Current data analysis utilizes sex as a static identity category- overemphasis on material obscures cultural relations of power

(Laura, The Numbers Do(n’t) Always Add Up: Dilemmas in Using Quantitative Research Methods in Feminist IR Scholarship Politics & Gender 5(3) 2009 )

In this sense, sex is an empirical category and gender is an analytical one, because as Jackson (2002, 499) notes, sex disaggregation of statistics in itself does not amount to gender analysis or, I would add, feminist analysis. However, as Helen Kinsella (2003, 296) argues, to identify sex as an empirical category is deeply problematic because it presumes the naturalization of the biological sex binary and obscures how the categorization of sex (as well as gender) is politically produced and regulated. One way to respond to Kinsella’s position would be to reject the use of sex disaggregated data (and associated quantitative models) altogether. Another way to look at this position is that it also allows for interrogation of the process of data construction, collection, and analysis that is not informed by feminist IR (and other feminist) theorizing. It is this tension raised by feminist IR scholars that enables me to conclude that due to the parameters of such data, my findings do not shed much light on how globalization, economic development, and democratization help shape and sustain gender ideologies that serve to oppress all those identified with the feminine, whether they be women or men. I concur with V. Eudine Barriteau (2006), who argues that much of the sex disaggregated data, gender indexes, and models place too much emphasis on the material relations of power to the exclusion of the social and ideological relations of power. In this sense, there is indeed a formidable disjuncture between IR feminist theorizing and the currently available data. Despite this problem, we can use feminist IR analysis to explain why this is so and to frame interpretation of statistical findings. (416)