Gender and World Politics

These are the sort of questions that scholars and activists interested in gender and global politics ask. Feminist scholars look at what happens to women in global politics and why. They also recognize that a feminist perspective would change theoretical approaches to global politics, which have tended to ignore women and gender. They argue that gender analysis of the global political arena is necessary to understand why and how women are seen, and treated, differently. Using gender analysis, international relations (IR) feminists have interrogated key concepts in the study of global politics, like sovereignty, the state and security, critically engaging inherited notions about what matters in global politics and how global politics works. This chapter begins with a discussion of the meaning of gender and moves to discussing the relevance of gender to the study of world politics. It then explores the inclusion of the concept of gender generally and in the discipline of international relations specifically, thereby presenting different theoretical approaches of feminist IR. After laying that groundwork, the chapter briefly discusses future possibilities for research in the field of gender and IR.