Security Dialogue 2010 Sylvester 607 14

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SAGE Publications, http://sdi.sagepub.comVol. 41(6): 607–614, DOI: 10.1177/0967010610388206

Tensions in Feminist Security Studies

CHRISTINE SYLVESTER*

School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden& Lancaster University, UK

Barry Buzan & Lene Hansen (2009) note that the first glimmer ofconcern with women and security within international relations andpeace studies was a site of tension: in the 1970s and into the 1980s,women were not on the agenda of international relations at all. Peace

theorists embraced the concept of structural violence but also excludedwomen from their discussions. There are now new inclusion/exclu-sion tensions within feminist international relations and its securitywing. In this article I address two tensions: (1) concern to maintain thestance that security is a peace issue as some venture systematically intofeminist war studies, and (2) a tendency to issue harsh judgements offeminists whose views challenge the accommodation of cultural dif-ference. I briefly consider examples of these two tensions and suggestways to work with and beyond the structure of international relationsto ‘evolve’ (feminist) security studies further.

Keywords gender • insecurity • peace • security • war

BARRY BUZAN & LENE HANSEN (2009: 138) note that the first glim-mer of concern with women and security within international relationsand peace studies was a site of tension: well into the 1980s, women

were not on the agenda of international relations at all, and peace theoristswho embraced the concept of structural violence excluded women from dis-cussions of groups affected by it. Nils Petter Gleditsch’s (1989: 4) review of

Journal of Peace Research ( JPR) from that time, which Buzan & Hansen quote,indicates that ‘only 8% of the articles in the JPR’s first 25 years were written

by women; this figure shows little change over time. Moreover, we have nothad very much to say on such issues as feminist approaches to peace.’ I wasin that 8%, with an article published in 1980 while I was a graduate student(Sylvester, 1980). This was based on my PhD research at UN headquarterson a range of what were called ‘world order’ values – peace, economic well-

being, social justice and ecological balance – presented by one of the fewalternative streams of international relations thinking that then existed. As

I interviewed delegates and secretariat members about issues they felt were

Special Section on T HE EVOLUTION OF I NTERNATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES

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difficult or intractable, I tried to consider possible differences in replies bymen and women. Were women more consistently concerned with peace?There were, however, so few women at the first-secretary level or higher inthe UN that I had to abandon the comparison.

At exactly the time Gleditsch was presenting dismal statistics on gender in JPR and I was witnessing gender exclusivity at the UN, the closed-off fieldof international relations was in a moment of disciplinary curiosity aboutfeminist thinking. Pace-setting conferences featuring papers by feminists andnon-feminist academics convened at the London School of Economics andPolitical Science in 1988, the University of Southern California in 1989, andWellesley College in 1990; as Buzan & Hansen (2009: 138–141) astutely pointout, many early feminist international relations papers were on security as agendered concept paired with gendered states (e.g. Peterson, 1992; Tickner,1992; Sylvester, 1994). Feminists telescoped everyday women and genderanalysis as aspects of international relations and security. Simultaneously,post-Cold War globalities packed identity politics in their bags and movedaround the expanding international, thereby also contributing to people-awareness in international relations and security studies.

International relations is now a capacious field of camps rather than amostly state-centric narrative (Sylvester, 2007a). In an ironic echo of the neo-realist definition of the states system, it has become a minoritarian enterpriseof functionally equivalent units. The feminist camp is one unit, no more orless marginal or dominant than many others, and much of its work still focus-

es on issues of women, gender and security. The new field of internationalrelations sights and sites more actual international relations than it once did,yet that acuity does not extend to generous citing across camps. A tensionpoint of the camp structure is a tendency to ignore – not necessarily oppose,

but fail to consider – the knowledge that other camps produce. Even wheninterests and approaches seem compatible, there is a disinclination to reach

beyond one’s own fire for inspiration or debate; perhaps there is less needto be inclusive in a situation where new camps can form whenever a grouptakes exception to the ones that exist. An inward orientation in capacious

international relations was evident when the European critical security stud-ies camp issued a mission statement that put fellow-travellers’ feminism andpost-structuralism in a footnote, to be addressed some other time and place bysomeone other than them (c.a.s.e. collective, 2006; see also Sylvester, 2007b).With camp-based journals developing around favoured schools, personages,texts, levels of analysis and even cities, international relations’ proliferatingknowledge has no ready vehicle for sharing across camps. More than an evo-lution of opposing approaches, the field is beset by a politics of indifferent orself-protective exclusivity.

Within-camp tensions also exist. In feminist international relations, these can

revolve around concern to maintain the stance that security is a peace issue


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Christine Sylvester Tensions in Feminist Security Studies 609

as some venture systematically into feminist war studies, and a tendency toissue harsh judgements of feminists whose views challenge the accommoda-tion of cultural difference. In this short article, I briefly consider examples ofthese two tensions in the security wing of feminist international relations,

and suggest ways to work with and beyond the structure of the internationalrelations field to ‘evolve’ (feminist) security studies further.

Peace or War?

Feminism has long associated itself with peace and nonviolence. The connec-tion is so strong that war has not historically been seen as a feminist inter-national relations topic, except when treated in oppositional mode. That is,although militarization, militarized masculinity, women in the armed forcesand the effects of war on women have been considered, feminism has posi-tioned itself outside war, above it, and in ethical belligerence to it, despitealso expressing commitment to gender- and women-inclusive research. Anew generation of feminist security thinking is exposing the tensions aroundstudying war by bringing once-neglected women into security research:women who participate in the political violence of war (Sjoberg & Gentry,2007; Parashar, 2009; MacKenzie, 2009; Alison, 2009). They recognize war asan inclusive transhistorical and transcultural institution that shapes and is

shaped by gendered subjects and discourses.Women qua embodied people are in national militaries, in combat in

Afghanistan and Iraq, in militant movements in Kashmir, urging genocid-al acts in Rwanda and committing other war crimes. They occupy subjectstatuses of suicide bombers, guerrillas and terrorists, and, in the case of BlackDiamond in Liberia, become war leaders. Those experiences and statuses arenow presented as elements of the politics and practices of war and peace,rather than cases of gender deviance, false consciousness or globalized mili-tarization. Some warrior women are monsters (many SS guards, for example),

and some are duped into infamy as they try to please a man (think LynndieEngland). But, other war women carry out the liberal feminist agenda ofequality with men in their societies, or link violent action with security for anation, ethnic group, family or individual. Women might even war for peace.The actions of war women comprise a differentiated politics that some femi-nist security work now investigates in the spirit of bringing all manner ofgender politics and women into the study of international relations.

Tensions over the framing of security are not likely to fade away on theirown. To ‘evolve’ this realm of security analysis probably requires some defi-ance of camp boundaries. Relatively little research in peace studies, security

studies or feminist international relations exists on end-of-war moments,




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when warriors must change their labour, identities and networks in a transi-tion to peacetime. Imaginative literature is less myopic on the topic. DanaiGurira’s (2009) powerful play Eclipse depicts the waning days of war inLiberia, as various war women, peace women and concubines experience it

in the field. Her warriors are more frightened and rendered more insecure bythe end of the war than by its routines and exhortations. They face decisionsof where to go, what to do next, and whom to talk to about the activitiesthey engaged in during the war. Emotional attachments with colleagues andlovers are suddenly severed and de-legitimated. One’s nom de guerre passesout of use, and with it can go considerable personal power and identity. Theplay suggests that the moment peace comes to war the binary oppositionof peace/war dissolves into gendered personal-political dilemmas that donot come through in usual disarmament, demobilization and reintegrationprocedures. To pull out those moments, memories and stories requires a jointeffort across war and peace orientations within feminist security, as well aswith camps of adjacent interest, and, taking a step out of international rela-tions, with literature and arts that hint at the choices women face when theyfind themselves in a depleted war.

Difficult Differences

A second tension within the feminist international relations security wingconcerns people and positions that ‘good’ feminists should support and thosethey can ignore or should criticize. It is a tension that echoes larger intercampindifferences and avoidances within the international relations field, but alsoharkens back to the 1970s worry that Western feminism was inadequatelyattentive to differences between and within ethnic groups, classes, gendersand nations. To enable rather than dominate difference, many Western femi-nists began to refrain from indicting cultural practices they would once havedeemed misogynist, and from speaking critically about difficult gender rela-

tions that a majority of women in other cultures might accept. Respect forcultural difference admirably lowered the volume on Western feminism, but, over time, it also left some culturally rebellious feminists isolated andrendered dangerously insecure by the very local practices that Western femi-nists were trying to accommodate.

The case of Somalian-Dutch former member of parliament Hirsi Ali illus-trates the conundrum. Ali is infamous for speaking out against Islam and themyth of tolerance that animates Dutch society and liberal societies in general;

both, she claims, can damage Muslim women and keep Muslim nations livingin the past rather than in an enlightened present. Ali is an immigrant to the

Netherlands, more out of desperation originally than clear choice: she was en




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route to an arranged marriage in Canada and used a stopover in Germanyto escape that plan. Ali learned Dutch, went to Leiden University and, still inher 30s, became a Dutch member of parliament. These achievements are thestuff of feminist dreams. Yet, Ali is best known for speaking about the bur-

dens Muslim women bear in their religious cultures, and for being punishedin the Netherlands for so doing. A self-proclaimed feminist, she endorsesfeminist theorist Susan Okin’s (1999) critique of Western policies that pro-tect the integrity of besieged cultural groups over individuals associated withthem. To Ali (2006: 6), adherents to European multiculturalism, in particular,‘take no heed of the private lives of the cultures they are defending . . . [eventhough] it is precisely in private life that differences in power and the repres-sion of women manifest themselves most clearly’.

The degree to which Ali’s accusations – the words of one woman – couldrender insecure a ‘tolerant’ Dutch state grappling with significant Muslimimmigration is remarkable. Ali’s application for citizenship, successful morethan a decade earlier, suddenly came under state scrutiny for possible errors.In 2006, she was stripped of her Dutch citizenship and her position as a mem-

ber of parliament on the grounds that she had given a false surname on herimmigration documents. Ali had openly spoken of her decision to put anextended family name on the application rather than her own surname, soher father could not find her and pursue the arranged marriage. To do so isnot against Dutch law, and her citizenship was later reinstated by an embar-rassed Dutch government. Ali now lives mostly in the USA, a fellow at the

American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank. She believes thatshe takes ‘an enormous risk by . . . joining in the public debate that has beentaking place in the West since 9/11 . . . . I must say it in my way only and havemy criticism’ (Ali, 2006: xviii).

It is a risk that has not earned her the support of many Western feminists,who worry that she upsets women in Muslim communities, tries to tell thosewomen what to think, and works now for a conservative think-tank in theUSA. That Ali is from the religion she critiques but lives as a difference toit, that she encourages public debate about religion and Muslim women’s

human rights, seems less important to feminist critics than her personal style(harsh) and her deviant position within a group that is hounded in what isclaimed to be a global war on terror. I lived in the Netherlands at the time ofAli’s public disgrace and heard Dutch feminists call her an ambitious womanmanipulated by the racist right, or a bitter woman whose personal circum-stances were the only basis for her condemnation of a world religion. As forthe Dutch state, it was motivated by concern that Ali was fomenting socialunrest in a country captivated by a belief in its own social tolerance.

That many feminists sided with Dutch Muslims and the Dutch state againstAli shows a monumental shift in thinking, away from defending besieged,

outspoken and religion-questioning feminists to aligning with a non-feminist




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cultural majority and mostly male state. It also suggests that a feminist likeHirsi Ali can be placed beyond difference by other feminists, which is to saythat her difference cannot be attended to as a real difference. Ali goes aboutwith bodyguards now. That situation should alarm feminist security ana-

lysts, for it suggests that casting feminists beyond difference can cast themout of security.

Analogously, although less insecuring, many Western feminists are criticalof Azar Nafisi, an Iranian academic also living in the USA. Known for her

bestselling book Reading Lolita in Tehran (Nafisi, 2004), Nafisi, like Ali, is anavowed feminist and shares Ali’s limited patience ‘when people . . . keep tell-ing me, “It’s their culture” . . . it’s like saying, the culture of Massachusettsis burning witches’ (cited in Birnbaum, 2004). Ali (2004: 16) maintains that‘the fear of offending [Muslims] leads to the perpetuation of injustice andhuman suffering’, while Nafisi (cited in Peterson, 2010) maintains that‘Muslim Iranians have come on their own to ideas of life, liberty, and the pur-suit of happiness. These aren’t just American things.’ Feminist disapprovalsand snubs can also be directed at ‘difficult feminist’ academics. Jean BethkeElshtain is an example. A founder of feminist international relations and a

brilliant exponent of issues surrounding women and war,1 Elshtain’s workis widely cited today within feminist international relations. She, however,has become persona non grata in many feminist circles, owing to her morerecent conservative views on the war in Iraq (for it) and on marriage (againstit for gays). One might say that she has been defrocked as a feminist doing

international relations.Perhaps the difference discourse central to academic feminist analysis for

25 years has hit a wall. If difference packages itself differently than expected,holds an unpopular line and politics, and yet calls itself feminist, barrierscan go up to ‘it’, even if the ‘difficult feminist’ has a tale worth lauding incertain respects. Feminist security studies could address these thorny ten-sions by shifting focus from the concrete, embodied, ‘difficult’ feminist to thelanguage, power and referent objects that define and render insecure peoplewho take difficult positions. Hirsi Ali (or Azar Nafisi or Jean Elshtain) is not

‘just’ an individual but a referent object in discourses about oppressive actsor institutions. Lene Hansen (2009) argues elsewhere, very convincingly, thatwhat should matter in security circles are discursive positions and politicsrather than persons. Ali and other difficult instances of feminist internation-al relations are framed by powerful narratives about them in tandem withnarratives about other reference points of identity or identification. If thereis more focus on those reference points, individual positions become com-plex, variegated and less personal, more hybrid than all-determining of one’s‘good’ or ‘bad’ feminist personhood. ‘Ali’ becomes a hybrid of narrativesabout women, Africa, Islam, the Netherlands, religion, terrorism, immigra-

1 See, for example, Elshtain (1987).


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tion, feminism and US foreign policy. The communities she offends, includ-ing the feminist international relations camp, are also hybrids composed ofmany currents of thought and practice. There is no master identity or behav-iour to denounce or defend in this type of analysis, which makes it possible to

support and simultaneously question controversial causes and people, ratherthan turn on them.

Comment

Buzan & Hansen hope an expanding international security studies will findways to dialogue across its disparate elements. I have hopes in that regard,too, even as I contend that smaller circles of interest will define the field ofinternational relations for some time and produce a master tension: self- confining positions within a more open field. The politics of the feministinternational relations camp manifests aspects of that structural pull to par-ticularism combined with a push pre-dating ‘camp international relations’to determine what feminism stands for and against. Such push–pull dynam-ics offer opportunities to examine bottlenecks around what and whom tostudy – states or people, peace or war, dissident individuals or majoritar-ian groups? These also throw up challenging differences that feminists ininternational relations and security circles can nuance through debate and

discourse evaluation. Difficult feminists/ideas are not thereby avoided,shunned or rendered insecure if the new differences they expose run counterto established feminist norms. By detailing how security studies can get stuckin oppositional, unsupportive and either–or frameworks, even as it evolvesmultiple understandings of security, Buzan & Hansen have eased these prob-lematics into view. Now the work of ‘evolving’ beyond smoky campfires ofself-confinement commences.

* Christine Sylvester is Professor of International Relations and Development at LancasterUniversity and the holder of the Kerstin Hesselgren Chair in Sweden for 2010–11. Most

recently, she directed an interdisciplinary research programme on ‘Touching War’ atLancaster University, edited Experiencing War (Routledge, 2010) with selected papersfrom the programme, and is the editor of a new series with Routledge on ‘War, Politics,Experience’. She also recently compiled a five-volume anthology of key works in femi-nist international relations (Routledge, 2010) and is writing a monograph entitled War, Feminism, Security, and International Relations.




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Alison, Miranda, 2009. Women and Political Violence: Female Combatants in Ethno-NationalConflict. London: Routledge.

Birnbaum, Robert, 2004. ‘Azar Nafisi: Interview’, identitytheory.com, 5 February; avail-able at http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum139.php (accessed 2February 2007).

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c.a.s.e. collective, 2006. ‘Critical Approaches to Security in Europe: A Networked Manifesto’,Security Dialogue 37(4): 443–487.

Elshtain, Jean Bethke, 1987. Women and War. New York: Basic.Gleditch, Nils Petter, 1989. ‘Focus On: Journal of Peace Research’, Journal of Peace Research

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MacKenzie, Megan, 2009. ‘Securitization and De-Securitization: Female Soldiers and theReconstruction of Women in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone’, Security Studies 18(2): 241–261.

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Howard & Martha Nussbaum, eds, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press (7–26).Parashar, Swati, 2009. ‘Feminist International Relations and Women Militants: Case Studiesfrom Sri Lanka and Kashmir’, Cambridge Journal of International Affairs 22(2): 235–256.

Peterson, Britt, 2010. ‘A Forgotten Civil Society: Interview with Azar Nafisi’, Foreign Policy,7 June; available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/07/a_forgotten_civil_society?page=0,1 (accessed 20 August 2010).

Peterson, V. Spike, 1992. Gendered States: Feminist (Re)visions of International Relations Theory.Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

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Security Dialogue 2010 Sylvester 607 14