Professional Documents
Culture Documents
INTRODUCTION
1990’s
Lesser Reactive
Focused on different achievements of Women
SUCCESS
• Gender Issue became
International
• Women won
protection from
unemployment ,
discrimination, laws,
media and equal
access to school
• Women worked
together to achieve
their goals.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
FEMINIST
• 1988-Milestone
• Second wave of feminism was at its height
• Private problem into a public issue
• UN Decade of Women
• Mobilized the movement
• Women’s Studies Journal
• British International Studies Association
• International Studies Association
• To pen up a professional space for IR Feminist
(Spike Peterson ,Ann Tickner )
• 1990
• FTGS (feminist theory and gender section)
• Journal, the international feminist journal of
politics (IFJPS )
• a place where the diverse interaction of gender
and power would be explored.
• Discussions were made multinational
• Encouraged men to serve as journal’s
advisorary board
• Headquarters' was to be in the US
WHY GENDER MATTERS?
Why Gender Matters
• Feminist scholarship in various disciplines seeks to
uncover hidden assumptions about gender in how we study
a subject.
• Some feminist IR scholars argue that the core assumptions
of realism especially of anarchy and sovereignty reflect the
ways in which males tend to interact and to see the world
• foreign policy decision making, state sovereignty, or the
use of military force is run by male properly
• The critique upon gender is somewhat complex.
• Because the vast majority of heads of state, diplomats, and
soldiers are male, it may be realistic to study them as
males
• Then feminist critics arise a question to those
scholars who explicitly recognize the gender
nature of their subject rather then implicitly
assuming all actors are male
• Gender identity affects their views and decision
processes.
• Feminist scholars often challenge traditional
concepts of gender as well.
• In IR, these traditional concepts revolve around the
assumptions that males fight wars and run states,
• Whereas female are basically irrelevant to IR.
• Such gender roles are based in the broader
construction of masculinity as suitable to public
and political spaces,
• Whereas femininity is associated with the sphere of
the private and domestic.
What is missed when women are
ignored?
• Feminist, by academic researchers have revealed that many
forms of public and private power are dependent for their
operation, legitimization and perpetuation on controlling the
thoughts and bodies of women and on controlling notions
of femininity.
• The international powers dynamic and institutions remains
incomplete and unreliable on the floor of International levels
when women are ignored.
• So many researchers have presumed that women are
insignificant in the public arena.
• Feminist-informed political researches have discovered that
women have often letdown efforts to shape their actions and
thoughts in ways that served their would-be manipulators
• Women are not confining themselves to the ‘domestic’
sphere and on the public sidelines where they are
‘supposed’ to be playing their support roles.
• For example, take the dramatic history of the International
Political economy of sugar.
• Germany
• Only current
woman leader of a
great power; put
limits on German
troops with NATO
forces in
Afghanistan
MARGARET THATCHER
• Britain
• First Woman to lead
a great power in a
century; went to war
to recover Falkland
Islands from
Argentina
INDIRA GANDHI
• India
• Led war against
Pakistan.
GOLDA MEIR
• Israel
• Led war against
Egypt and Syria
TANSU CILLER
• Turkey
• Led a harsh war to
suppress Kurdish
rebels.
CASE STUDY: UN
SANCTIONS ON IRAQ
• In 1991 Iraq invaded and conquered Kuwait.
• The United Nations declared Iraq’s invasion
illegal and ultimately used military force to eject
Iraq from Kuwait.
• This is known as the First Gulf War.
• At the end of the war, UN Security Council
Resolution 687 left Iraq under a strict export and
import embargo.
• This sanctions regime originally intended to last
about a year, stretched over thirteen.
• Throughout the 1990’s Iraq remained under one
of history’s longest and most strict economic
sanction regime.
• In the mid1990’s popular opinion turned
against the sanctions due to the tragic
humanitarian consequences.
• The USA and UN Security Council blamed
Saddam Hussein for Iraq’s non-compliance,
while the Iraqi government blamed the UN.
• The sanctions regime was a humanitarian
disaster and its impacts extensive.
• Iraqi gross national product fell by 50% by
the first year of sanctions and declined to
less than $500 in the following years.
• By 2000 Iraq was the third poorest country in
the world.
• Economic decline caused a sharp decline
in wages and widespread unemployment.
• With no income, a crippled infrastructure,
and an international law against both
imports and exports, Iraq had a difficult
time acquiring food.
• The result was catastrophic malnutrition.
Households rarely had enough food and
women were often the last to eat.
• These deprivations also had severe medical
impacts.
• Child morality rate skyrocketed and the
cancer rate rose by 400 per cent.
• It is estimated that the sanctions imposed on
Iraq led to the death of about 1 million
people, half of them children and another 30
per cent women.
• In a country which had previously
possessed a world class medical system,
curable diseases and starvation were now
the primary causes of death.
• The sanctions had sent Iraq back to the
stone ages.
VIEW OF
FEMINIST ON
IRAQ WAR
• Imposition of Sanction Regime
• War on Iraq’s Citizens
• Impact on individuals and communities
• War on Iraq to hurt its citizens
• To force them to change their government
• View how both the gender’s were affected
• Introduced gender as a category of analysis
• NO FEMALE HEAD WAS
PRESENT IN THE UN SECURITY
COUNCIL MEMBER STATE
• Sanctions can be
use as policies to
force the weaker
actor to submit to
its will
CRITICISM
• International
Relations value
masculine values
over feminist ones
IS FEMINISM ONLY
ABOUT GENDER?