Transcript IR2501 - Reinhard Meyers

Gender and International
Relations
www.abdn.ac.uk/.../IR2501/
IR2501.%20Gender%20and
%20IR%20II.ppt -
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?
Cynthia Enloe
‘For an explanation/theory to be useful, a great deal of
human dignity has to be left on the cutting room floor’
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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)
G8 Summit: Gleneagles 2005
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: Russia 2006
What women do in IP?
(not just in obvious
foreign policy or heads of govt roles)
• Diplomatic wives/loyal politicians wives –
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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 …
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
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’ …
Women/Gender and the
War on Terror
• Major use of the rhetoric of “women’s rights” in
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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
Women – gender – IP. 3 points
1. Women are integrally involved in oiling the wheels and
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3.
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 ..
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).
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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
Hans Morgenthau: 6 principles
Morgenthau’s 6 principles of political realism (see Lecture
3)
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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
Tickner’s feminist reformulation
• Objectivity is culturally defined – AND it is associated with
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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’ …
Carol Cohn
“Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals”
“Wars, Wimps and Women: Talking Gender and Thinking War”
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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
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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
Criticisms of feminist/gender work in IR
• Mainstream (what’s it got to do with ‘real’ IR? – and isn’t it just about ‘women’
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issues’ only?); OR Not scientific enough (Robert Keohane)
Women’s movements/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,
Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, Team America, Dr Strangelove: Or how
I stopped worrying and began to love the bomb
World Trade Center trailer …
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y8I37
BMOQc
• What use is made of masculinity and
femininity in this film?