Feminism: Theoretical Typology of IR Feminist theories §

Created Time: August 8, 2021 10:39 PM Database: Evergreen Database Last Edited Time: September 13, 2021 7:32 AM Type: Permanent Notes

Typology of IR Feminist theories §

Many of these feminist theories build on, but go beyond some of the IR perspective such as liberalism, constructivism, critical theory, poststructuralism and post colonialism.

Liberal feminism - Liberalism §

Liberal Feminism calls attention to the subordinate position of women in global politics but remains committed to investigating the causes of this within a positivist framework.

• Assumptions: Liberal feminists believe that women’s equality can be achieved by removing legal and other obstacles that have denied them the same rights and opportunities as men.
• Methodological preferences: Liberal feminists use gender as an explanatory variable in foreign-policy analysis
• Exemplary writings: Mary Caprioli and Mark Boyer use statistical indicator to investigate whether there is a relationship between domestic gender equality and states’ use of violence internationally
  • Result: Violence decrease as domestic gender equality increase
  • Critique from postpositivist: There is problem with measuring gender inequality using statistical indicators, must go deeper than this.

Critical feminism - Critical Theory §

• Assumptions: Ideas are the product of human agents. Therefore, there is possibility of change. Critical theory is committed to understanding the world in order to try to change it.
• Methodological preferences: Goes beyond liberal feminism’s use of gender as a variable. It explores the ideational and material manifestations of gendered identities and gendered power in global politics
• Exemplary writings:
  • Sandra Whitworth: Feminism and International Relations - Examines he different ways gender was understood over time
  • Christine Chin’s: In Service and Servitude - examines the increasing prevalence of underpaid and often exploited foreign female domestic workers in Malaysia during 1970

Feminist constructivism - Constructivism §

• Assumptions: Ideas about gender shape and are shaped by global politics
• Methodological preferences: ideas about womanhood and femininity
• Exemplary writings:
  • Elisabeth Prugl: The Global Construction of Gender - analyze the treatment of homebased work in international negotiation and international law.

Feminist poststructuralism - Post-Structuralism §

• Assumptions: Poststructuralist feminism is particularly concerned with the way dichotomized linguistic constructions, such as strong/weak, rational/emotional, and public/private, serve to empower the masculine over the feminine. They believed that these distinctions have real world consequences
• Methodological preferences: Feminist poststructuralists seek to expose and deconstruct these hierarchies—often through the analysis of texts and their meaning.
• Exemplary writings:
  • Charlotte Hooper: Manly States - what role does international relations theory and practice play in shaping, defining, and legitimating masculinities
  • Laura Shepherd: Gender, Violence, and Security

Postcolonial feminism - Post-Colonialism §

• Assumptions: Postcolonial feminists see false claims of universalism arising from knowledge which is based largely on the experiences of relatively privileged Western women.
• Methodological preferences: Culture, social class, race and geographical location
• Exemplary writings:
  • Chandra Mohanty: criticize some Western feminists for treating women as a homogeneous category
  • Lily Ling and Annathangelou: seek to redress these subordinations within their own cultural context, rather than through some universal understanding of women’s needs