Gender, Feminism, and War Theorizing

So the potential for feminist war theorizing seems grim, and fraught with tension. Carol Cohn (2011) made a distinction in the term “feminist security studies” – where she commented that work in that field looks different if depending on which two words you group. In Cohn’s (2011) view, feminist “security studies” represents a feminist approach to the traditional subject matter and practice of the scholarship of Security Studies, while “feminist security” studies represents an approach that puts feminist analysis of security first. This chapter explores feminist war theorizing from both sides. It begins with feminist ‘takes’ on traditional war theorizing. A second subsection considers what might look different about war theorizing that puts feminism first. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the history and trajectory of feminist war theorizing.