Fixation on specific policy choices is epistemologically debilitating-only system wide analysis can uncover gender binaries that contribute to conflict

(Marysia, Well, What is the feminist Perspective on Bosnia?, International Affairs Vol 71 No 2, April)

The question in the title is one that feminist scholars working within international relations have been asked many times. The specific issue changes- it might be the Gulf War, or Somalia, or the Cuban missile crisis-but the enquiry is essentially the same. Probably the main reasons for the frequency of such questioning are the explosion of feminist work in the subject, and the fact that feminist theory has only recently infiltrated the academic discipline of international relations. Courses on gender/women/feminism and/in inter- national relations are proliferating in the United Kingdom, North America, Europe and Australia; PhDs on relevant topics are in progress; and many books, chapters and articles are being published. One might venture three possible reasons for these changes which have occurred in the last decade or so: more women students and teachers within the discipline; the desire to find more fruitful tools of analysis given the 'failure' of academic international relations largely to imagine, let alone predict, major changes in the international sphere such as the demise of the Soviet bloc, the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and the signing of the Arab-Israeli peace accord; and the breaking down of rigid disciplinary boundaries which has meant that international relations has been belatedly influenced by developments in subjects such as philosophy, politics and sociology. These changes, events and intrusions, it is argued, have led to a critical assault on the discipline, usually referred to as the 'third debate', whereby international relations as a discipline is accused of being reactionary, theoreticaliy naive, male-biased, gender-insensitive and generally ill-equipped even to start thinking about the problems of contemporary world politics in any more than a superficial way. These criticisms have come mainly from three broad groups: feminist theorists, critical theorists and post-modernists. My concern in this article is with one of these, namely feminist scholarship in international relations. I will start by looking briefly at a key feminist concept-gender. (339-40)

(continued)

Scholars in international relations are concerned to understand more about how the world works. As we approach the twenty-first century this will have to mean more than just ‘telling stories like we’ve told them before’ ; doing the latter merely recycles old answers. This in turn means that those professing to be part of the theory and practice of international relations will have to resist attempts to ‘patrol the intellectual borders which frame the study of world politics’63 and begin to question their own constructions of disciplinary authority and sovereignty. But what does this mean for the practitioners of international relations? There are two answers: one easy, the other more difficult. The relatively easy answer is that, empirically, more attention could be directed to those marginalized groups in world politics, rather than just assuming that those at the centre are there ‘naturally’ . Women are one such ignored group. But this relatively easy answer leads on to a more difficult one—a move towards intellectual eclecticism—without which scholars and policy-makers will find it difficult to develop more innovative analyses of world politics. At the start of this article I mentioned that a frequent question asked of feminist scholars is on the lines of: ‘Well, what is the feminist perspective on Bosnia?’ As I have just noted, there is an easy and a difficult answer to such a question. The easy, but no less important, answer is to look at what is happening to women in Bosnia. No one can deny that women suffer in gender specific ways in wartime, although this is often represented as simply a nasty side-effect. But this, at first sight easy, answer feeds immediately into the difficult one. Let me give one example from Bosnia. When we start to take seriously the experiences of women in the light of the work that has been done on gender, scholars and practitioners of international politics might consider the gravity of Christine Chinkin’s claim that the ‘rape of women during war is a deliberate instrument of warfare and a consequence of male power and masculine privilege ... the widespread coverage of the rape of Bosnian women by Serbian soldiers risked presenting it as “ something exceptional” . The reality is that rape and abuse of women in armed conflict has a long history.’64 Professor Chinkin cited attacks on women in Kuwait, Somalia, Peru, Liberia, Burma and Japan, claiming that in Burma rape is explicitly used as a routine punishment— a means of demonstrating who the master is. The reifications of gender are manifestly seriously implicated here. But we might also consider how notions of female identity are being used by, for example, women in Serbia who have formed a Women’s Party which intentionally transgresses ethnic boundaries by calling out to all women in former Yugoslavia, and also by women in cross-community work in Northern Ireland.65 In this case, as after the First World War, female solidarity is being used to insist on peace. Feminists’ exposure of the double illusion of the ‘naturalness’ of gender differences and the apolitical nature of the private sphere has opened up a great swathe of possibilities for increased understanding of world politics; the asking of new questions allows the telling of new stories. Thus, when faced with the compensation claims by Filipino prostitutes within the framework of human rights abuses for contracting sexual diseases when servicing US army bases, let us not simply and easily assume that their diseases are merely the inevitable consequence of (‘natural’) female economic vulnerability and (‘natural’) male heterosexual desire. We have to work harder than that. We should instead begin the difficult process of tracing the complex network of gendered meanings, myths and ideologies which, in part, have created a world population of women who have limited access to financial independence; a sexualized construction of ‘exotic, pliant, ready to please Asian/Oriental’ women; and the heterosexualized construction of a ‘manly’ soldier whose sexual needs are an integral part of military policy. Changing the empirical focus draws us into the epistemological realm and can—if there is a commitment to intellectual openness—make us start questioning how beliefs and myths about gender play an important part in creating, maintaining and ending wars, including that in Bosnia. (354-6)