What is the difference between sex and gender and why is it important? Why has gender traditionally been the blind spot of IR theory? In what ways is gender important to the study of international relations?
Despite the three “waves” of feminism that arose and crested during the twentieth century, feminism really only began to make an impact on IR in the late 1980s and its relationship to the discipline has long been uneasy. Moreover, the newer field of Queer Theory has helped to broaden gender issues beyond feminism and make them relevant to the LGBT community. This week we will consider such issues as the sex/gender distinction, the masculinism of conventional IR theory, the place of women and homosexuals in the military, and feminism’s contribution to security studies.
Readings
Elshtain, J. B. (2009), “Women, The State, and War,” International Relations 23 (2), 289–303.
Enloe, C. (2000), “Gender Makes The World Go Round,” in Bananas, Beaches, and Bases, Ch. 1.
Tickner, J. A. (1997), “You Just Don’t Understand: Troubled Engagements Between Feminists and IR Theorists,” International Studies Quarterly 41 (4), 611–32.
Supplementary Readings
Ackerly, B.A., and True, J. (2008), “Reflexivity in Practice: Power and Ethics in Feminist Research on International Relations,” International Studies Review 10, 693–707.
Cohn, C. (1987), “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12 (4), 687–718.
Delehanty, W. K. and Steele, B. J. (2009), “Engaging the Narrative in Ontological (In)Security Theory: Insights from Feminist IR,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 22 (3), 523–540.
