Feminist International Relations

Abstract

This chapter opens by problematising the ordering of the three words – ‘Feminist International Relations’ – given this can present feminism as an ‘add on’, or adjunct, an afterthought: a thing added to something else. This is arguably how feminist IR has typically been represented in the discipline of International Relations (IR); that is, as a contribution to an existing field of study (IR), where the latter is usually self-representing as the discipline primarily responsible for the study of international politics. In this chapter, we present ‘feminist IR’ as ‘simply’ IR, the study or enquiry into matters of international or global politics. Crucially, however, feminist-inspired questions are placed, always, at the centre of our investigations. In this mode, the chapter explores feminist-inspired questions such as the ‘where are the women?’ and ‘what work is masculinity doing in global politics?’, with specific attention to the global Covid-19 pandemic, and the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2021. Importantly, we also probe and push at the primacy of gender as an analytic category in feminist IR scholarship. We do so as a critical reminder to ourselves and those reading this chapter to treat feminism as a living, breathing project that necessarily stays on the move to remain vital to making sense of global politics in its messy complexities and lived realities.