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“You can’t get that time back”: pregnancy, birthing and newborn babies Some of the mothers in our sample were pregnant with their first or second baby during the various New Zealand lockdowns. During the interviews, these mothers described experiencing various health concerns, including a fear of catching COVID19, and concerns about lack of familial support during the birthing process: I was worrying about getting it, what would happen to the fetus? Then when you actually go into birth, when there was an outbreak, people weren’t allowed to have their partners in the delivery room, so we didn’t know what was going to happen. The thought of [partner] not being there really freaked me out. Just having that in the back of your mind and worrying about whether your new-born would have some kind of health issue and then COVID would come. There were all those sorts of things that added that extra layer of anxiety on top of all the things you already worry about being pregnant (Emilla, first pregnancy). Pregnant women were navigating many different sources of information to try to understand the risks of COVID-19 while pregnant. During the early stages of the pandemic, scientific information was emerging very quickly, and there were long periods of time with much uncertainty due to the quickly evolving nature of the virus and its effects on human health. This context caused considerable stress and anxiety for pregnant women and new mothers who felt an “overwhelming sense of responsibility” to their (unborn) babies (Gray and Barnett, 2022). The lack of services during this time caused many of the mothers, particularly those pregnant or with newborns, to experience various forms of uncertainty, stress, and anxiety. Many described logistical challenges in meeting their midwives or other medical professionals due to social isolation restrictions in place: It was a really anxious time because none of the services were available. I was trying to ring the numbers and there was nothing there, no support. It got up until I was throwing up every day and I knew I was pregnant and the hormones were high. I went to a scan on my own, because [husband] wasn’t allowed to come with me (Beth). Some experienced challenges with accessing social and emotional support. For example, one of the mothers experienced a miscarriage during the first nationwide lockdown, and recalls this as a particularly traumatic period of her life: The nurse called me up and said, “You’ve got to go to ED now because you’re still bleeding.” I went there, they dropped me off and she said, “You’ve got to be prepared for a D&C [dilation and curettage]”. So I went there. Going to the hospital was traumatic. They were very busy, I didn’t get any emotional support. I was on my own and it was painful and awful. I came home, recovered. Then weeks after that, I had quite an emotional breakdown, I think because of the events. Some of the mothers expressed sadness and frustration by COVID-19 rules that restricted family support during special moments in their pregnancy journeys, particularly scans and birthing: You can’t get that time back. For me personally, I’ll never get to experience my first birth with my mum there. Or my scans. I had to go on my own, my family waited outside in the carpark. (Shanti, teen mother) Attending medical appointments alone, without family support, was upsetting for some mothers (particularly teenage mothers), whereas others accepted such conditions as part of a national campaign to limit the spread of the virus. In the context of COVID-19, vaccinations were highly politicized “biomedical technologies” playing a significant role in the construction of the fetal and maternal body, and discourses of risk and responsibility (Lupton, 2012, 2022, 329). While the mothers in our study had widely ranging views on vaccination, many experienced various forms of judgement, misinformation, and miscommunication from the public and medical health professionals. For example, first time migrant mother Keeja recalled her distress upon receiving conflicting information about vaccination: The same day I did my home pregnancy test and it was positive was the same day I did my first dose of vaccination, because I had already booked it. They tell you to let them know and I said, “Well, I just found out today that I’m pregnant.” They were like, “Oh, do you want to get vaccinated?” I was like, of course, I can’t believe you’re asking me this! For many mothers, vaccination and masking were important measures to protect themselves and their babies, while others chose not to be vaccinated in fear of side-effects on their babies. With significant social restrictions based on vaccination status, some unvaccinated mothers described feeling angry about missed opportunities for their families to join them at medical appointments (i.e., scans, physiotherapy) and important milestones in their journey into motherhood: I didn’t get vaccinated while hapu (pregnant). . . because I don’t know how that’s going to affect my baby yet. But I would be in so much pain, my midwife would recommend me to go get massages, and chiropractic stuff, and I had to sit at home in pain because of the vaccine rules. (Avi, teen mother) I didn’t like how you had to be vaccinated to go to things, like even scans. My baby daddy didn’t come to my scans because everyone had to be vaccinated. (Hotu, teen mother) For these young Maori mothers, recalling their pregnancies ¯ during lockdowns and vaccination restrictions, evoked strong feelings of loss, grief and even anger toward the government. Herein our findings align with Thornton and Reich’s (2022) research on Black mothers and vaccine refusal in the US, highlighting how structural gendered racism and concerns about state intervention shaped vaccine decisions. Although the women had different views on vaccination, many felt that their competency as a ‘caring and responsible’ mother was being judged by strangers, family members and medical professionals based on their willingness to be vaccinated or not, and their efforts to minimize risk: I had a lot of medical issues with my pregnancy, and I’d go to hospital a lot. And it’s just that constant badgering or the sly, “oh, you’re already not going to be a good mum, because you’re not getting vaccinated”, “Think about your child”, “do what’s best for them”. What happened to, ‘my body, my choice’? I felt discriminated against because I wasn’t vaccinated. (Shanti, teen mother) I remember one lady was in the lift with me and she turned to me and said, “Oh, I hope you’re being careful.” I was like, “yeah, because I’m fucking going around [NZ city] trying to catch COVID. I want to get my baby sick [sarcasm]”. You become like public property when you’re pregnant, but those sorts of comments were a whole other thing. (Emilia) Outside of pandemic times, pregnant women and mothers of newborns experience high levels of “regulation, monitoring and control”, as well as social judgement in their approaches to mothering and the decisions they make to care for their babies and themselves (Longhurst, 1999; Lupton, 2012, 329). During the first two years of the pandemic, the mothers described heightened levels of judgement, particularly as pregnant women and new mothers navigated unknown risks of COVID infection and vaccination, often without the medical and social support required to make informed decisions. In this way, our findings align with Manca’s (2021) research on pregnant women’s experiences of risk and intersectional power relations during the early stages of the pandemic. According to Manca (2021), medical responses to COVID19 were “(dis)organized within pre-existing economic, racial, colonial, and patriarchal power relations that disadvantaged some pregnant women more than others” (321). As our research shows, moral and medical judgements were indeed highly racialized, with young Maori, Pacific and migrant mothers ¯ disproportionately facing the brunt of health professionals questioning and scrutiny. According to a recent report, the “single largest cause of maternal death in Aotearoa is suicide”, particularly affecting wahine ¯ Maori mothers ( ¯ Hoki, 2019). With the pandemic further amplifying mental health issues, and with the absence of many structures of formal and informal support, intersectional approaches that recognize the compounding factors of ethnicity and socioeconomic deprivation (as a result of colonization, and ongoing racism in everyday life and health and social service provisions) on mothers’ health and wellbeing are necessary to provide the culturally-responsive care and support for those most impacted (Barrett et al., 2023).

The extensive research carried out by this specialist gives visibility and recognition to the genealogy and feminist historical memory in health. But, above all, its content is intended to shake the public's conscience. "Many ideas we have today about women's health come from a historical process in which men, who were the ones with the power to elaborate concepts, considered women's health to be weak and labile by nature, because of our biology," she assures. This totally erroneous vision is still anchored in our society. As Nogueiras García argues, it is "a self-interested idea at the service of men that, after centuries of history, continues to crouch in health theories and practices under the cloak of objectivity, and also in each and every one of us, because it is part of the cultural baggage we have acquired". In fact, among many of the themes that surface in the book, readers will be surprised to see the relationship of health with systems of subordination and subjugation. From healers to contemporary feminism The text sheds light on the history of women healers, true forerunners and pioneers, and their expulsion from the practice of health care by men in the Middle Ages, who exclusively appropriated a professional field hitherto occupied by women. "We have to know that science and professional practice was built without women for centuries, that is why we say that science, and health sciences in particular, are androcentric and patriarchal, they have sexist, scientific and clinical biases," explains the author. At all times, Nogueiras García speaks with extensive knowledge of the cause. The researcher has actively participated in the women's health movement, as a professional she has worked in institutional spaces for equality and was also co-founder of the Espacio de Salud Entre Nosotras, created by the Asociación de Mujeres por la Salud in 1990. This book is the result of her celebrated thesis, a research carried out after her work experience at the Women's Health Observatory. In the first part of the publication, the author exposes the discourses, practices and vindications in the different periods of the development of feminist theory. In the second part, the critical feminist studies of the health sciences are collected, highlighting their androcentric perspective and supporting the need for feminist theory to be incorporated into health studies and disciplines, as well as into professional and clinical practices. At the end, Nogueiras García systematizes the contributions that have been developed in Spain from 1975 to the present. Betting on training in feminism for health professionals. "Let's remember that until 1975, women lacked rights, and with the arrival of democracy, a whole process of vindication and activism began, raising women's awareness, creating public health policies and training professionals," says the specialist. And it is the latter that the author also wants to focus on. "It is important for health professionals to be aware of the feminist critique of science so that they can develop critical thinking about the knowledge they have acquired," she remarks. For the author, "if professionals continue to lack a feminist perspective on health, they will not be able to understand where the ailments and illnesses that women bring to the healthcare system come from". In this way, specialists could relate the health of their patients to the violence they suffer in the couple or the overload of care, among other aspects, and thus avoid diagnoses that have nothing to do with reality or prescriptions for psychotropic drugs that will not help them. Although, in general, society lacks training in feminism and a certain amount of critical thinking in this regard, Nogueiras García is optimistic. "Feminism is transforming all areas of life and knowledge," she says. However, it would be useless to think that all progress has been made. For the researcher "it is important to continue creating spaces for awareness, training and reflection". Because there are still many challenges to achieve and milestones to celebrate.

(Alberta Guerra is a Senior Policy Analyst at ActionAid USA. She holds an MSc in Peace Education, International Cooperation, Human Rights, and European Union Politics, and a master's degree in political science from La Sapienza University. ActionAid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. ActionAid USA is the U.S. branch of ActionAid International, which works in more than 70 countries to achieve social justice, gender equality, and poverty eradication. October 2, 2017, Why Feminism Matters for Food Security and Nutrition. ActionAid USA. / CPSW – GHS-LHM)

For many people in the world, the link between women and food security is about the role women play in producing food, cooking for others, and caring for household members. The more women are well fed, the more they are able to undertake these multiple roles for the benefit of their families. Yet for feminist movements and women’s rights activists, women are much more than that. Women are human beings with their own rights, and without the elimination of violence and discrimination, women’s food security will never be achieved. Women are the most affected by food insecurity because they are the last to eat in the family. They have less access to natural resources and services, they bear the bulk of household chores, and they face discrimination and multiple forms of violence – all of which leave them economically vulnerable and food insecure. Respecting women’s rights means that women will be food secure, along with their families, because they will be free from violence, discrimination, economic injustice and disempowerment. Tackling Women’s Food Security at the UN The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) holds governments accountable to all forms of discrimination against women. The recently adopted General Recommendation 34 (GR34) further elaborates on the obligation of governments to respect the human rights of rural women specifically. Rural women represent a quarter of the world’s population and make up the majority of small-scale farmers in the world. Yet they continue to face systematic and persistent barriers to the full enjoyment of their human rights. In many cases, conditions have deteriorated due to the persistence of discriminatory laws and policies, the lack of implementation of gender-sensitive laws, and the continuation of patriarchal structures fueled by social norms and customary attitudes. Taking a clear stance in favor of reforming the current food system, GR 34 promotes agroecology as the model to empower women socially and economically. The statement was a central topic of discussion this week at the Committee on World Food Security, a global space at the United Nations for discussing food security and nutrition. The Committee held a forum on women’s empowerment, with the purpose of looking into the persistent barriers to the empowerment of women and how GR 34 can advance women’s rights. In the preparation for the forum, I had the privilege of working together with women from feminist movements, small-scale farmers, and indigenous women from all over the world, to bring the voice of the grassroots into the UN global space. Their feminist analysis concluded that the current neo-liberal economy builds on patriarchy, overexploitation of women’s paid and unpaid care work, and discriminatory access to resources and opportunities. Profit is being made on the shoulders of women who pay the most and get the least. “We don’t want an adaptive agenda, we want to promote an alternative model of production and consumption.” – Nettie Wiebe, woman farmer from La Via Campesina, an international movement of small-scale farmers The current food system, which is characterized by increased market concentration and expansion of industrial agriculture, is a form of violence against natural resources and perpetuates violence against women. Women are forced off their land, criminalized for defending their land and their seeds and deprived of decent work conditions as farmworkers. For these women the solution is not to simply remove the barriers to the global market and integrate them into the industrial agricultural model. They want to be supported in their own way to produce and sell. To achieve women’s rights, we have to move towards a new global food system where women can control what they produce and what they sell in the local markets, where unpaid care work like cooking and cleaning is recognized, and where public services are safe and accessible and reduce the burden of unpaid care work. By getting rid of harmful chemicals like fertilizers and pesticides, agroecology allows women to be less dependent and also benefits their health, income and soil fertility. “We farmers do all the work in the field. We go through a lot to make sure we put food on table for our family, [our] communities and the world in general. But in the end we are not there to enjoy the fruits of our hard work. We are not recognized as the key players of food production in the world. If we [want] to eliminate hunger in the world, we need to have secured tool[s] women need to be empowered and recognized. We need to make sure we eliminate the barriers and challenges that burden women farmers.” – Eva Mageni Daudi, President of the Rural Women Farmers Forum, Tanzanian woman farmer. Women must be granted equal rights to so that they can access and control their land and seeds, take up leadership roles and enjoy decent work conditions and living wages. Governments must recognize all women’s rights and also support feminist movements and grassroots associations to bring forward their demands. Women are agents of their own development and empowerment, if they would be ensured respect and equal opportunities to fully unleash their potential.

Gender and Politics in South Asia: An analysis of India and Pakistan As in other parts of the world issue of gender is equally critical in South Asia and women of this region face same imbalanced behaviors as in rest of the world. Society’s cultures and religions of South Asia constitute an environment unfriendly and biased towards women and sometimes cruel in causing discriminatory rituals against women of this region. Religion has been used as a tool in South Asia for suppression of women and they have been treated as sub human. Devastating situation of poor literacy and medical care for women in South Asia is also one of miseries created and neglected by the corrupt regimes. Focusing more on political empowerment it is evident that women remained head of states in most of the countries of the South Asia, such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Despite they remained popular figure in the masses, an ordinary woman remains subject to violence and discrimination with fewer opportunities to flourish and survive with dignity. Fig. 1 “Women Percentage in Legislature” below shows comparative participation of South Asian women in politics with less than 10 percent women in legislature in the region as a whole and Pakistan as leading state with more women in legislature. Table indicates how utmost 1/5th of the total legislative body are women only in one country of South Asia and 2% in Bangladesh with less than 10% in the largest claimed democracy of the world. Though this lesser representation of women in the national parliaments strengthens the feminist argument of gender biased, by meeting all bitter realities and pitfalls for women, this region has done nothing better rather it remained in bottom half of the list, but when it comes to power politics, the women in power, particularly in India and Pakistan left no scope for advocates of cooperative nature of women. <<table omitted>> Coming to the focal point, Pakistan and India are two major states of south Asia having rivalry against each other and had fought three wars within 24 years of their existence. Over all environment in these rival states remained as it was in Europe of late 18th century that was extreme nationalism even at the cost of others. In such political and divisionary foreign policy oriented strategies women in power couldn’t serve the assumed purpose and pre-occupied political situation prevailed that resulted war and continuity of international crisis on border. This highlights that as in other parts of the world the South Asian politics too exposed in terms of gendered politics. Despite fragile peace and less optimism in setting up good relations in two neighbors, women in power did nothing but to follow suit of the existing patterns and dismayed feminist peace scholars. Came into office of prime minister in 1966, Indira Gandhi not only applied violence and use of force on international front but also quite often in domestic issues. Daring, decisive and bold, she never hesitated to apply means of force to achieve desired objectives. Creation of Bangladesh in 1971, brought climax of her political career and she rode on the crest of popularity during that time (Bhattacharjee, 2012). Maneuvered successfully to dismember Pakistan and detonation of atom bomb in 1974, both are the practical examples to challenge the notion of cooperative woman rather conflictual one. India on its way to stable democracy faced the national emergency, a form of constitutional crisis in aftermaths of High Court decision against the Prime Minister in office, alleged her of electoral malpractice in 1971 elections thereby declaring 1971 parliamentary elections in Rae Bareilly null and void. The masses came out in the streets and demanded for her resignation but brutally dealt by the government, press was under strict censorship and constitutional rights were abrogated (Gandhi, 1985). She had the option to go for peaceful means to mitigate this crisis by appealing the supreme court and wait for the final verdict rather, she again opted alternative means. Some 145000 people were in prison under this emergency and democratic rights were denied by the government (Ali, 1991). In June, 1984 Operation “Blue Star”, was an outcome of her order to put an assault on the “Golden Temple” the holiest place of the Sikhs. This was heinous practice of state violence against civilians, tough there were few anti-state forces present in the temple but collateral damage was highest, left more than 1000 people dead. From the military perspective Gen. SK Sinha, clearly rejected military operation as a last resort in his words, The Army Action was not the ‘last resort’ as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi would have us to believe... It had been in her mind for more than 18 months... Shortly after the Akali agitation of 1982, the Army began rehearsals of a commando raid near Chakrata Contonment in the Doon Valley, where a complete replica of the Golden Temple complex had been built... Another training involving Aviation Research Centre Commandos was given in the Sarsawa area and Yamuna bed in helicopters converted into gunships. (Operation-Blue-Star, 2013). Choices made by Mrs. Gandhi were purely at her own will and she deliberately opted for violence and potential use of military operation against the Sikhs. As in her own words, I don’t give a damn if the Golden Temple and whole of Amritsar are destroyed, I want Bhindranwale dead. (Operation-Blue-Star, 2013) Additionally Mizoram, Nagaland and Kashmir were dealt with iron hand and conflict resolving approach was never peaceful and application of negotiation and dialogue was outlawed. In office of Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto made merely any difference to change or modify the impression of security state about Pakistan. Although her liberal rhetoric and democratic perceptions were popular in the west, she continued nuclear program of Pakistan. Two visits to North Korea were made in 1990 & 1996 and was alleged to be the carrier of information sharing for missile technology with Pyongyang (Frantz & Collins, 2007). As premier in both terms, the movement for self-determination in Kashmir was at zenith, this movement was supported politically, diplomatically and morally by the government of Pakistan. It was same time when the office of Prime Minster authorized Interior Minister to install Taliban Government in the war-ridden Afghanistan mainly to seek strategic depth for defense and to control situation there (Chitkara, 1996). This was entirely opposite to the democratic believes and installment of fundamental regime in a state like Afghanistan proved lethal in coming future. In domestic political issue, only in Karachi the commercial capital of Pakistan more than 1000 people were killed in violence and same number of people were killed by security forces and law enforcement agencies in 1995, whereas political solution of the situation was quite possible (Gayer, 2014) Exclusively on the basis of political divergence with the leading parity in Karachi i.e. Mutahidda Qomi Movement civil death were allowed and violence was practiced under the protection of state legitimacy. Both terms in office were infame with respect to charges about corruption and in 1995 Pakistan was in the both end of the list of most corrupt sates. Popular slogan of Pakistan People’s Party “Roti, Kapra aur Makan” mean food, clothing and shelter were never materialized instead, and hunger, unemployment and bad governance were the hallmark of that government.

Inclusive growth implies that the gains of development are shared between all citizens in ways that are just. That is to say, the state takes positive action to compensate the traditional disadvantages of the weak, the deprived and the vulnerable so that each citizen attains a minimal level of capabilities necessary for survival and functioning. India's record in this regard is far from satisfactory; inequalities on grounds of religion, caste and ethni city are rampant and these get compounded once again for women of all groups on grounds of gender. An unacceptably large section of the population, among whom women form the majority, still continues to suffer from hunger, ill-health and ignorance.

Education: Access to education and skill training exemplifies these failures. Despite the constitutional provision of a right to education and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan campaign, there are still persistent gaps and discrimination in access to education on grounds of religion, caste, ethnicity and gender. Regrettably, this time too, policymakers do not appear to have any vision for redressing that situation. Too much of early childhood education is being left largely to underpaid female teachers who, in spite of being state employees, are denied workers' rights.

(Chih-yu Shih is a political science professor at National Taiwan University and National Chair Professor of the Republic of China. He earned a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University and a PhD from the University of Denver. 2022, Eros of International Relations: Self-Feminizing and the Claiming of Postcolonial Chineseness. Pages 66-67. Hong Kong University Press. //CPSW – GHS-LHM)

Post-Western international relations theory has yet to extend its analysis to social sites: these sites may include gender, role, network, and so on. The individual actors, each in the capacities they choose to serve, understand and practice learned values differently while in different roles, for example. Therefore, difference and agency do not merely revise European international relations: through shifting between social sites, the actors similarly revise their own practices and understandings. Post-Western international relations gains strength by allowing differences inside all individual sites. The ensuing discussion will show how cheongsam, as both an individual and a non-geographical site, can multiply the meanings of modernity and international relations. At the municipal level, cheongsam as a metaphorical site further alludes to gender, just as it does as a social site; the site, however, is a far broader and deeper category for post-Western theories and practices than cheongsam alone. Role theory can improve this post-Western quest for sited agency and subjectivity by showing how actors not only adopt the roles imposed on them by European international relations, but also create roles for others to adopt (C.-c. Huang 2020a; Michalski and Pan 2016; Harnisch 2012). This capacity for the altercasting of others testifies to the subjectivity of the actors at a social site to revise the meaning of European international relations. However, the contemporary literature of altercasting is implicitly gendered to the extent that it is about ego-initiated interaction, the quest for ontological security, and protection of a master role (Fazendeiro 2020; Harnisch 2016; Klose 2020), as opposed to the feminist concerns regarding boundary crossing, relational security, or contextualized improvisation. Such patriarchal altercasting in the existing literature requires the exploration of distinctively internal role sources (Thies 2010, 2012; Wehner and Thies 2014). National role sources form one major agenda of role theory as it applies to international relations (Cantir and Kaarbo 2016). In contrast, cheongsam can be a social site, with its wearers inspired to cast their alters and audience into a reconciliatory role relation. Given that roles are intersubjective and mutual expectations exist between the actors, cheongsam can be a role source when its wearers are inspired to make roles. This agency turns the stereotypical women and, metaphorically, postcolonial actors in general from primarily role takers into assertive and yet non-egotistical performers (Pushikin 2017). The subsequent sections will argue that cheongsam represents such a self- romanticizing state of mind that its owners are not objects of a gaze; rather, they refine and appropriate onlooker preferences, engage in self-entertainment, and altercast the onlookers to show appreciation. Relational theory considers the social networks, linguistic embeddings, and shared rights that constitute the identities of different actors with the same relations (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 2019; Nordin and Smith 2019), and are embedded in some kind of resemblance between them. These are the prior resemblances built into the identities of actors who practice, reproduce, and revise these relations. Therefore, relations are role sources. Relational identities thus oblige self-restraint, resulting in role expectations. Post-Western international relations sensitize relational theorists to civilizational differences, but relational theory fails to cope with at least two processes that fail to prepare any apparent role expectation. The first is between actors coming from different prior relations (e.g., between Christianity and Confucianism) and the second is where the prior relations are thin or abstract (e.g., the Confucian notion of harmony or Buddhist nothingness). The Confucian theme of harmony denotes a belief that all are bound to be related, but fails to reveal how they are related. Under these two conditions, prior relations fail to offer sufficient clues regarding how to bring roles into an interactive relation, which is why the improvisation of practical relationship through role-making is necessary in order for the relational theory to be complete. The discussion that follows will show how self-romanticizing by actors in cheongsam is a particular way of improvising relations.

(Joy (Zhiruo) Wang is a current PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her undergraduate degree from Beijing Normal University. March 2, 2019, Limits of Realism in Understanding Chinese Land Reclamation, Foreign Affairs Review, A Johns Hopkins International Studies Publication. CPSW – GHS-LHM)

International relations is arguably a man’s world, dominated by masculine modes of thinking. This is certainly true given that in the US women had been barred from entry until very recently and sex discrimination still abounds.17 Feminist theory believes that women tend to define power in terms of the ability to cooperate (as opposed to the masculine definition of control over others) and discern more opportunities for toleration and coalition-building in spite of differences; this is because females often rely on persuasion and shared understanding in solving domestic disputes and are therefore socialized into a more contextual, narrative-based mode of analysis.18 As a result, feminists argue that global politics would look much different if women were national leaders. This feminist interpretation explains the magnitude and aggressiveness of China’s land reclamation. Despite its communist egalitarian ideals, China is in fact a deeply sexist society. Structurally, the mandatory retirement age for female government workers, including those employed in state-owned enterprises and public universities, is 50 or 55 while the male equivalent is 60.19 This differential treatment not only impedes women’s ability to achieve high leadership positions as most government officials only reach the highest ranks in their 60s, but also perpetuates the gender stereotype that women are less physically vigorous than men. As of now, there are no women in the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest decision-making unit in China, and only one woman in the 25-member Politburo, the next rung after the Politburo Standing Committee.20 Therefore, the lack of female contribution to policies can be construed as the reason why China chose to pursue a more militaristic response (island building) instead of seeking cooperation and a larger scale of operation since males tend to perceive more threats than females and to think in terms of sheer strength as opposed to persuasion. Overall, realism explains a significant part of China’s rationale for land reclamation as relative power and military capability did factor heavily into its calculation. However, first and second level analysis, constructivism and feminism elucidate components that realism fails to incorporate: (1) land reclamation itself as a viable strategy (2) its timing in 2014 and (3) its tremendous scale. This is because realism fails to acknowledge the influence that a state’s culture, structure and history exert on shaping interests and identities and the lenses through which it receives and interprets external realities. Therefore, to fully understand the issue of land reclamation in the South China Sea, a simple look at the balance of power would not suffice; meticulous attention must be paid to the particular circumstances of the countries involved. Peaceful resolution of this conflict depends on an impartial synthesis of different approaches and one day we may hope to see a South China Sea characterized by tranquility and cooperation.

(Chih-yu Shih is a political science professor at National Taiwan University and National Chair Professor of the Republic of China. He earned a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University and a PhD from the University of Denver. 2022, Eros of International Relations: Self-Feminizing and the Claiming of Postcolonial Chineseness. Pages 103-104. Hong Kong University Press. //CPSW – GHS-LHM)

Efforts to re-/engender international relations in the past few decades have focused on exposing patriarchal power and ideologies as well as the gendered role-making that reflects, reproduces, and arguably abuses gender differences. However, the practical improvement in international relations has been modest at best—if it even exists—because the national actors and their discourses are able to reappropriate gender consciousness and the ensuing reforms’ potential to patriarchal power’s advantage. As a result, the peace advocacy that arises from border-crossing solidarity and is embedded in living together, mutual empathy, ideological neutrality, aversion to violence, and environmental sensibilities yields to military threat, swagger, or clashes between political forces. In reality, the caring and mothering that deactivate exclusionary sovereign borders can give way to xenophobia, which seeks to monopolize resources and commit demonization, especially during an pandemic or an exodus of refugees. The responsibility to protect easily ends up politicized by national leaders, who purport to justify the confrontation, intervention, and exploitation mobilized by the trained masculine instinct. All of this is truly disappointing. In adding to the critical engendering attempts of feminist literature on international relations, this book conveys little optimistic sense of its similarly critical intent. It nevertheless seeks to present an empirically plausible reinterpretation from a revisionist gender perspective—to detect how international relations are, in practice, not always engrossed in the masculine style of sovereign, national, and power-oriented platforms. Gendered biases in international relations can occasionally lead to certain results that are conducive to the easing of masculinity, and these results become visible at various levels: national, municipal, and corporate. In these instances, the actors—women and men alike, who have been conditioned by the patriarchal pedagogy and socialization—reveal a need and capacity to think and act differently. Moreover, exactly because intelligent actors detect this intellectual and emotional need among all people, including presumably the strong, they can trigger a degree of transformation within a given temporal span and at a certain site. This book embarks upon the realization of this sporadic emancipation. Specifically, self-feminization can serve as a catalyst for emancipation that bridges the relations between rivals in context. The purpose of self-feminization is to oblige caring in order to make relationality a constituent of the identities of all interacting actors. It can peculiarly enhance the level of caring on the part of self- feminizing actors, who are the first to enjoy their own gendered image and therefore are emotionally capable of bringing enthusiasm for their service to their visitors. The epistemologically double-sided self-feminization creates plausible roles for a caring relationship either by obliging the self to care for others or others to care for the self. The two parties are epistemologically equal, as they need each other to practice the caring relationship, regardless of the asymmetry of power that often characterizes their imagined binary. Provided that the relationship is reciprocal, the rivalry between them becomes more negotiable, non-solution more appealing, and inconsistency more tolerable. As such, ostensibly universal rules and norms are neutralized. International relations theory can benefit from treating social sites, composed of carefully crafted gendered roles in context, as the base of action. Social sites are subject to spinning and recombination, through which the actors readily attend to the instability of identity, appreciate their own agency for relating, and critically engage these sites’ intersectionality, which constitutes different actors. Self- feminizing in this book relies on postcolonialism and feminism to discover how a subaltern, late-coming state, city, and corporation together reconstruct a practical thread of Chineseness, whose meanings vary according to the context, the perceived characteristics of the other relational self, and the strategy of those allegedly acting on behalf of Chineseness. This unstable Chineseness would bring forth a disquieting epistemological lens and prompt a quest for another kind of empirical agenda, one to retrieve and even reactivate an emancipation through gendered relations.

(Chih-yu Shih is a political science professor at National Taiwan University and National Chair Professor of the Republic of China. He earned a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University and a PhD from the University of Denver. 2022, Eros of International Relations: Self-Feminizing and the Claiming of Postcolonial Chineseness. Pages 100-102. Hong Kong University Press. //CPSW – GHS-LHM)

The evolution of the past two decades has not appeared promising because nationalist politics in China and Taiwan rival each other, which culminated in a “self-othering” statist platform in Taiwan in the first half of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic started in the city of Wuhan in China and then spread globally; the Taipei authorities, for their part, seized the opportunity to construct an equivalence between China and the virus that quickly led to the exclusion of Taiwan’s own legal citizens, who have been connected to China in one way or another. The reinforcement of the binary presumably demonstrates that Taiwan is Western rather than Chinese and incurs gendered, colonial, and illiberal consequences. In its long quest to become a member of the West, as opposed to a part of greater China, Taiwan’s anti-pandemic platform cashed in on the opportunities provided by the pandemic to stigmatize Chinese spouses of Taiwanese, usually wives, and their families. In fact, several thousand individuals, together with their children, who were visiting their Chinese relatives in Wuhan during the Chinese New Year festival became stuck in the city during the pandemic. Taiwan offered to take them back on government charter flights, an arrangement exclusively aimed at insinuating Taiwan’s independent statehood, which the sensitive Chinese authorities accordingly rejected. In addition, only parents who held a Taiwan passport were allowed entry and not their children—who were still waiting for their passports in a long queue—so many mothers were forced to remain with their children in Wuhan. The Taiwanese authorities proceeded to ban them from returning at all unless they took a Taiwanese charter flight “directly” from Wuhan, which was never available. After Wuhan’s reopening, however, these passport holders or Taiwan residents were still not allowed to enter Taiwan. In order to bar them from entry through indirect flight arrangements via a third transition point, the immigration authorities marked their passport electronically in the same way they do a persona non grata. When repeatedly asked during news conferences to compare those banned Taiwanese visiting Wuhan with other returnees, who were escaping far more serious pandemic conditions in the United States and Europe but allowed entry—initially without even observing 14 days of collective quarantine—the official reply was that the human rights of passengers from these countries must be respected. Deep in the background are the tens of thousands of families across the Taiwan Strait who, while practically providing immunity for Taiwan against an allegedly dangerous Chineseness, call into question official de-Sinicization campaigns. The pandemic has been a needed front for the government to strike back, substitute separation for immunity, and inflict self-othering. In fact, as the pandemic fades in China, the pro-independence authorities in Taipei proceed to ban any Chinese vaccines offered by various Chinese sources to Taiwan, despite the enormous difficulties for the Taiwanese to import vaccines elsewhere. Other than the KMT or the TPP, femininity has been vividly displayed in the cross-strait activities of Taiwanese businesspeople, families, students, and tourists in their endeavors to comply with the numerous regulations—set by both authorities that discourage their interactions—and win the support of their fellow citizens, who have become increasingly distrustful or hostile toward their counterparts across the strait. Even so, these involuntary political trespassers have been able to expand their network, benefit their acquaintances, and literally restrain Taiwanese politicians from exacerbating a decoupling policy, which has remained extreme rhetorical but much milder in practice. Postcolonial sensibilities, reflected in the quest for political autonomy from control and dominance, have consumed much of the political discourse on Taiwan and its future relations with China. Such sensibilities threaten to reduce Chinese nationalism anywhere to its feared irrelevance and apprehension regarding continuous Western imperialism in China. On the other hand, the same sensibilities prompt the pro-Taiwan independence forces, ironically, to desire a dependence on the United States and, to a lesser degree, Japan. China-Taiwan relations thus involve a number of complexities and ironies. In hindsight, all these sensibilities are essentially composed of two threads of discourse. The first thread reproduces the binary of the self and the other, mainly in territorial and legal terms. This binary comprises the rivalry between China and Taiwan as well as the rivalry between China and the United States. In the latter binary, Taiwan is merely a dependent of either China or the United States, in accordance with whether Beijing’s or Washington’s perspectives are adopted. It is this quest for dependence disguised as independence that creates the second thread of discourse and defines the scope of this book. In its samples, this chapter discovers both threads, which are discursively masculine and feminine. The masculine discourses are characterized by the sensibilities of political autonomy and/or rival ideologies, while the feminine discourses encompass a readiness for reconciliation, bridging, and adaptation on the one hand and a tolerance of inconsistency on the other. These discourses are respectively uttered by male and female professionals or entrepreneurs. The masculine discourses exemplify the strategy of side-taking between international rules or market performance and local conventions; they are metaphors for Taiwan’s choice between the United States and China, or China’s choice between internationalism and nationalism. International relations theory, as applied to Taiwan, echoes masculine discourses (D. Chang 2009), up to and including articulations by alleged feminists who mimic masculine values (Wei 2019). The feminine discourses are, however, unfamiliar to international relations theory (Chan 2000; Chowdhry and Ling 2010). They engender relational identities and reflect practices that either postpone a decision on where to draw the binary or deliberately alternate between the two elements indefinitely. Self-feminizing is intrinsic during alternation because the dependent relationship improvised threatens neither side. A self-feminizing approach improvises the relationships between the United States and China indirectly, and facilitates the constitution of their relational identities by way of the same dependent other. In practice, such consciously enacted femininity is ubiquitous. It can be argued that the self-feminizing of female professionals and entrepreneurs, which keeps the international and local from direct confrontation, points to a non-solution as a solution to seemingly rival identities. The potential confrontation can be caused by either divergent ideologies or competing people: local accountants, enclaved refugees, migrant workers, and colonized populations are examples of consciously low-profiled practitioners improvising non-threatening relationships that cut across politically correct binaries. Although these binaries are used to support hierarchy and dominance, the self-feminizing agencies enable epistemological equality between all competitors and rivals, who resemble each other in their relational sensibilities and responsibilities, albeit differing in kind, toward the common feminized dependents. One plausible consequence of self-feminizing, then, is emancipation from the pressure to enforce universal norms and rules. That said, the 25-year-old archives reveal the need for caution against any optimism about emancipation, as none of the male interviewees on the list practiced noticeable self-feminizing at the time. This lacuna of male participation may have already changed today, as more women plays leading roles in international sectors. However, the opposite can also be true if more women in the capacity of branch head or government head take on masculine values in their roles. Will there be more transgender strategists due to a more balanced mix of cisgender leaders, or vice versa? This could be answered by undertaking follow-up research in the future on the strategizing style of female CEOs and male CFOs in Taiwan’s international sector. The result could have serious cultural implications for anyone concerned with the prospects of emancipation from the masculine rivalry in the sovereign world.

(Yiping Cai is a PhD student at the University of California, Irvine. She has received a master’s in Human Rights Law from Peking University. She is a feminist activist and journalist. Summer 2021, What Do Gender Equality and Women's Rights Have to Do with China's Global Engagement? Feminist Studies, Vol. 47, Issue 2, from Feminist Studies, Inc. //CPSW- GHS-LHM)

With China's growing influence in the world, there is increasing criticism and skepticism with regard to Chinese overseas investment and initiatives within the public opinion of recipient countries, leading to charges such as the "China Threat" and "neocolonialism." (9) In response, China is revamping its global engagement strategies to counter these narratives as well as to strengthen the mutual benefits and mitigate the negative impact of its relations with other countries. Telling "good Chinese stories" and sharing Chinese development experiences are just two examples of these efforts. Stories about women and girls' development in China are among those that China is willing and able to share. (10) One example is the story of Li Ziqi [phrase omitted] a thirty-one-year-old woman from Sichuan province whose YouTube channel celebrating rural life and Chinese culinary arts has acquired 14.1 million followers by 2021. One commentator on the state-owned China Central Television channel said about her, "without a word commending China, Li promotes Chinese culture in a good way and tells a good China story." (11) Another example is the way China highlights the contributions of women to coviD-19 pandemic prevention and control efforts as manifested in President Xi Jinping's speech at the UN event marking Beijing+25 on October i, 2020. (12) In an earlier speech, on September 27, 2015, Xi cohosted an event with UN Women called the Global Leaders' Meeting on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment: A Commitment to Action, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women. Xi highlighted the Chinese government's achievements and commitments to the UN's fifth Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS)--achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. China donated US$10 million to UN Women for implementation of the BPfA and the realization of Agenda 2030. China also pledged to help other developing countries build one hundred health initiatives for women and children, send teams of medical experts to provide services, and implement one hundred happy campus projects for schooling poor girls. Training programs in China will host 30,000 women from developing countries and 100,000 training opportunities will be provided in local communities of developing countries. This high-profile event that China cohosted in New York helps to put gender equality back on the political agenda after the Beijing conference in 1995, providing important momentum and legitimacy. Thereafter, at the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference as part of the Beijing+25 Review held in Bangkok in November 2019, Chinese delegates updated its partners on the progress made thus far and reaffirmed that all commitments would be fulfilled by the year 2020. (13) China has already launched some programs through multilateral and bilateral platforms to strengthen its cooperation with other countries on gender related issues. The report "Equality, Development and Sharing: Progress of the Women's Cause in the 70 Years since New China's Founding" enumerates China's achievements in promoting women's development and gender equality at the global level. (14) It states, for example, that China actively ratifies the UN's international instruments in the field of gender equality and fully promotes women's development progress. Furthermore, China has maintained friendly exchanges with 145 countries and 429 women's organizations and institutions as well as relevant UN organizations and special agencies. Through its aid projects, donations to UN Women, and other South-South cooperation projects, China has actively promoted the development of women's health, education, economy, poverty alleviation, and the environment in developing countries. On nine occasions, Chinese representatives have been elected to the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Nearly 1,000 Chinese women participate in UN peacekeeping missions, of which China is one of the major funders and the largest troop-contributing country among the permanent members of the UN Security Council. (15) Following that report, at the high-level panel discussion commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action held at the forty-third session of the UN Human Rights Council on February 25, 2020, in Geneva, Chinese representatives proposed to advance gender equality and women's development in three areas: advance women's cause through development, improve the protection of women's rights through laws and policies, and strengthen international cooperation with adherence to the principle of cooperation for win-win results. These efforts would take place on the basis of respecting the needs and contexts of individual countries, especially on issues of climate change, migration and the refugee crisis, and online violence against women. (16) Do these Chinese gender stories in the report reflect actual changes or are they merely self-congratulatory state propaganda? How are these narratives received and interpreted by the target audiences? To what extent are these stories reliable as well as reflective of the status quo of women's lives and the reality of gender equality in China? The answers to these questions are all subject to the judgment of global audiences. However, one thing China must prioritize in its storytelling is careful selection of the language used. Although the content of the stories is Chinese-specific, the language should be the universally recognized as conveying gender equality, human rights, sustainable development, and so on. It must be consistent with international conventions and policy frameworks, such as human rights treaties, BPfA, CEDAW, and SDGS in order to reach diverse global audiences and address their concerns. CHINESE GOVERNMENT'S POSITION ON GENDER-RELATED ISSUES IN THE GLOBAL ARENA In this section, I shift to a discussion of the low-key role and contradictory positions regarding gender that the Chinese government holds and the reasons behind them. There is a potential for China to play a more proactive role on the international stage in terms of promoting gender equality and women's rights. (17) Nevertheless, observing China's positioning in various global forums and negotiations at ICPD and Beijing reviews as well as the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN security council, the human rights council and other commissions, gender issues do not seem to receive much attention or visibility in China's foreign policy when compared with trade, security, international cooperation, counter-terrorism, climate change, and other major issues. Nor are there consistent, coherent positions on gender issues in the global arena. Instead, Chinese government representatives seemingly take a low-key role and hold ambiguous, sometimes even contradictory positions on various issues regarding gender, sexuality, and human rights. Such positions imply the potential role that China could play to promote gender equality in global contexts; however, they also show that gender equality and women's rights can be watered down or compromised as China negotiates instead for political and economic benefits and other priority issues. Unlike a handful of UN member states, such as Russia or the United States, who have blocked the process or voted against hard-negotiated agreements, China has joined the international consensus supporting all the outcome documents following reviews of the 4wcw and the ICPD as well as the SDGS and sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women. Thus, China supports gender equality and the inclusion of women's empowerment language, sometimes with compromises. For example, at the Asia Pacific Ministerial Meeting on Beijing+25 held in Bangkok in November 2019, organized by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), the US asked for a roll-call vote and then cast the only vote against the Asia Pacific Declaration on Advancing Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment. The Beijing+25 Review was adopted at the end of the intergovernmental meeting--not just the paragraphs on sexual and reproductive health and rights but the agreement in its entirety. Chinese delegates expressed reservation about the term "women human rights defenders" in paragraph nine, noting that there was no international consensus on what constitutes women human rights defenders and that the term was not well defined, but they agreed to adopt the declaration nonetheless. (18) China has been consistently aligned with the agreed-upon language of "gender equality and women's empowerment" in UN documents such as BPfA and SDG5. It also does not oppose the language of women's human rights. Its hesitation to recognize "women's human rights defenders" indicates that, concerning China's foreign policy, the matter of human rights is more fraught than that of gender or women, and it is more difficult to reach consensus on this issue.

(Alison M, Vulnerable Women and Neo-Liberal Globalization: Debt Burdens Undermine Women's Health in the Global South, Theoretical Medicine 23, 425-40)

When neo-liberal globalization has been so harmful to the health of many people in the global South, it is natural to wonder why they continue to participate in this system. Much of the answer lies in the past. Neo-liberal policies were introduced in many Southern countries in the 1980s as conditions of borrowing money from international lending institutions or of rescheduling existing debts. Many developing countries engaged in massive borrowing in the 1970s, when interest rates were low but, when interest rates rose sharply at the end of that decade, most debtor countries had difficulty paying the interest on their loans. In the early 1980s a world debt crisis resulted, threatening the failure of major US banks and perhaps a collapse of the world economic system. In order to forestall default by large debtors such as Mexico, international lending institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank rescheduled many debts. At the same time, they imposed new loan conditions mandating so-called policies of structural adjustment or SAPs. These neoliberal economic policies “adjust” the “structures” of local economies so that they can be integrated into the global economic system, thus enabling them to gain the foreign currency necessary for servicing external debts. SAPS thus are designed to orient local economies away from production intended to satisfy the needs of local people and towards producing goods for export.15 Any local economy that is integrated into the global economy becomes vulnerable to the vicissitudes of world trade. For example, SAPs encouragement of cash crop agriculture, has forced many countries in the global South to become permanently dependent on Northern machines and fertilizers, as well as on world prices for their crops. Thus, SAPs have created guaranteed markets for Northern manufactured products, technologies and consumer goods and simultaneously have ensured a “captive” supply of cheap exploitable labor, cheap raw materials and agricultural products. In a world where the terms of trade for raw materials and agricultural products have historically tended to worsen (with a few conspicuous exceptions, such as oil), such interdependence has inevitably made the North richer and the South poorer. Although SAPs were promoted as necessary to economic development in the global South, they have harmed rather than helped development in many debtor nations. The growth rates of most debtor countries have been significantly reduced, living standards in many have deteriorated, and some have become trapped in a vicious cycle of stagnation and decline. Some of the countries that are worst off are the most integrated into the global economy; for instance, exports account for close to 30 percent of the GDP of impoverished sub-Saharan Africa, compared to less than 20 percent for industrialized nations. Many Southern countries are now in a state of economic collapse and their debt burden has multiplied many times over. By 1997, the total debt stock owed by the developing world to the developed world was $217 TRILLION, up from $1.4 trillion in 1990. Although SAPs have been counterproductive from the point of the view of the global South, they have been highly successful from the point of the view of the global North. This is because they have ensured that an increasing proportion of the debtor countries’ resources have gone to paying off foreign debts. Even by the mid-1980s, the Third World was paying out annually about three times as much in debt repayments as it received in aid from all developed-country governments and international aid agencies combined. Ten years later, the developing countries are paying the rich nations $717 million per day in debt service; $12 billion annually flows north out of Africa. The need to service their debts provides much of the explanation why many countries in the global South have joined the WTO, despite the fact that the neo-liberal rules of this organization tend to favor the interests of Northern countries and corporations over those of poor people and countries. Deeply indebted nations, which need foreign exchange to service their debt, cannot afford to be left out of the global trading system. Thus, the existence of longstanding debt is one of the chief mechanisms maintaining global neo-liberalism. It binds Southern debtors and Northern creditors together in a system advantageous primarily to the privileged classes of the global North. Because this system is harmful to most women’s health, Southern debt should be an important concern for both medical ethics and feminist ethics. I wish to conclude by suggesting that many supposed Southern debt obligations are not morally binding because they were not legitimately undertaken. (431-33)

(Alison M, Vulnerable Women and Neo-Liberal Globalization: Debt Burdens Undermine Women's Health in the Global South, Theoretical Medicine 23, 425-40)

Liberal democratic theory holds that all citizens are collectively responsible for decisions made by their democratically elected governments. Even citizens who disagree with particular government policies are said to have consented to them indirectly if not directly because they agreed to the rules of the electoral game.16 Like most bio-ethicists, most liberal political philosophers hold that such consent is binding only if it is informed, rational and uncoerced. In practice, however, people’s rationality is always imperfect, their information incomplete and their available options restricted; hence the validity of consent is always a matter of judgement. I shall argue that, when many Southern countries undertook their supposed debts, their citizenry was largely uninformed and/or their options were virtually nonexistent. Consent to the debt as coerced: many Southern countries were forced to borrow because their wealth was stolen One reason why citizens in the global South cannot be said to have undertaken their supposed debts voluntarily is that neo-liberalism was not introduced into a global state of nature, comprised of nation states that were politically sovereign and economically independent. Instead, it was introduced into a world previously made unequal by colonialism – which also often exacerbated inequalities among and between men and women. Despite the lip service paid by the European Enlightenment to such ideals as universal freedom and equality, European expansion was characterized by violence, slavery and genocide. These destroyed many non-European societies and drastically weakened many others, forcibly converting them into sources of cheap raw materials, food and labour, as well as markets for the manufactured goods of the colonizing countries. The import of manufactured goods from Europe and the US undermined production by local artisans and suppressed the manufacturing potential of the colonies. Thus, it made formerly self-sufficient communities economically dependent. Patterns of colonization varied but typically they created powerful local elites whose interests were linked to maintaining an open economy. At the same time, much of the population was severely impoverished and the seeds were planted of land misuse and environmental degradation.17 In short, colonialism drained massive resources and wealth away from the colonies and destroyed their economic self-sufficiency. After political independence, the erstwhile colonies were left dependent on the metropolis for manufactured goods and also for training indigenous professional and skilled people. Seeking to end their economically disadvantageous position as suppliers of raw materials, many Southern countries sought to develop their own industries. However, so much wealth had been siphoned off from their nations during the colonial period that they lacked sufficient capital to invest in new plant or infrastructure and were forced to borrow. It was because they had been impoverished by previous centuries of Northern colonialism that these countries cannot be said to have undertaken their debts voluntarily – even if they consented formally to accept the loans. Basically, they are forced to borrow back wealth that was stolen from them – and to borrow it from (the descendants of) the robbers. Consent to Southern debt as uninformed or non-existent The people who bear the overwhelming burden of paying Southern debt are the poorest citizens of the poorest countries in the world. This is especially Southern women. These citizens are held economically responsible for debts undertaken by their governments, often before they were born. Every baby born in the developing world today owes about $500 at birth. In most heavily indebted countries, however, electorates were uninformed about the meaning or even existence of foreign loans. Debts were often assumed by local elites, who spent them on unproductive prestige projects or siphoned them into personal foreign bank accounts. Many debtor countries were run by autocratic rulers, who were supported by wealthy First World countries as a bulwark against popular insurgencies regarded as “communist,” and they often used borrowed funds on the military repression of their own populations. Thus, much of the money lent to ThirdWorld rulers in the 1970s and 1980s by wealthy FirstWorld states not only did not support economic development but in fact undermined it by subverting democracy. Given this history, it is plausible to argue that poor people in the global South have no responsibility to pay back money that they did not ask to borrow, from which they enjoyed no benefits, and through which they were even repressed. It is especially unreasonable to expect Southern women to be responsible for the debts because, even if they had the formal equality of the vote, they had even less input than men into taking on the loans and benefited even less from them. We have seen that women in the global South, as a group, receive less food, health care and education than men, and they benefit even less from military expenditures. Absence of democracy in global economic institutions So far I have contended that the entry of many Southern countries into the neo-liberal global economic system occurred under considerable duress and was therefore less than fully voluntary. I now wish to argue that a situation of duress continues, since these countries have little or no influence over the conduct of the global economic system, despite being bound by its rules. The political weakness of what was then called the Third World was already evident in the 1980s, when SAPs were imposed on many debtor nations. At that time, the International Monetary Fund and theWorld Bank were the main institutions governing the global economy and their policies were heavily influenced by a small group of wealthy countries. At both the World Bank and IMF, the number of votes a country receives is based on how much capital it gives the institution, so rich countries have disproportionate voting power.18 Although it is intuitively reasonable that lenders should be able to determine the conditions under which they lend their money, we have seen that much of the wealth of world’s rich countries was derived, directly or indirectly, from a long history of conquest and colonial exploitation. Since this wealth was acquired illegitimately, I suggest that those who currently claim ownership of it lack the moral right to control its disposal, much less to use it in ways that worsen the lives of those from whom it was taken. The birth of theWTO created a supranational organization whose rules, as we have seen, supersede the national laws of its members on issues of trade. Joining the WTO limits the sovereignty of member nations over an enormous range of issues, since the WTO construes trade so broadly as to include many matters of ethics and public policy. The WTO is formally democratic in that each of its 142 member countries has one representative or delegate, who participates in negotiations over trade rules, but democracy within the WTO is limited in practice in many ways. Wealthy countries have far more influence than poor ones, and numerous meetings are restricted to the G-7 group, the most powerful member countries, excluding the less powerful even when decisions directly affect them. Moreover, even though sovereign states are the only official members of the WTO, this organization’s dispute resolution system allows powerful multinational corporations to challenge trade barriers or domestic regulations, sometimes seeking to reverse decisions lost in the political arena at home. The dispute resolution system of the WTO violates most democratic notions of due process and openness. Cases are heard before a tribunal of “trade experts,” generally lawyers, who are required to make their ruling with a presumption in favor of free trade, and the burden is on governments to justify any restrictions on this. The WTO dispute resolute system permits no amicus briefs, no observers, no public record of the deliberations, and no appeals. The present organization of the global economy undermines democracy by increasing the political exclusion of the poorest and most marginalized people across the world. It especially excludes women, who are among the poorest and most marginalized of all. Even though the proportion of women representatives recently has increased in most national legislatures, except those of Eastern Europe, the significance of this gain is diminished when the authority of national legislatures is reduced. The virtual absence of women from the decision-making processes of such bodies as theWorld Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization reflects the very limited influence exercised by women at all levels of global politics. (433-6)

EXCLUSION OF WOMEN INVENTORS BY THE NARROW DEFINITION OF A PATENTABLE INVENTION Eligible Patent Matter (EPM) as a Filtering Factor Intellectual property laws provide important sources of access to concrete and intellectual assets, capital, rights and power.2 5 Recognition of the continued and increasing contribution of intellectual property to innovation is well established. Patent ownership plays an important role acting as an incentive for advancement that inevitably leads to economic growth. As such, the number of patent applications and grants has grown significantly over recent years, as has the type and breadth of inventions that can be patented.26 The laws of intellectual property make it possible for applicants and other people who have access to the patent system to benefit from basic, existential values including liberty, autonomy, and security while developing 27 and actualizing their personhood. From this point of departure, it is no wonder that the laws of property and intellectual property have served as the focal point of a philosophical-legal-social debate. However, intellectual property laws have not yet been subject to major feminist analysis. When viewed within the context of gender, the reality reveals that women scientists are less productive than men scientists. This has a significant and negative impact on women's career advancement by creating and perpetuating inequalities in the relevant fields, such as reward and cognition.

This Article emphasizes the claim that patent law does not provide protection for all products and processes equally, but only for those products or processes that the law itself defines as worthy of protection (resulting in the exclusion of women). In other words, there are built-in legal filters in patent law. One of these accepted "filters" in the field is the principle of EPM. According to this principle, a patentable invention is one that complies with certain criteria, which are established by the law. Inter alia, these include the requirement that the invention be "new and useful." 28

(Mary, Prof @ Rutgers, Policy discourse as sanctioned ignorance: theorizing the erasure of feminist knowledge Critical Policy Studies Vol. 3, Nos. 3–4, October–December 2009 )

Over the past two decades, more and more women across the global south have been recruited to the formal labor force, supplementing the work they do in the home and in the production of subsistence. Feminist scholars characterize this phenomenon as ‘the feminization of the labor force’. In export processing zones across the global south, for example, women constitute 70–90% of the factory workers producing textiles, leather goods, toys, electronic goods, and pharmaceuticals (Wichterich 2000). Export processing zones approximate a new form of ‘extra-territoriality’, existing within the borders of particular states, but exempt from taxes, tariffs, national labor laws, and environmental regulations. With official and unofficial bans against labor unions, working hours are long and working conditions are often hazardous. As transnational corporations have increasingly moved to ‘outsourcing’ labor, 200 million women are employed by subcontractors. In textile and pharmaceutical production, women employees work in their employers’ homes, garages, or workshops for very low wages. To meet production deadlines, mandatory overtime without compensation is often required. The tolls of such working conditions are manifold. Long hours at work impose strains upon family life as women workers have little time to perform the domestic chores expected of them. Some families find it difficult to withstand such strains. In Salvador, for example, 80% of the married women in textile production are living without their husbands (Wichterich 2000, Brooks 2007). Thus feminist scholars have pointed out that globalization is changing family formations: 52% of poor households are now headed by women, compared to 20% in the 1990s, and 10% in 1970s (Poster and Salime 2002, p. 211). The health effects of work in the export processing zones are also palpable. Women working in export processing zones have twice the normal rate of miscarriages and deliver twice as many underweight babies. Poor lighting, eye strain, and repetitive stress syndrome combine to impair the performance of women factory workers after a comparatively short period. The average work life for women factory workers in Thailand, for example, is five years. Job-induced problems with eye– hand coordination provide managers with a reason for firing workers. Nor is Thailand atypical. In Central America, the average woman factory worker is let go after seven years (Wichterich 2000). The ‘feminization of labor’ under globalization involves more than a shift to a majority female labor force. It also encompasses ‘informal’ and ‘flexible’ conditions of employment long associated with women workers, including part-time and temporary jobs, low wages, and no benefits. In 1975, 80% of economically active workers were eligible for unemployment compensation; in 1995 only 25% of economically active workers qualified for that benefit (Wichterich 2000). Both men and women workers have been subjected to ‘informalization’ and ‘flexibilization’ as the conditions of labor are ‘feminized’. The feminization of the labor force and feminization of the conditions of labor are also related to the kinds of work characteristic of globalization, in particular to the shift to a service economy. Although male-dominated services in finance and information technology can be highly remunerated, women-dominated services such as childcare, paraprofessional health care, retail sales, or cleaning services, tend to be paid very poorly. The vast majority of women service workers earn subsistence-level wages or less, which contributes to the feminization of poverty (Wichterich 2000). More than 70% of the poor globally are women. The economic restructuring involved in the transition to a market-based service economy has been particularly tough on women workers. In 1990, prior to the collapse of state socialism in Russia, women held 60% of the highly-skilled positions in fields such as medicine and chemistry. In the transition to a market economy, 80% of women workers lost their jobs. After a decade of severe economic dislocation, the job opportunities available for many women were far less attractive than the positions they had lost. Taking positions as hairdressers, cosmeticians, secretaries, and sex workers, many Russian women experienced a significant decline in wages. Before 1990, Russian women earned 70% of the average male wage; in 2000, they earned 40% of the average male wage (Wichterich 2000). The instensification of sex-segregation in the labor force under recent globalization has contributed to a growing wage gap between male and female workers. In Western nations women earn 10–25% less than average male earnings; in the global south, as in Russia and former Soviet states, women earn 30–60% less than the average male wage. (270-1)

(Mary, Prof @ Rutgers, Policy discourse as sanctioned ignorance: theorizing the erasure of feminist knowledge Critical Policy Studies Vol. 3, Nos. 3–4, October–December 2009 )

The feminization of poverty refers to more than the fact that 70% of the poor globally are women; the ‘poor’ are constituted as a ‘feminized’ category, as dependent, subrational, and in need of direction (Kingfisher 2002). The transnational marketization of the care economy provides that direction through ‘the return of the serving classes’ (Sassen 2002, p. 259). The increase in low-wage work globally constitutes a ‘feminization of job supply’ (Sassen 2002, p. 259), as poorly paid workers are expected to adopt the self-sacrificing demeanor of the subaltern. Informalization and casualization constitute a ‘feminization of business opportunities’ (Sassen 2002, p. 263), as microfinance subjects increasing numbers of women to the stern discipline of the market’s ‘Invisible Hand’. The World Bank (2002) promotes the ‘feminization of survival’ as the solution to the problem of global poverty, and households, communities, and governments become increasingly dependent on women for their survival as the structural forces of globalization make the possibilities of poverty alleviation increasingly remote. The logic of ‘feminization’ is complex and contradictory. Women are simultaneously hailed as resourceful providers, reliable micro-entrepreneurs, cosmopolitan citizens, and positioned as ‘disposable domestics’, the exploited global workforce, and as displaced, devalued, and disenfranchised diasporic citizens. In the early 1980s, Christine Delphy (1984) argued that what made ‘women’s work’ distinctive was not the particular tasks involved but the requirement that those tasks be done in a relation of subservience. ‘Feminization’ replicates a mandate of subservience. Regardless of the tasks involved, feminization entails a logic of menialization, requiring that tasks be performed with a measure of servility. Where patriarchy required women’s generic subservience to men, feminization renders the ‘feminized’ (men and women) subservient to market imperatives, profit maximization, and commodification. Tim Kaufman-Osborn (2005, p. 5) has suggested that ‘feminization’ is a ‘strategy of power’ involving ‘scripted practices of subordination’, which work by cutting people off from the known and reassuring, casting them into the strange, and disorienting them to foster compliance. There is much about globalization that fits this description. Transnational migrants quite literally are cut off from all that is known and familiar, cast into strange homes in strange lands. Marketization in former socialist states superimposes the strange upon the remnants of a lost way of life. Deindustrialization and flexibilization of labor in emergent service economies disorients workers who can no longer rely on longterm employment at living wages. Structural adjustment policies cut people in the global south off from livelihoods built upon subsistence agriculture and subject them to the vicissitudes of export cropping, off-shore enterprises, urban and transnational migration, and radical restructuring of family and community life. The dimensions of feminization contrast starkly with neoliberal claims concerning the beneficial effects of globalization. Rather than promoting freedom, equality, self-determination, maximization of self-interest, and individual flourishing, feminization produces marked inequalities, which workers rendered docile and subservient accept with resignation. Rather than conforming to the ‘developmental logic’ of modernization discourses (CruzMalavé and Manalansan 2002), which suggests that the market obliterates ‘traditional’ cultures and relations, and establishes liberal individual freedoms in their place, feminization restores features of oppressive feudal relations, such as indentured servitude, servile relations, political disenfranchisement, and sexual slavery. Feminization challenges the central logic and the purported benefits of globalization and raises important questions about the long term prospects of the majority of the world population, the nature of women’s waged and unwaged work, the conditions of labor within the global economy, the scope of democratic practices within neoliberalism, and gendered power relations within families, communities, nations, global institutions and transnational arenas. Given the importance of such questions for policy-makers and policy analysts, why is this knowledge so routinely erased from mainstream globalization discourses? (275-6)

A. Adapting the Critique of Rights to the International Law Framework

Any critique of rights discourse must be historicized. Rights have historically played a significant role in the eradication of legal privilege. 46  [*97]  The challenge awaiting a feminist critique is to ensure that the discourse of rights learns to walk on its own in the human rights field as applied to women. To argue that such a discourse has "run its course" is to lose sight of the relationship between rights and historical stages.

Conceiving of international legal argument as a dialogic framework 190 would create a significant methodological and substantive tool for subjecting the interaction of "sources," "process," and "substance" doctrines to substantial deviation. A dialogue that incorporates a feminist understanding of social arrangements and legal argument as part of a critique of international law and the human rights field would help to undo the repressive nature of these three doctrines and thereby enable law's transformative potential to run its course.

The patriarchal narrative which divorces the economic and social framework from the political and civil framework generates a story of "civility" and citizenship that neglects the socioeconomic structures in which women's subordination occurs. It promotes the demarcation of social into public and private spheres. It creates a coerced exile of the experiences of women in the rights framework. This narrative must  [*125]  be the subject of a reconstituted dialogue which brings to the fore the ideological nature of such constructions and which creates conditions for a reasoned construction of alternatives.

A feminist approach to human rights would incorporate a critical, political-historical assessment of both the emergence and hierarchization of human rights; it would insist upon the recognition of women's political and civil rights in order to liberate them from their social and economic subordination. In such a historicization of human rights,  [*96]  a feminist critique would demonstrate how the emergence of human rights derives legitimacy from sources and process doctrines which embrace political and moral choices played out through historically specific conceptions of justice, equality, and dignity. The critique would show how core concepts of human rights law, such as the dignity and personal integrity of human beings, have the imprint of the historical struggles of groups and individuals who bring about changes in the discursive and non-discursive conditions that ultimately realign power structures and thus generate legitimate legal rules. 43

A feminist critical historical review of those norms considered as jus cogens, for example, which achieve universal acclaim by virtue of their "protection of interests which are not limited to a particular state or group of states" but which "belong to the community as a whole," 44 must ask why women's issues do not belong to the international community and are relegated to either individual states or treaty law. A feminist critique must ask why white supremacy belongs to the "community" while male supremacy belongs to the individual state, why gender issues are deemed private within international society. 45

A feminist analysis must insert itself into the critique of the illusion of coherence projected by international law. By dissecting the structure of international legal argument and exposing its artifactual nature, a feminist critique can reveal how such construction serves to perpetuate the alienation of women within international law. By attacking the doctrinal framework, a feminist critique shows how the interplay of sources and process doctrines keeps women outside the boundaries of the international legal argumentative framework.

Through abstraction, hyperbole, and argumentative equivocation, 38 process doctrines, which delimit actors and their jurisdiction, assert independence from sources and substantive standards of behavior. The two most significant areas of process doctrines, participation 39 and jurisdiction, 40 establish and limit sovereign identity without reference to sources or substance. Participation doctrines, which establish sovereignty, must do so without reference to the substance of law. Sovereignty relies on facts and practices, not on the consensual basis of legal sources. In limiting sovereign authority, jurisdiction doctrines must remain procedural, also without reference to substantive law.  [*95]  Jurisdiction doctrines are "the ground, the basis, the preexisting supposition of sovereign autonomy;" delimitations of sovereign authority must not abridge the sovereign's ability to act. 41

Ideally, of course, friendship as a private relationship would be protected by a republican government within a Kantian ethical framework. But the rules of friendship, as such, derive almost exclusively from the experiences of the friends themselves choosing playmates and companions, and maintaining those relationships in all their particularities.25 I turn in the following section to an alternative ethical framework that promises to incorporate the context and idiosyncrasies of international relationships—in particular, friendship —necessary for peace.26 AN ALTERNATIVE, FEMINIST ETHIC OF CARE Considering the importance of international relationships to peace, an ethic of care provides a fitting alternative to the prevailing Kantian, rights-based ethical foundation for the democratic peace phenomenon. Most significantly, an ethic of care “begins from a different understanding of human nature and human interaction. Rather than seeing people as rational actors pursuing their own goals and maximizing their interests, we must instead see people as constantly enmeshed in relationships of care.” It follows that the political behavior of individuals must reflect not only their self-interests, but also the particular “constellation of caring relationships” in which they find themselves, and the institutions that define and sustain those relationships.27 This moral voice is rooted in Carol Gilligan’s claim that women tend to express an ethic that emphasizes relationships and responsibilities, as opposed to rules and rights. Gilligan argues that the process by which an individual develops a method of moral reasoning governed by “self-legislated and self-imposed universal principles such as those of justice, reciprocity and respect” is gendered. More specifically, the way in which women make moral choices differs from Kohlberg’s process because they see themselves less as autonomous individuals than as interdependent human beings.28 Gilligan accounts for this difference in terms of Chodorow’s argument that a young girl’s natural connection to her mother is the source of the relatedness that would prepare her for the traditional work of caring for a home and family; a young boy’s need to separate from his mother and identify instead with his father is likewise the source of his inability to relate deeply to others and cor responding readiness for work in the public sphere.29 Gilligan concludes on It also notably distinguishes care epistemologically from a rights-based

perspective. Care as a foundation for moral choice is obviously grounded in experience rather than pure reason as a source of knowing or validating behavior. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of motherhood.30 Motherhood—anexperience that is, of course, unique to women—remains a distinguishing relationship for the care ethic, broadly understood. The actual physical experience of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood reshapes a woman’s moral identity: “pregnancy is not something that just happens to women. . . from the moment a women learns she is pregnant . . . [her] responsibilities are mediated by this unique bodily perspective.”31 The portent of such a fundamental change in moral consciousness lies in questions of how wemight generalize the virtues of motherhood, “the caring, nurture ing, feeling, intuiting, empathizing, and relating.”32 One possibility lies in the introduction of “maternal thinking,” which emphasizes the responsibilities that mothers share in preserving the lives of their children; fostering their physical, intellectual, and psychological growth; and training them in citizenship into a nation’s policy-making process. Despite the potential par adox inherent in the coupling of “preserving life” and “citizenship training,” which can include military service, Ruddick argues that the logic of this kind of thinking is pacifist.33 That women, because they exclusively are able to bear children, reason ably possess a distinct perspective on moral life should not be surprising. It is increasingly clear, however, that the experiences of establishing and main taining caring relationships in general are not limited to women. Although only women are able to bear children, young people, grandparents, society’s economically disadvantaged and disenfranchised members, and others in positions of submission and servility are particularly likely to reason in terms of their personal experiences and relationships. Working-class people and parents, for instance, often provide “feminine,” or particular, nonutilitarian justifications for their moral choices. More specifically, recent studies suggest that members of such groups as well as women “seemed to think it obvious that compromise and accommodation were good things, at least in cases of conflict.”34 That pacifism is thus the logical conclusion of moral reasoning is critical to the argument at hand because it supports a care-based alternative to “perpetual peace.” More specifically, the practices of “caring about,” “taking care of,” “care-giving,” and “receiving care” are not merely important considerations once constitutionally guaranteed rights have set some “moral minimum”asthe criterion of ethical behavior, but rather establish “the wider moral framework. . . .”35 Thus, I argue below that the roots of international peace are planted firmly at “home” in the incorporation of what has been considered private morality into the domestic politics of care.