FEMINISM AND

GEOPOLITICS

Table of Contents
Introduction to Feminism

What is feminism?
Interesting facts about feminism
What are feminists and what do they do
Discoveries made by feminists

Feminism and Politics

Feminist Politics
Liberal Feminism

Feminist Geopolitics
What is feminist geopolitics?
The role of feminist geopolitics
Feminist geopolitics and International Relations

Abstract
The purpose of this essay is to create a clear and understandable meaning of the concept of
feminism by pointing out what is feminism, who is a feminist and explain what is feminism in
geopolitics and also analyze the content of some academic papers.

Feminism is a concept which has been discussed for a long time and which has been
inspiring controversy, having a specific meaning or understanding for every person. For
example, some writers propose a more dynamic, more supple, and more comprehensive than
those formerly inscribed in dictionaries1, some consider feminism as a powerful working
tool for enhancing understanding of the concept that remains undisputedly significant to both
women and men today 2 and others even think of this concept that it is represented by two
historically distinct and seemingly conflicting modes of argument 3. Basically, feminism is a
commitment made in order to achieve the equality between the sexes. The need to demand
equality is due to the experienced discrimination in terms of race, age, class etc., Feminism
was considered for some journalists as the radical notion that women are people 4. However,
it can be noticed in the definition of the concept the comparison to men, which is the key
element because of the way it is related to feminism: ": "rights equal to those granted men." 5
This was a classical definition offered by dictionaries in the 1950s and 1960s.This comparison
appeared as a result of the Western tradition developed in Great Britain and United States
mostly, having as a point of interest the elaboration the rights and privileges of male
individuals on grounds of principle.6 The main issues of the women were the vote, the
entrance into male-specific jobs and the achievement of legal control over a property and
their legal rights in institutional hierarchies.
What is curious about it, though, is the fact that it was discovered, at some point that
the term feminism hardly existed before the 20th century and that since the very beginning
of its introduction it was a controversial one. Early research show that the concept has its
origins in France (fminisme) and that the invention of the word has nothing to do with
Charles Fourier as it was believed, but that the origins of the word are mostly uncertain. It is
1 Offen, 2012
2 Toril Moi, 1985
3 Offen, 2012
4 Rebecca West, 1913
5 Flexner, 1971; Sinclair,1965; ONeill, 1971
6 Bethke Elshtain, 1981

also believed that the concept first appeared in France, in early 1890s with the meaning
womens emancipation.
As for the first feminist, Hubertine Auclert was the one proclaiming herself a feminist
in 1882,using the term in her paper, La Citoyenne, published periodically.
Feminist geopolitics is the approaching of global issues taking into consideration
feminist politics: Feminist in this context refers to analyses and political interventions that
address the unequal and often violent relationships among people based on real or perceived
differences.7 Politics involves this feminist perspective and it approaches relationship,
processes, normative facts in order to prevent or treat marginalization or exclusion. The
feminist perspective focuses on description and proof of the fact that there are patterns of
inequality, in the sense of power exercise.
The Western theory or tradition that we talked about earlier is a representative
example. This theory focuses on research at macro level and concerns about institutional
politics, especially at the state level. As a result, one of the main consequences was
overlooking the matter of gender:There is a tendency, for example, to focus on elite actors,
who either have institutional power through their roles within the state or are able to influence
the state through non-state institutions such as firms or nongovernmental institutions; the
agents who wield such power are typically men. 8 Feminists instead focused on changing this
misperception by redirecting the attention onto what creates exclusion or marginalization.
They also focused on giving proof and revealing the importance of everyday life:The
triangulation of information and methods of analysis also makes it easier to see the ways in
which gender and other dimensions of difference operate in political processes. 9 Another
subject of debate of was the relationship between geopolitics, colonialism and imperialism.
Studies about geopolitics and imperialism revealed the fact that women were excluded from
the practice of imperialism, women were not allowed to take part in imperialism and they
were marginalized and reduced to silence. This was an important point in the history of
feminism as feminists proved there was two forms of violence against women: violence of
imperialism and violence of patriarchy. Feminists revealed the fact that imperialism was
constructed as a masculinise power exercised in public spaces: Through the masculinised
languages and practices of imperialism, the narrators of empire consigned women to a
symbolic role. These practices are replicated in the work of both traditional and critical
geopoliticians, who continue to be bound by masculinise modes of analysis and representation
that create binary oppositions between powerful and powerless, and by those who continue to
use language that is marked by its apparent objectivity but that masks fundamentally
gendered ideas and concepts.10
The conclusion reached was the fact that women are a vital element in the practice of
geopolitics, but their importance has been hidden or has not been recognized: Women are
crucial to the practice of geopolitics but their work and importance are hidden as a result of
7 Hyndmann,2000
8 Gilmartin,Kofman,2004
9 Sharp,2004
10 Kofman,2004

their textual invisibility11. Thus, imperial rivalries in international world were a real matter
since feminist tried so hard to prove that societies were separated in terms of gender relations
and racism. Instead, gender may also be related to globalization. It is believed that in the
Western tradition or theory there was a gender-binary, masculine-feminine. This binary works
like an exclusion mechanism, of course against women: equation between the local and the
feminine gets re-inscribed over and over again, bringing along with it the corollary equation
of the global with the masculine-even in the most critical of analyses12.

Feminism and Politics

Feminist Politics
In the western vision, "politics" represent a vast concept that includes aspects of the
management or government of a state or a city. This term is also defined by the Websters
dictionary as the art of governing a state, or the tactics used to influence governmental
policies or methods to how a state should be administered. Because it is a male-dominated
society, feminists are most often excluded from the governing positions; typically, they try to
change how a society is governed from the outside. This may be a hard burden as, due to the
gender division of labour, women are associated with the household and are considered
incapable of making important decisions concerning the administration of a state.
Feminist politics are strongly based on feminist values, although they are not shared
by all groups of feminists. The main disagreement among feminists concerns the aspects of
women oppression. For example, both liberal feminists and traditional Marxists are against
the fact that society considers the main responsibility of a woman should be the housework.
The difference lays in the reasons for their belief. Liberals consider this unjust because they
think it confines women from equal opportunity of self-fulfilment. Marxists, on the contrary,
sees it a good way to divide the working class. When analyzing different features regarding
women situations, feminists provide solutions on how that situation can be changed. In this
case, "liberal feminists propose that housework should be "professionalized through the
market, whereas Marxists propose that it should be socialized through the state." 13 The first
solution would result in a competitive society where relations between people will be strongly
affected by money whereas the second solution results in a society where the social task is the
ultimate responsibility.
The values of each group of feminists are strongly connected to the way they see
human nature which, in turn, entails a particular approach to politics. In a book published in
1983, "Feminist Politics and Human Nature", Alison Jaggar describes four theories that are
related to feminism: liberal feminism, Marxism, radical feminism and socialist feminism.
Marxism feminists focus their activities on explaining the private property and systems of
capitalism's oppression against women. Radical feminists oppose to the patriarchal society,
whereas socialist feminists strongly believe in gender equality and that women are being
sexually discriminated. It also combines Marxism's belief (of the capitalism's oppression
toward women) with the radical view (that women are oppressed by the patriarchal society).
11 Thrift,2000
12 Freeman,2001,201213 Jaggar, 1983

Furthermore in this essay, different feminist approaches to political life would be analyzed
from Liberal Feminism point of view.

Liberal Feminism
Liberal Feminism is a feminist theory, which focuses on the belief that women are
strong and competent enough to be equal to men. Liberal feminists accuse society for the false
conception that women are not, by nature, smart and physically capable to compete with men,
thus women are being discriminated in many social aspects. They also believe that women are
being discriminated when it comes to the political sector, rights as justice, equality and liberty
being violated.
Liberal feminists strongly consider the fact that women suffer from many
discrimination forms; most important one, from their point of view, is sexual discrimination.
This means that a man is given credit according to its merits whereas a woman is criticized on
her assumed merits as a female. According to them, the gender of an individual should be
taken into consideration when it is relevant in performing a specific task or when a certain
opportunity is an advantage.
Another form of discrimination perceived by liberals is legislation which provides
different obligations, responsibilities and opportunities for men and women. Liberals
complain that these laws are restricting women from well-paid jobs and from their right at
promotion. Because of these, women do not have equal opportunities for pursuing their own
self-interest as men do. Due the social wrong conceptions, most women are expected to have
a job similar to their duties at home: running a home and raising a child. This results in
diminished autonomy and liberty for women, because for a woman to have freedom and full
identity, she has to be economically independent. This form of work does not require much
skill and little solicits the intellect. Exception does the teaching profession which is a job
attributed to women and clearly requires intellectual capacities.
Women also have less sexual liberty than men have because of the familiar sexual
double-standard that expects women to be passive in sexual encounters. In the contemporary
society, women are very often seen as sexual object which encourages sexual harassment thus
limiting the woman's freedom to travel alone in safety. During the 1970s, many feminists tried
to increase the legal equality between men and women; in the United States for example,
liberal feminists proposed to the Constitution the Equal Rights Amendment which states:
"Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
state on account of sex." Although the United States Congress approved it, its ratification was
not possible. The ERA would have been one of the most successful activity pro equality for
women if it had been ratified, as the discrimination concerning education, employment,
training, marriage, admission into the armed forms etc., would have been abolished by law.
Liberalists believe that this failure occurred partly because the legislation force is composed
entirely of men. Consequently, feminists argue that women should be given more jobs into the
juridical system and public office for an impartial administration of the laws.
When it comes to competing for political power, women are always at a disadvantage.
They try and often succeed to influence the political decisions but they fail to achieve political
offices as their authority is not recognized by the society. That happens because society
expects women to be under the authority of a man who supports her participation in political
and social life, thus enabling her to control their, and others, actions. If a woman, however,

succeeds to impose her authority, it will disrupt men's socially legitimated power. So men
have a reason to exclude women from political life.

Feminist geopolitics
What is feminist geopolitics?
Feminist geopolitics is an approach that describes the ways in which power operates
across the scales of geopolitics; it aims to emphasize the learning of feminist and political
geography by making geopolitics become a more gendered project.
Feminist geopolitics appeared in the lately 2000s - about 200 years later than the
classical geopolitics and it was established from the critical geopolitics division and the
feminist geography category.
Feminist geography emerged in the late 1970s and the early 1980s and it suffered
several transformations through time. If, at first, a socialist feminist geography was not able to
integrate social relations brought through differences that are beyond class or gender, a
cultural movement in feminist geography draw more attention to the processes of racism and
racialization. In terms of politics, a political turn has been made with the geographical
analysis on international relations.
Critical geopolitics is one of the many cultures of resistance to Geography as
imperial truth, state-capitalized knowledge, and military weapon. It is a small part of a much
larger rainbow struggle to decolonize our inherited geographical imagination so that other
geo-graphings and other worlds might be possible 13. Critical geopolitics challenges the
practices and understandings of war, peace and violence within the state system. Some
lecturers and professors argued that critical geopolitics is a method of exposing the migrants
as a threat and managing international relations by criminalization and securitization of the
regimes.
Critical geopolitics and feminist geography could not work so well separately; where
critical geopolitics seems weak, feminist geography reinforces its political aims, and without a
feminist sensibility, critical geopolitics are left with a politicized approach to analysis and no
fair way in terms of political practice.
The term feminist geopolitics appeared as a need to distinguish the nature of the
geopolitical relations, as many feminist scholars argued that these relations are produced in
the home as much as in the battlefield and not particularly by characters inside the formal
political realm.

The role of feminist geopolitics

The feminist political geographers, which were the scholars of feminist geopolitics, started
their mission by attracting peoples attention to the exclusion of women from geopolitical
debates and the feminist understanding from the critical geopolitical learning. Then, they
focused on the failure of the critical geopolitics purpose of concentrating on the attenuating
13 O Tuathail, 1996; Dalby, 2003

deconstruction that did not included the significant aspects of the world and the ways in which
everyday interactions and experiences influenced the geopolitical processes. In opposition to
the critical geopolitics actions, feminist geopolitical approach analyzes, on one hand, the way
experiences influence the global political processes, and on the other hand, the way these
processes impact everyday experiences framed as feminine.
Feminist geopolitics takes part at the social construction of scale and at the
interconnections across and among dimensions. In terms of national security, it comes
another aspect of feminist geopolitics, that is to examine how the increased security, provided
by the state though intensified surveillance, brings for some people pressure, insecurity,
exploitation. Feminist geopolitics builds connections across differences and distances in terms
of political practice, forms of communication and speech, discursive political debates.
Another role played by the feminist geopolitics is to understand the changing ground of
conflict, meaning understanding the processes of securitization in capitalist society and
focusing on both security and conflict. It is also a concern the differences between genders,
races, nationalities, sexualities and sexualized discourses which can lead to kinds of violence
and persecution.

Feminist geopolitics and International Relations

Feminism addresses international relations from a female perspective, encouraging
gender equality. In essence, feminists in the international relations field look at who is shaping
politics in the world today, whether women are involved in the decision-making process, and
how females can change foreign policy and other aspects of international relations. They
critique the present social norms and question the patriarchal hierarchy in the military and
economy, among other fields.
Much IR writing remains disembodied. The writers and their subjects do not have
(visible) bodies14. Not surprisingly, the main topic of feminists debates in terms of
international relations is the notion of security: Feminists are suspicious of statist ontologies
that define security in zero-sum terms with binary distinctions between anarchy and order15.
In international relations, it is argued that the understanding of security should not be only the
traditional protection of the state, but also the protection of women that might be different
because women are more likely to be attacked by men they know, rather than strangers from
other states16. Radical feminism emphasize the fact that women have not been acknowledged
for their contributions to central issues in international relations.
Feminists in international relations raise their concern that women are a disadvantaged
group that own one percent of the worlds property and resources and perform 60 percent of
the worlds labour17
14 Pettman, 1997
15 Tickner, 2001
16 Caroline Code, 2002

Early signs of feminism in international relations were present in the 1960s when
feminists joined together to address conflict and peace issues using the feminist perspective.
In 1975, feminists presented gender as a factor in structural violence at the International Peace
Research Association conference. Now, in international relations, feminists, particularly
standpoint feminists, consider how gender plays a role in how international relations are
structured and formed.

References

Mapping women, making politics; Feminist perspectives on political geographyStaeheli, Lynn A., Kofman, Eleonore, Peake, Linda J., 2004, pg. 1-5, 127;

Towards a feminist geopolitics - Jennifer Hyndmann, 2000, pg 2;

Defining feminism: A comparative historical approach - Karen Offen, 1988, pg. 119,
120, 122, 123, 124;

"Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Philosophy and Society) Alison Jaggar,
1983, Chapter 3 "Feminist Politics;

"Woman, Culture, and Society" Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, 1974, pg. 89 95;

Feminist Theory and International Relations: The Feminist Challenge to Realism and
Liberalism Ruiz Tricia

17 True Jacqui

Feminist Geopolitics Massaro Vanessa A., Williams Jill, 2013

Mind the gap: bridging feminist and political geography through geopolitics,
Hyndman Jennifer