Feminism
- Feminist theories of IR use gender as a socially constructed category of analysis when they analyze foreign policy, international political economy, and international security.
- Feminist security research takes two major forms: theoretical reformulation and empirical evaluation.
Feminists’ definition of gender
-
Feminists define gender as a set of socially constructed characteristics describing what men and women ought to be.
- Masculinity: strength, rationality, independence, protector, and public. These aka hegemonic masculine characteristics.
- Femininity: weakness, emotionality, rational, protected, and private
-
Men, women, and the states they live in generally assign more positive value to masculine characteristics than to feminine ones.
-
These gender dualism also organize and divide social activities between groups of humans
Example:
- Women associate with private sphere → caregivers
- Men associate with public space → natural breadwinners