Question

What does feminist theory add to our understanding of war?

Answer 1

Feminism is a broad term given to works of those scholars who have sought to bring gender concerns into the academic study of international politics and who have used feminist theory and sometimes queer theory to better understand global politics and international relations.In terms of international relations (IR) theory, a feminist approach is grouped in the broad category of theoretical approaches known as reflectivism, representing a divergence from approaches adhering to a rationalist outlook based on the premises of rational choice theory; reflectivist approaches, which also include constructivism, post-structuralism, and postcolonialism, regard state identities and interests as continuously in flux, so that norms and identity play as much a role in shaping policy as material interests.Feminist IR emerged largely from the late 1980s onwards. The end of the Cold War and the re-evaluation of traditional IR theory during the 1990s opened up a space for gendering International Relations. Because feminist IR is linked broadly to the critical project in IR, by and large most feminist scholarship has sought to problematise the politics of knowledge construction within the discipline often by adopting methodologies of deconstructivism associated with postmodernism/poststructuralism. However, the growing influence of feminist and women-centric approaches within the international policy communities (for example at the World Bank and the United Nations) is more reflective of the liberal feminist emphasis on equality of opportunity for women.

The reality is that women play various roles in war and for different reasons, depending on the conflict. It is noted that women have actively participated in war since the mid-nineteenth century. This process of eliminating women from war is a tool used to discredit women as agents in the international arena. [4]A focal point for many feminist scholars is mass rape during wartime. These scholars will seek to explain why wartime sexual violence is so prevalent through history and today. Some scholars turn to explanations such as rape as a weapon or as a reward for soldiers during the war. Others see sexual violence as an inevitable consequence when social restraints are removed.

Considering war at the international, state, substate, and individual levels, Sjoberg's feminist perspective elevates a number of causal variables in war decision-making. These include structural gender inequality, cycles of gendered violence, state masculine posturing, the often overlooked role of emotion in political interactions, gendered understandings of power, and states' mistaken perception of their own autonomy and unitary nature. Gendering Global Conflict also calls attention to understudied spaces that can be sites of war, such as the workplace, the household, and even the bedroom. Her findings show gender to be a linchpin of even the most tedious and seemingly bland tactical and logistical decisions in violent conflict. Armed with that information, Sjoberg undertakes the task of redefining and reintroducing critical readings of war's political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions, developing the beginnings of a feminist theory of war.A prominent basis for much of feminist scholarship on war is to emphasize the ways in which men are seen as the sole actors in war. Women, on the other hand, are commonly conceived of as acted upon throughout conflict and conflict resolutions.