Gender constitutes and shapes all conflict –feminist theorizing key to make sense of war

Gender and war(s) Feminist theorists have also suggested that sex and gender are key to theorizing war. Some scholars have shown sex to be a key variable in war(s) by linking sex equality within states and states’ tendency to make war(s) (e.g. Den Boer and Hudson 2002; Caprioli 2004; Hudson et al. 2009). Using statistical evidence, Hudson et al. made the state-level (or ‘second image’) argument that ‘the treatment of females within society’ is a ‘fundamental and powerful factor’ in explaining when wars occur (2009, 7). While this work using gender as variable is interesting, using gender subordination as an analytical concept through which to understand inter- national conflict provides more leverage to analyze the gendered nature of states, militarism, and war.10 This perspective is the foundation for an emerging subfield of Feminist Security Studies that argues that security can be understood as constituted by gender, war seen as caused by gender hierarchy, and wars considered gendered competitions (Sjoberg 2009a; Sylvester 2010; Wibben 2011). Feminist scholarship has explicitly linked war and gender subordination in a number of different ways: conceiving of global politics as a ‘war system’ where sexism, human subordination, and violence are linked (Reardon 1985); noting that war often victimizes women (Stiehm 1983); pointing out the co-constitution of gender, nationalism, and conflict (Yuval-Davis 1997); linking gender and militarism (Enloe 1989), and understanding the enterprise of war as fundamentally gendered (Tickner 1992).11 This article argues that feminist theorizing of war and feminist structural theorizing can be productively linked.