Feminism Theory

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Feminism

• HINA ZAIDI
• National Defense University, Islamabad

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An over view of Feminism

• It originates as a social movement.
• It provides comparison between
• Implication for Political analysis.
• Actual preoccupations and achievements.
• We will discuss its evolution as a dialogue
  around a common agenda.
• Presentation is divided into three parts
• An over view of Feminism
• Feminist perspective for Political Science.
• Feminism and IR

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Quotation

• The true meanings of feminism is that to use
  your strong womanly image to gain strong results
  in the society.
• Pamela Anderson

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Definition

• Feminism emerged as a movement and body of ideas
  that aimed to enhance womens status and power.
• Simply put, feminism affirms womens equality
  with men, and rejects patriarchy.

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Introduction

• Introduced gender as a relevant empirical
  category and analytical tool for understanding
  global power relations as well as a normative
  position from which to consider alternative
  world orders.

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Strands of Feminism

• Liberal feminism
• Liberal feminism movement
  focuses on eliminating female subordination.
• Marxist feminism
• Marxist feminism arises out of
  the doctrine of Karl Marx whose theory is
  centered less on material aspects of life than on
  the more broadly defines social ones.
• Radical feminism
• Radical feminism takes the point
  of view that society under patriarchal rules in
  necessarily oppressive to women.

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Feminism and Political Science

• Potential implication of feminism strands for
  political analysis.
• Traditionally political scientists were almost
  all men and numbers of women still relatively low
  in 1970.
• Different stages
• First stage was mounting a critique of
  male political science for its virtual exclusion
  of women as political actor.
• Second stage sometimes dismissively
  referred to as adding women in , and entailed a
  much more systematic investigation into the
  extent of womens underrepresentation and its
  institutional and non-institutional causes.
• In third stage more fundamental
  questions were raised about their discipline,
  about limitations of the characteristic
  methodologies employed in political science,
  about the way that politics is conceptualized
  and about the gendered character of political
  institutions and processes. Linking these to
  broader developments in feminist thinking.

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The development of Feminism in IR Theory

• First wave of feminism Feminist movement finds
  its roots in the abolitionist movement in 1830s.
• Second wave of feminism suffrage movement. Late
  19th to early 20th c.
• Third wave of feminism equal legal rights
  political participation. Mid to late 20th
  century.

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Important aspects of feminist research

• First generation of Feminism in IR late 1980s
• For instance, in the enthusiastic
  rush to analyze the widespread process of
  democratic transition, especially evident in
  Latin America, through the 1980s political
  scientists largely ignored questions about
  womens participation or the implications of
  associated institutional and policy changes for
  women.
• Second generation
• A second generation of feminist
  researchers has had to take up these basic
  questions and developed feminist IR by making
  gender a central analytic category in studies of
  foreign policy, security and global political
  economy.

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Typology

• Christine Sylvester has applied an interesting
  typology of feminist theory to international
  relations.
• Feminist Empiricism
• Feminist empiricism combine
  both the objectives and observations of feminism,
  it relies mainly on mainstream which is part of
  the positivism but feminist empiricism and the
  positivism are two different approaches. This
  approach evaluates whether the states or
  worldwide capitalist process should be focused
  on, and the examination of social attitudes and
  structures that influence gender international
  relations.

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Cont.

• Feminist Standpoint Theories
• Feminist standpoint this
  approach argues that a women's point of view
  should be taken to account not a man's point of
  view, a woman's everyday lifestyle and how they
  construct their worlds socially. This theory
  states that because women are portrayed
  differently to men in most societies they lead
  them to hold different types of knowledge
  compared to men. This theory does not deny any
  traditional views rather states valid insights of
  the world of politics.
• Feminist postmodernism
• This covers more than one
  likelihood towards the ' falsely universalizing
  prospective' that tends to create an internal
  tension, and states that the 'one true story' by
  the standpoint feminist as a very dangerous
  fiction.

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The Feminist Standpoint on Power, Sovereignty,
Reciprocity

• The Feminist standpoint on power, sovereignty and
  reciprocity, these need to re-analyzed for the
  feminist as they are the key concepts as it will
  ask if male constructions have influenced the
  mind in the way they think about international
  relations.
• Power - An actor that influences another person
  to act in respectful outcomes, which affects ones
  environment.
• Sovereignty - Defined as 'power as control' as it
  means supremacy over all authorities, final and
  political authority which casts back the
  long-established thinking of males.
• Reciprocity - Is similar to sovereignty as it the
  possibility to have a sovereign society, it
  should be taken into account that other states
  had the right to claim what they wish and enjoy
  it.

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Feminist Empiricism and Postmodernism

• Feminist empiricism and postmodernism - Is a
  sociological approach the studies on why the
  difference between genders affects the modern
  interstate system, and how women are victims of
  the modern international relations as the
  enforcements were very harmful and dangerous the
  females and their lives.

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Goals of Feminism

• The goals of feminism are
• To demonstrate the importance of women
• To reveal that historically women have been
  subordinate to men
• To bring about gender equity.

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Conclusion

• We can summarize the feminist impulse as a
  political position aiming to alter the power
  balance between men and women.
• Despite its internal diversity and debates, the
  feminist perspective is badly needed in political
  science.
• In the future, feminist political science will
  need to engage more fully with questions
  surrounding the formation of masculinities,
  reflected in a growing body of literature and
  research , without losing hold of its original
  political commitment to women.
• The feminist perspective, for its part, should be
  able to give theories of complex interdependence
  and institutional change, more gender conscious
  formulation and also to criticize the gender bias
  to be found in conceptions of interdependence and
  institutionalization created by men.

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Thanks for Precious Time