Session 21 - Where are the women?

Initially, international relations has been about the relationship between states. However after the end of cold war, the field of International Relations evolved and saw various dimensions being added into it. This provided an entry for the feminist perspective to IR too.

The feminist perspective of international Relations looks at the role of women in the international arena. However the reading by J. Ann Tickner explores other literature on the topic where women’s subordination in politics and discrimination against women, for example is discussed.

However while going through the reading, I felt that the feminist perspective to International Relations was more appropriate under the study of sociology than International relations. While the ideas such as inequality in income and power for women are hard facts which are backed by empirical research, the presence of these ideas and concepts in International Relations seems to me, stretched.

Or it could be that the lens that we are used to while studying International Relations has been so male dominated and male centered, that such a dimension (the feminist dimension) looks absurd. In which case, this female perspective lens will take time to be fully appreciated.

The names of Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto, Sheikh Haseena and Indira Gandhi were some of the names that kept coming to my mind while doing this reading. While they are not representative of all women or even the majority of women, they are some names that influenced the relations among states and played a huge role in the domestic politics of their respective countries too. The point being, that for me, in international relations they are policy makers and state representatives and their gender has nothing to do with how state business was conducted.