An Introduction to Feminist Security Studies

Abstract

International Security and Gender. By Nicole Detraz. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012. 255 pp., $22.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-745-65117-0). Nicole Detraz provides an impressive and accessible introduction to the vibrant and wide-ranging body of International Relations (IR) research now commonly referred to as “feminist security studies” (Sjoberg 2010; Wibben 2011). Addressing itself primarily to advanced undergraduates and graduate students, International Security and Gender adroitly guides the reader through feminist analyses of militarization and militarism, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, terrorism, human security, and environmental security. Surveying foundational texts, recent contributions, and emerging research areas, Detraz presents a strong case for the adoption of “gender lenses” to facilitate much-needed reevaluations of the assumptions that undergird security scholarship. Although issues related to the subordination of women are central to this work, Detraz specifies that her subject is not “women and security,” much less “women in need of security,” but rather “gendered understandings of security” (p. 12). This distinction—pithily captured in the title of Terrell Carver's 1996 book Gender Is Not a Synonym for Women— reflects the work's explicitly feminist theoretical orientation. That is, by defining gender as “a set of socially constructed expectations about what men and women ought to be” (p. 5), Detraz distinguishes her project from nonfeminist security-studies research that treats gender as an unproblematic and dichotomous variable—the “add gender and stir” approach previously criticized by feminist IR scholars (Peterson 1992; Carver 2003; Sjoberg 2006). She rejects, in other words, efforts that merely “bring women into an analysis, which can isolate …