Feminism: Discussion of Gender in IR
Gender in IR 1
Third debate in the The Four Great Debates in IR
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The third debate: scholars began to question the epistemological and ontological foundations of a field (positivist, rationalist, and materialist theories)
Example:
- Post-Positivism scholars questions Positivism’s beliefs
- Post-Positivist rejects rationalist methodologies and causal explanation
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Post-Positivist advocate more interpretive, ideational, and sociological methods for understanding global politics
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Many feminist share this Post-Positivist commitment to examine the relationship between knowledge and power
- Feminist point out that most knowledge has been created by men and is about men
Conventional IR vs IR feminist
- Conventional IR relies on generalized Rationalism explanation of asocial states’ behavior in an anarchic international system
- IR feminist theories focus on social relations (gender relations). Rather than anarchy, they see an international system constituted by socially constructed gender hierarchies
- In order to reveal gender hierarchies, feminists often begin their examinations of international relations at the micro-level how lives of individual affect and are affected by global politics
IR Feminist Research
- IR feminist research can be divided into two complementary but distinct generations:
- First generation: focused on theory formulation
- bringing to light and critiquing the gendered foundations of IR theories and of the practice of international politics
- Second generation: approached empirical situation with gendered lenses
- begun to develop their own research programs
- use gender as a category of analysis
- First generation: focused on theory formulation