Feminist Perspectives on International Relations

In order to introduce the intellectual foundations of IR feminist perspectives, we begin this chapter with a brief discussion of feminist theory and the meaning of gender. We then provide a brief history of the development of feminist research in the discipline, followed by an overview of feminist ideas about epistemology and methodology for studying global politics. We then outline some of the questions that IR feminists ask in their research, questions that often expand the traditional boundaries of the discipline. In order to illustrate how feminists are going about answering the questions they pose, we conclude by focusing on security and the global economy, two issue areas with which recent feminist research has been centrally concerned and which are also important to international policy concerns.