Feminist Theory

Feminist International Relations

Feminist international relations is the field most removed from conventional state-bound or local analyses of governance. It provides critiques of globalization, development, and democratization and addresses the impact of global governance institutions on women. A particular feature is an emphasis on neoliberalism and the role of markets, which is understood as a gendered discourse that has become the paradigm for global governance.

Feminist Theories of the State

Feminist state theory maintains that political processes reflect and reproduce patriarchy, which will not change simply by increasing female representation in political institutions. A fraternal contract, based on essentialist understandings of gender, makes male political participation “natural,” and treats women as incidental to the process of governing so that they are marginalized and excluded from decision-making and agenda-setting processes. The token representation of women in the state parallels the token representation of women within gender-blind mainstream state theory. Women are very underrepresented in state structures. The gendering of the state ensures that women's interests are articulated in “feminine” spheres such as welfare and education (opposed to the state's violent and repressive spheres). There is little recognition that state actions reproduce gender relations and identities through regulating marital relations, reproduction, wage discrimination and male violence, so that men are continually favored. However, although these processes reflect and reproduce patriarchy, feminist theorists believe the processes are open to change, rather than fixed.

This notion underpins poststructuralist approaches that assert feminist state theory rests on the illusion that the state is inherently male. The state is not structurally given but, rather, the product of erratic and disconnected discourses and the contingent success of various groups in articulating interests and homogenizing claims. Politics is therefore a set of contests about meanings rather than about objective interests. The importance of discourses is also recognized by standard feminist state theory: fraternal discourses construct the state on the assumption that the subject is male, so rather than explicitly defending male interests, government is conducted as if only men's interests exist and in the belief that men are acting in the interests of society as a whole.

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