Conclusion: Feminist Futures

The chapters in this book have attempted to reflect on, and provide some answers to, some of these questions both in the text and in the oral conversations at the conference. Drawing on these written and oral conversations, this conclusion will elaborate on some of these questions and suggest some useful directions that feminist IR might take in the future to help answer these questions; of course we realize that this book is only a small part of an ongoing conversation about a wide variety of richly nuanced feminist research programs. As we noted in the introduction, looking forward to the future of feminist theorizing about global politics is both complex and exciting; it is taking place in multiple locations and disciplines. The complexity comes from combining the elements of challenge and aspiration – the challenge to deal with the “hard questions” for gender theorizing and an aspiration to do so in a way that makes feminist IR the best it can be, theoretically and empirically.