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7/27/2019 Feminist and Gender Apchs to Security 29 Oct 13 Final
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Feminism and Gender
Approaches to Security
Sanaullah Khan
29 October 2013
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Chapter 2 ofCritical Security Studies: An Introduction by
Columba Peoples and Nick Vaughan-Williams
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Salient terms and concepts
Introduction of the chapter
Arguments propagated in the chapter
Thoughts of renowned feminists referred in the chapter
Poststructural approaches to security
Criticism on poststructural approaches to security
Analysis
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Sex: For most feminists, sex highlights biological
determination of human, and therefore is an ineradicable
difference between female and male.
Gender: Sex and gender are often used interchangeably
in everyday language. Gender refers to the social
construction of sexual difference. As such, gender is
clearly distinct from sex. Gender denotes a set of
culturally defined distinctions between women and men.
Gender either operates through stereotyping, or it is a
manifestation of structural power relations.
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Patriarchy: Patriarchy literally means rule by the father.
Feminists use patriarchy in this specific and limited sense,
to describe the structure of the family and the dominance
of the husband-father over both his wife and his children.Patriarchy thus means rule by men.
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Femininity: Characteristics to identify female(emotionality, caring, dependence).
Masculinity: Characteristics to identify male (strength,
aggression, autonomy).
Performativity: The idea that gendered identities are not
neutral, but produced through being acted out in social
life.
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Feminism: Feminism can broadly be defined as a
movement for the social advancement of women.
Feminist theory is based on two central beliefs: that
women are disadvantaged because of their sex; and that
this disadvantage can and should be overthrown.
Liberal Feminism: A form of feminism that is grounded in
the belief that sexual differences are irrelevant to personal
worth and calls for equal rights for women and men in the
public realm.
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Focus of liberal feminism is invisibility of women in
security. Exponent of this theory is Synthia Enloe.
Radical Feminism: A form of feminism that holds gender
divisions to be the most politically significant of social
cleavages, and believes that these are rooted in the
structures of family or domestic life.
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Stand Point Feminism: A form of feminism that focuses
on the experiences of women in global politics for
theorizing global security relations. This approach stresses
that the views and experiences of women be taken in
theorising global security relations. J. Ann Tickner is the
exponent of this theory.
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Radical Feminism: A form of feminism that holds gender
divisions to be the most politically significant of social
cleavages, and believes that these are rooted in the
structures of family or domestic life.
Essentialism: The belief that biological factors are crucial
in determining psychological and behavioural traits.
Poststructural Gender Approach: This approach does
not give any special ontological status to woman. Instead it
contends that woman (as sex) is a discursive construct.
V. Spike Peterson is the exponent of this theory.
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Poststructuralists argue that there is no objective
yardstick that we can use to define threats, dangers,
enemies, or, underdevelopment etc.
We need to investigate how constructions of the world
and those people and place that inhabit it, make
particular policies seem natural and therefore legitimate.
Poststructuralists raise questions about ontology (theory
of existence) and epistemology (theory of knowledge).
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Historically most of the state leaders, diplomats, soldiers
and international civil servants have been men.
Men make wars because wars make them men
(Barbra Enenriech)
International politics and security are mans world.
Feminists contend that realist-oriented security studies
have disregarded womenstudy of men by the men.
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Pythagoras (570 to c. 495 BC) wrote, "There is a good
principle that created order, light and man and a bad
principle that created chaos, darkness and woman.
Aristotle (384 to 322 BC) Women are inferior in reasoning.
Menander (c. 341 to 290) Woman is a pain that never goes
away.
Paul the Apostle, (c. 5 to c. 67 AD) "Of all the wild animals,
none can be found as harmful as women.
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Gender inequalities (employment, wages, type of work).
Women form only one third of the work force.
Womens earning has been 50 to 80% of the mens.
Of 1.3 billion people living in poverty, 70% are women.
Women are assigned to positions that have less or no
authority.
Resource scarcity affects women more than men; women
spend most of their time in collecting water.
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Women have less education opportunities; two third of
worlds female are illiterate.
Women more vulnerable to sexual violence especially during
conflict situations, displacement, and in refugee camps.
Women represented far less in government; developing
countries are comparatively better as 1st female prime
minister was in Sri Lanka in 1960 whereas in West British
female prime minister was in 1979.
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Discipline of security has been gender-blind.
Women remained invisible in high politics i.e. security,
military, war for a variety of reasons.
One of the reasons is that traditional perspectives were
state centric which disregarded gender.
Secondly, the state, institutions, processes and world
politics have been patriarchal in character.
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Almost all decision making institutions have been
dominated by man. Even if there is a woman member
in such institutions, her voice is not heard well.
The concept of liberal feminism is that women be given
equal rights in all walks of life.
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French feminist Simone de Beauvoir (190886), Women
are made, they are not born.
The idea that gender is a social construct was originally
conceived as a means of refuting biological determinism,the notion, favoured by many anti-feminists, that biology
is destiny, implying that womens domestic or private
role is an inevitable consequence of their physical and
biological make-up.
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French feminist and political activist.
Her feminist work is a voluminous
book The Second Sex (1949)
She posits that man and woman are
socially constructed. Historically
women have been portrayed inferior,
so as to subordinate them.
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In 1989, US Academic Synthia
Enloe published Bananas,
Beaches and Bases: Making
Feminist Sense of International
Politics.
She contends that men are
dominant to an extent that world
politics is peopled by men.
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By mid 1980s there were 3000 foreign powers military
bases across the world.
She is of the view that unpaid work of military persons
wives was unnoticed.
In these bases, the sons adopt military career but
daughters emulating their mothers become housewives.
She also says that behind each male working on bananaplantation there is unpaid women working at home.
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Masculine traits: strength, power
and autonomy.
She contends that ideals of
manhood and state are mutually
reinforcing to exclude women from
high politics (security, military, war)
Heroic characteristics i.e.
chauvinism and patriotism are
attributed to men and women are
systematically kept deprived.
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Peterson argues that feminists actual job
is to transform ontology (theory of beings)
and epistemology (theory of knowing) to
make these gender neutral because
masculine or feminine traits are socially
constructed.
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Argues that sex and gender are misnomer.
Shares thoughts of Michel Foucault who
said that sex is bodily effect of gendered
regimes of power/knowledge in society.
Posits that sex/gender is not permanent but
performativity is used to identify it.
She gives example of the behaviour andlooks ofdrag queens which displays their
sex/gender.
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Post structuralism has raised questions on liberal feminisms
efforts to merely make woman more visible in the security.
Post structural gender theorists contend that categorization
of humankind into male and female is radically unstable.
There are diverse debates and arguments in feminist and
gender approaches to security.
The authors say that various debates on gender have
opened important areas of research in Critical Security
Studies relating to issue involving identity, violence and
justice.
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There are challenges of poststructuralist feminist and
gender approaches to the study of security.
Discriminatory patriarchal structures of the society were
considered to be major reason for feminist movements
but poststructuralism eliminates patriarchy.
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The writers have adopted very difficult method to explain
the point of view.
Long winded sentences impede assimilation of the
context and reach to the core issue intended to be
explained.
Poststructuralism appears to refute biological
determination of sex.
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Earlier definitions of sex and gender and difference
thereof is easy to understand but saying that sex/gender
is not static and instable is incomprehensible. Confusing
the matter by drawing analogy with drag queens also
appears to be untenable.
Feminist perspectives presented in this chapter are euro-
centric. Gleaning through the chapter indicates that most
feminists have raised the issue of unpaid household
work. Monetization of services rendered by the women in
their homes is considered unnecessary.
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