Control + 1 – Block Headings

War is not natural or inevitable – gender is critical to reproducing identities that enable war

Jan Jindy Pettman, Director of Centre for Women’s Studies at Australian National University, Spring 2004, pg. 92

9/11 and its aftermath did not silence feminists or transnational women's analysis and action for a more peaceful world. Feminists do have important things to say about these post-Cold War times. Their critiques reveal that war is not natural or inevitably a part of interstate relations - it has to be made afresh each time. Nor are the international and national identities whose boundaries mark the killing lines natural or inevitable. And gender plays a constitutive part in the making and reproduction of identities and war. This analysis does not stop at deconstruction or at clearing space for new thinking and action. There are many feminist lessons, strategies, and understandings developed in war and conflict fields that offer alternative courses of action. These ideas have been tested in severe conditions of organized violence, identity difference, and hurt. Why then is feminism so fiercely resisted, both within IR and at times of national and international crisis and violence?
AT: Alternative Can’t Solve War
Making women’s experiences visible is our only hope for peace and justice

J. Ann Tickner, Prof of IR at USC, M.A. Yale and Ph.D Brandeis, ’92, “Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving International Security,” xi-x

Rather than discussing strategies for bringing more women into the international relations discipline as it is conventionally defined, I shall seek answers to my questions by bringing to light what I believe to be the masculinist underpinnings of the field. I shall also examine what the discipline might look like if the central realities of women's day-to-day lives were included in its subject matter. Making women's experiences visible allows us to see how gender relations have contributed to the way in which the field of international relations is conventionally constructed and to reexamine the traditional boundaries of the field. Drawing attention to gender hierarchies that privilege men's knowledge and men's experiences permits us to see that it is these experiences that have formed the basis of most of our knowledge about international politics. It is doubtful whether we can achieve a more peaceful and just world, a goal of many scholars both women and men who write about international politics, while these gender hierarchies remain in place. Although this book is an attempt to make the discipline of international relations more relevant to women's lives, I am not writing it only for women; I hope that its audience will include both women and men who are seeking a more inclusive approach to the way we think about international politics. Women have spoken and written on the margins of international relations because it is to the margins that their experiences have been relegated. Not until international politics is an arena that values the lived experiences of us all can we truly envisage a more comprehensive and egalitarian approach that, it is to be hoped, could lead to a more peaceful world. Because gender hierarchies have contributed to the perpetuation of global insecurities, all those concerned with international affairs-- men and women alike-- should also be concerned with understanding and overcoming their effects.
Any discussion of peace that excludes the feminist discourse is invalid; it must be expanded, updated, and reconceived to obtain legitimacy.

Karen J. Warren, Duane L. Cady, Professors at Macalester and Hamline, Spring 1994, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810167?cookieSet=1

In this paper we have offered six sorts of women-peace connections provided by feminism and ecofeminism which suggest where and how women fit into discussions of peace. We suggested that if one takes feminism seriously, many current discussions of peace and war must be updated, expanded, and reconceived. They must be "updated" because feminist literature which points to women-nature-peace connections is currently available and, as such, needs to be addressed by any informed philosophical perspective. They must be "expanded" because the omission of such discussions will result in inadequate, because exclusionary, accounts of peace. And they must be "reconceived" because, once one looks at peace and war through a feminist lens, one sees things differently: Never again does one have the privilege or luxury of talking about nationalism, and regional conflict, militarism, war, and violence, as if women and nature didn't matter. They do. That's what is shown when one takes feminism and peace connections seriously.
Traditional studies ignore gender hierarchies – hurts security

J. Ann Tickner (professor of international relations at USC) 2001, Gendering World Politics. Pp. 5.

The second goal is to demonstrate what feminist approaches to IR are contributing and can contribute to our understanding of global politics. While not suggesting that they can tell us everything we need to know about world politics, feminists are challenging us to see the inequality and domination aspects of "common sense" gender differences. For example uncovering previously hidden gender hierarchies in policy priorities or workplace participation can show how they contribute to conflict and injustice in ways that have detrimental effects on the security of both men and women. Much of feminist analysis draws upon and intersects with that of scholars who would not consider themselves part of the discipline of IR; this suggests that feminists are charting their own voyages of discovery rather than staying within the confines of the discipline. Debates as to how connected feminism should be to the discipline are central to feminist discussions.
AT: Alternative Can’t Solve War
Feminist criticism of IR leads to a more peaceful world

J. Ann Tickner (professor of international relations at USC) 2001, Gendering World Politics. Pp. 146-147.

IR feminists will continue to challenge disciplinary boundaries and methods that, they believe, impose limitations on the kinds of questions that can be asked and the ways in which they can be answered. For this reason, their work often seems disconnected from a discipline, centered in political science, that can appear as inhospitable terrain for gender analysis. A world of states situated in an anarchical international system leaves little room for analyses of social relations, including gender relations. Consequently, as this chapter has shown, feminists have gone outside political science and drawn upon methods, such as ethnography and discourse analysis, more prevalent in sociology and anthropology. Coming out of a long tradition of cross-disciplinary feminist theory, IR feminists are, therefore, building transdisciplinary knowledge rather than knowledge based in political science; they are beginning to establish their own research agendas, albeit using different methodologies to do so. Listening to voices not previously recognized in the discipline has allowed IR feminists to see different worlds, ask new questions, and begin to build the kind of practical knowledge necessary to construct more democratic theories and practices. However, these transdisciplinary excursions and methodological innovations have consequences. Power differences between conventional and critical approaches that often play out by drawing disciplinary boundaries around subject matter and methods will continue to render judgment of feminist approaches as less than adequate, and frustration with strategies of cooptation or attempted exclusion will persist. Nevertheless, as they set out on their own journeys through world politics, I believe that it is important that IR feminists stay connected to the IR discipline, particularly at a time when other critical voices are raising similar challenges. Critical questioning of the founding assumptions of IR and the investigation of issues such as human security, human rights, democratic participation, and economic justice are crucial if IR is to contribute to building a more peaceful and just world, a goal that has motivated the discipline since its founding.
Research proves feminist approaches are less likely to produce violence

Mary Caprioli, prof @ UMass-Dartmouth, and Mark A. Boyer, prof @ UConnecticut, August 2001, Gender, Violence, and International Crisis, p. 504

At the outset of our discussion, it is important to note the great diversity in what political scientists often aggregate under the heading of feminist theory. Accordingly, we acknowledge that we examine only a small subset of feminist literature and use feminist theory as a general term while still recognizing the varying feminist perspectives and the dialogue between feminist theorists within and across disciplines. In the theoretical and conceptual discussion that follows, we build on scholarship from feminist anthropology, business, communications science, political science, and psychology to understand better how the diversity of feminist approaches can inform our understanding of international crisis behavior. In spite of this diversity within feminist literature, it is possible to identify a variety of themes that suggest differences in how women and men conceptualize peace and security. A significant amount of scholarship has shown, for instance, that women are more peaceful than men and less likely to support the use of international violence (de Boer 1985; Fite, Genest, and Wilcox 1990; Frankovic 1982; McGlen and Sarkees 1993; Mueller 1973, 1994; Shapiro and Mahajan 1986; Smith 1984; Togeby 1994; Tessler and Warriner 1997; Conover and Sapiro 1993).' Other studies suggest that women are more likely to use a collective or consensual approach to problem solving and conflict resolution than an approach that focuses on the unilateral imposition of solutions (Gidengil 1995; Welch and Hibbing 1992; Miller 1988; White 1988; Rosenthal 1998). Ample work also exists within the feminist literature to provide expectations that women will behave differently than men regarding the sanctioning of a state's use of violence as a means of conflict resolution (Fite, Genest, and Wilcox 1990; Gallagher 1993; Mueller 1973, 1989, 1994; Welch and Thomas 1988; Wilcox, Hewitt, and Allsop 1996). These gender-based value differences to international relations and foreign policy find their genesis in contrasting values and conceptions of politics and security, language, and power.
AT: Alternative Can’t Solve War
Science indicates that societies that emphasize gender equality take on more peaceful views of conflict resolution in diplomacy.

Mary Caprioli, prof @ UMass-Dartmouth, and Mark A. Boyer, prof @ UConnecticut, August 2001, Gender, Violence, and International Crisis, p. 509 - 510

Although research exists that has identified a gender gap in support of the use of international violence as discussed above, Tickner (1992, 138-39) argued that the gender gap and the inherent masculinity of international relations is at least partly a function of defining citizenship along the lines of "warrior patriot." Therefore, if citizenship were reoriented toward a conception of "citizen defender," we could begin to view international relations through a more gender-neutral lens. Indeed, a more pacific view of conflict resolution has been linked to gender-neutral value systems during interstate disputes (Caprioli 2000; Tessler and Warriner 1997). Furthermore, Tessler and Warriner (1997) argued that no evidence exists that women are by nature less militaristic than men or more oriented toward diplomacy and compromise in their judgments about security. They did find, however, that those who are more supportive of equality between women and men are also more favorably disposed toward diplomacy and compromise. A norm of equality among individuals, therefore, translates into equality and more restrained treatment for other political communities and countries (Caprioli 2000). This suggests that the relationship between more pacific attitudes and international conflict rests on the degree of gender equality that characterizes a society. Those who express greater concern for the status and role of women, particularly for equality between women and men, are more likely than other individuals to believe that the international disputes in which their country is involved should be resolved through diplomacy and compromise.3 We would, therefore, expect states that exhibit higher levels of gender equality to be less likely to use violence to resolve crises than those with less egalitarian societies.

Some scholars argue that a conception of power as domination and control is used as the rationale for female subjugation, thus leading to greater societal violence. Iannello (1992, 43) argued that power should be conceptualized as a divisible, infinite resource and the ability to reach goals. Values that emphasize equality and interdependence, therefore, would translate into an understanding of power as an infinite resource and would lead to unique conceptions of politics and security that are not necessarily the same concepts widely accepted in the international political system today. These values of equality and interdependence are not necessarily unique to women. Indeed, we use the term feminist to represent those people, both men and women, who are not hampered by socially constructed gender values and subscribe to values of equality and interdependence. Theoretically, gender-neutral societies would free both men and women from social constraints of the "male" and the "female," and each gender would represent a continuum of values on which the more pacific of both genders were those who subscribe to feminist and gender-equality values. The feminist view of politics and security rejects the Hobbesian description of the state of nature, wherein distrust and fear are presumed to be the dominant emotions and forces for political action. Feminism concerns itself with a "common security to envisage a type of security that is global and multidimensional with political, economic, and ecological facets that are as important as its military dimensions" (Tickner 1992, 22). According to Tickner (1992), feminism, in opposition to realism, defines security as the elimination of routine violence and unjust social relations, highlights the importance of cooperation and interdependence, and stresses social concerns over military prowess. For example, delegates at the 1985 Women's International Peace Conference "agreed that security meant nothing if it was built on others' insecurity" (Tickner 1992, 54-55). Feminism also involves a commitment to freedom, equality, and self-government (Dietz 1985) and rejects hierarchical domination, the use of military force, and other forms of exploitation (Brock-Utne 1985). Competition, violence, intransigence, and territoriality are all associated with a male approach to international relations. According to this literature, feminists would be less likely to see crisis negotiation as a competition and also less likely to advocate the use of violence as a solution, which would be focused on conceptions of common security and lasting peace. As this review of feminist writings suggests, although some research exists concerning the impact of gender- neutral value systems on international behavior, there is little empirical work in the international relations field that has attempted to examine the impact of gender-neutral value systems on crisis behavior.
AT: Alternative Can’t Solve War
Gender equality directly decreases the severity of violence used in international crises.

Mary Caprioli, prof @ UMass-Dartmouth, and Mark A. Boyer, prof @ UConnecticut, August 2001, Gender, Violence, and International Crisis, p. 515-516

States that are characterized by higher levels of gender equality use lower levels of violence during crises than those with lower levels of gender equality. This finding supports and extends the existing literature that tests similar hypotheses concerning the international behavior of states during international disputes. Our data highlight the impact of domestic gender equality on the level of violence employed by a state in an international crisis. Although the most powerful causal factors are embedded in the action-reaction processes that characterize crises in international affairs and in the val- ues threatened during the high-stakes environment of international crises, the severity of violence in crises does decrease as domestic gender equality increases. Our research thus adds to the growing body of literature that identifies the myriad of domestic influences on international behavior. In particular, our results have direct implications for understanding the impact of domestic sociopolitical gender equality and how that might translate into international policy decision outputs. The robustness of the gender equality findings is also noteworthy when accounting for the fact that crisis by its very nature places leaders in one of the most heated decision-making environments possible. In other words, even in an environment that exhibits a high propensity toward violence, higher levels of gender equity decrease the tendency toward violence. These results may be even more robust after examining data over a time period long enough for societal values to become truly gender neutral, as the percentage of women in parliament for any state remains small in almost all instances. Given the continuing gains made by women worldwide, it is possible that greater percentages of women in the legislature could produce even more striking results in years to come.

Our focus on gender equality represents a domestic norm of tolerance and equality that seems to be mirrored in states' international behavior at least with respect to the level of violence used during international crises. This strengthens the argument made by Caprioli (2000) regarding the association of gender equality and level of violence used during militarized interstate disputes.
Domestic violence makes international violence inevitable

J. Ann Tickner, Prof of IR at USC, M.A. Yale and Ph.D Brandeis, ’92, “Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving International Security,” 58

Maria Mies argues that this line, which demarcates public and private, separates state-regulated violence, the rule of right for which there are legally sanctioned punishments, and male violence, the rule of might for which, in many societies, no such legal sanctions exist. The rule of might and the rule of right are descriptions that have also been used in international relations discourse to distinguish the international and domestic spheres. By drawing our attention to the frequently forgotten realm of family violence that is often beyond the reach of the law, these feminists point to the interrelationship of violence and oppression across all levels of analysis. Feminist perspectives on security would assume that violence, whether it be in the international, national, or family realm, is interconnected.76 Family violence must be seen in the context of wider power relations; it occurs within a gendered society in which male power dominates at all levels.77 If men are traditionally seen as protectors, an important aspect of this role is protecting women against certain men.78 Any feminist definition of security must therefore include the elimination of all types of violence, including violence produced by gender relations of domination and subordination. The achievement of this comprehensive vision of security requires a rethinking of the way in which citizenship has traditionally been defined, as well as alternative models for describing the behavior of states in the international system.

AT: Alternative Causes Insecurity
Feminism enables a multidimensional approach to security

J. Ann Tickner (professor of international relations at USC) 2001, Gendering World Politics. Pp. 48.

Most feminist scholarship on security also employs a different ontology and epistemology from conventional security studies. Reluctant to be associated with either side of the realist/idealist debate, for reasons outlined in chapter 1, and generally skeptical of rationalist, scientific claims to universality and objectivity, most feminist scholarship on security is compatible with the critical side of the third debate. Questioning the role of states as adequate security providers, many feminists have adopted a multidimensional, multilevel approach, similar to some of the efforts to broaden the definition of security described above. Feminists' commitment to the emancipatory goal of ending women's subordination is consistent with a broad definition of security that takes the individual, situated in broader social structures, as its starting point. Feminists seek to understand how the security of individuals and groups is compromised by violence, both physical and structural, at all levels.
AT: Alternative Causes Insecurity
The conception of “National Security” founded upon existing institutions guarantees it remains a fantasy- the kritik opens up the option of true security for all

Adam Jones, political scientist at University of British Columbia, 1996 (“Does Gender Make the World go round?” Review of international studies vol 22, number 4, JSTOR)

The spirited discussion in feminist literature of 'national security' draws its inspiration from the debate in peace studies and dependency literature over peace, war, and violence. The dependista formulation of 'structural' violence24 has profoundly influenced the feminist claim that special, gender-specific states of insecurity exist even-or especially?- in states that are 'secure' by Realist standards. A forceful treatment of this theme is Peterson's.25 Recapping some statistics of female victimization the world over, Peterson presents the now familiar motif of a global, male-initiated 'war against women'. However 'secure' it might be in the international sphere, the state is complicit in the global phenomenon of violence against women, acting directly 'through its selective sanctioning of non-state violence' and indirectly 'through its promotion of masculinist, heterosexist, and classist ideologies'. In the face of women's 'systemic insecurity', Peterson contends that '"national security" is particularly and profoundly contradictory for women'. She adds: "Radically rethinking security" is one consequence of taking feminism seriously: this entails asking what security can mean in the context of interlocking systems of hierarchy and domination and how gendered identities and ideologies (re)produce these structural insecurities.26 And Tickner notes that 'thinking of security in multidimensional terms allows us to get away from [Realists'] prioritizing [of] military issues, issues that have been central to the agenda of traditional international relations but that are the furthest removed from women's experiences'.27 If the idea of national security is compromised by the unjust structures it acts to buttress, so too is the entire range of classical conceptions of power. When feminists analyze these conceptions, their argument generally takes one of two forms. They may seek to illuminate the power relationships that standard commentary has overlooked; or they may propose a radical redefinition of what actually constitutes 'power'. The former approach is straightforward. With its close link to the binary demarcation of public and private spheres that feminists have long assailed, it represents one of the more intuitively valid feminist assertions. The argument runs as follows: a focus on power exchanges among unitary states, or among elite men in the public sphere, misses a wide range of power relationships that discriminate against women. But while classical theories have devoted extensive attention to power, and down played the role of ideological or cultural factors, they have under-estimated the amount and varieties of power at work. It has taken power to deprive women of land titles and leave them little choice but to sexually service soldiers and banana workers. It has taken power to keep women out of their countries' diplomatic corps and out of the upper reaches of the World Bank. It has taken power to keep questions of inequity between local men and women off the agendas of many nationalist movements in industrialized as well as agrarian societies. It has taken power to construct popular culture? films, advertisements, books, fairs, fashion-which reinforces, not subverts, global hierarchies.28 Interestingly, this framework has also been used to examine power relations among women themselves. Some attention has been devoted to women who hold gender-structured positions of power-for example, as employers of domestic servants.29 Feminists have pointed out the 'very real power relations that exist among women, which determine how much money and time women can contribute to movement politics (and movement theorizing)'.30 Opposition has been voiced to Western feminists' eagerness to address a plight that is not directly theirs: that of their 'underprivileged' sisters in the Third World. These rifts and dissensions can only grow in the foreseeable future, as the surface ideological solidarities that tend to prevail early in the life of progressive movements are undercut by differences latent or emergent within them. The second type of feminist project-the attempt to radically redefine power-is more complex, and to my mind a good deal more problematic. For one thing, the effort is more prescriptive than descriptive. It seeks to delineate how power should be viewed, rather than how power considerations (as ordinarily understood) apply in spheres where their operation has often gone unnoticed. The attempt to redefine power is usually associated with feminism's essentialist wing, which isolates supposed differences in the way women versus men employ power. Women are said to act in a 'shared rather than assertive' manner.31 Feminist attempts to conceptualize power as mutual enablement rather than domination' seek to strip power of its coercive dimension, as a means of 'feminizing' both the domestic and inter national environment. This is the distinction drawn by Marilyn French {Beyond Power), who argued for a separation of 'power-over' from 'power-to'. In Rosemarie Tong's summary, 'Whereas power-to is constructive, power-over is destructive. Power-to seeks to create and to further pleasure for everyone; power-over seeks to destroy and spread pain.'32