour • No universally agreed set of moral principles - power is about control of man over man (state over state …) • Politics and political man must be removed/abstracted from other aspects of human nature – this is an autonomous zone, In other words – politics is a separate sphere of human activity

13. Tickner’s feminist reformulation • Objectivity is culturally defined – AND it is associated with masculinity - so objectivity is ALWAYS partial • National interest is multi-dimensional – so not one set of interests can (or should) define it … • Power as domination and control privileges masculinity … • All political action has moral significance – cannot/should not separate them • Perhaps look for common moral elements …? • Feminists deny the autonomy of the political realm – building boundaries around a narrowly defined political realm defines political in a way that excluded the concerns and contributions of women. • THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL • So Tickner critiques the foundations of the discipline … and attempts to get the discipline to ‘understand’ …

14. Carol Cohn“Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals” “Wars, Wimps and Women: Talking Gender and Thinking War” Her questions • How does gender work in language? • What can’t we say and does gender have anything to do with that? • She has spent a lot of time working with military officials in the US. • Primarily she is interested in how gender works at the level of language/discourse – directs attention away from gendered individuals to gendered discourses (stories) • Her definition of gender discourse – not only about words or language but about a system of meanings, of ways of thinking, images and words that shape how we experience … understand …gender as a central organizing discourse of culture, politics and society. (Page 228) • Gender can work as a PRE-EMPTIVE DETERRENT to thought • Read from page 230 from “Wars, Wimps and Women” • This well illustrates the HIERARCHY involved in and around gender

15. Criticisms of feminist/gender work in IR • Mainstream (what’s it got to do with ‘real’ IR? – and isn’t it just about ‘women’ issues’ only?); OR Not scientific enough (Robert Keohane) • Women’smovements/activists (feminism has got too ‘academic/theoretical’– Halliday thinks this a bit too – 1998 Millennium article) • Poststructuralists (they have a problem with ‘identity’ politics which feminism is seen as a part of) … • Though perhaps still on the margins? But is there a difference between IR as an academic discipline and the ‘real world’? • Fred Halliday in 1998 saw some change in the disciplinary study of IR the discipline – but not so much in ‘real world’ • Jill Steans in 2003 – still sees feminism and gender on the margins of the discipline • Currently new wave of critique – the neo-feminists who want to study gender without feminism - the “neo-feminists” - too much about feminism – do gender without feminism? (Adam Jones, Charli Carpenter). • BUT - currently still a lot being written on feminism/gender and IR, and a lot more on masculinity and popular culture (e.g. films –G.I. Jane, Forrest Gump, Fahrenheit 9/11, IndependenceDay, The Day After Tomorrow, Team America, Dr Strangelove: Or how I stopped worrying and began to love the bomb

16. World Trade Center trailer … • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y8I37BMOQc • What use is made of masculinity and femininity in this film?