Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations – serie

NGOs headquartered in the North have been, for some time, prominent actors in attempts to address the poverty, lack of political representation, and labor exploitation that disproportionally affect women from the global South. Feminist NGOs and NGOs focusing on women's rights have been successful in attracting attention to their causes, but critics argue that the highly educated elites from the global North and South who run them fail to effectively question the power hierarchies in which they operate. In order to give depth to these criticisms, Sara de Jong interviewed women NGO workers in seven different European countries about their experiences and perspectives on working on gendered issues affecting women in the global South as well as migrant women in the global North. Complicit Sisters untangles and analyzes the complex tensions women NGO workers face and explores the ways in which they negotiate potential complicities in their work. Unlike other studies looking at development workers "on the ground," this book examines the women NGO workers in the global North who work to influence high level gender advocacy and policy, alongside women NGO workers supporting migrant women within the global North--a unique combination. Weighing the women's first-hand accounts against critiques arising from feminist theory, postcolonial theory, global civil society theory and critical development literature, de Jong brings to life the dilemmas of "doing good."

Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) has always been a part of warfare. In Asia, testimonies of egregious rape and sexual violence extend back to the Rape of Nanjing, to the experience of the Korean comfort women in World War II, and to forced marriages and sexual slavery during the Cambodian genocide. The past two decades have yielded crucial new insights about SGBV, but scholars and researchers still struggle to explain why and when this violence occurs. A major problem is that incidences of SGBV are vastly underreported; reliable data is especially scarce in Asia, where demographic and health surveys are infrequent and national reporting systems are underdeveloped relative to other parts of the globe. Asia also has some of the most protracted conflicts in the world but the complexity of subnational conflicts in Asia often masks the gendered dimensions of violence. In Hidden Wars, Sara E. Davies and Jacqui True examine the relationship between reports of SGBV and structural gender inequality in three conflict-affected societies in Asia--Burma, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. Based on extensive field research and an original dataset on conflict-related SGBV, Davies and True show how reporting is significantly constrained by a variety of factors, including normalized gendered violence as well as political dynamics affecting local civil society, humanitarian, and international organizations. They address the real-world limitations of data collection and argue that these constraints reinforce a culture of silence and impunity that perpetuates SGBV and permits governments to abrogate their responsibility for this violence. Hidden Wars breaks new methodological ground in showing that what we know about SGBV can be understood fully only if the politicized context of reporting SGBV and data collection is taken into consideration.

Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) has always been a part of warfare. In Asia, testimonies of egregious rape and sexual violence extend back to the Rape of Nanjing, to the experience of the Korean comfort women in World War II, and to forced marriages and sexual slavery during the Cambodian genocide. The past two decades have yielded crucial new insights about SGBV, but scholars and researchers still struggle to explain why and when this violence occurs. A major problem is that incidences of SGBV are vastly underreported; reliable data is especially scarce in Asia, where demographic and health surveys are infrequent and national reporting systems are underdeveloped relative to other parts of the globe. Asia also has some of the most protracted conflicts in the world but the complexity of subnational conflicts in Asia often masks the gendered dimensions of violence. In Hidden Wars, Sara E. Davies and Jacqui True examine the relationship between reports of SGBV and structural gender inequality in three conflict-affected societies in Asia--Burma, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. Based on extensive field research and an original dataset on conflict-related SGBV, Davies and True show how reporting is significantly constrained by a variety of factors, including normalized gendered violence as well as political dynamics affecting local civil society, humanitarian, and international organizations. They address the real-world limitations of data collection and argue that these constraints reinforce a culture of silence and impunity that perpetuates SGBV and permits governments to abrogate their responsibility for this violence. Hidden Wars breaks new methodological ground in showing that what we know about SGBV can be understood fully only if the politicized context of reporting SGBV and data collection is taken into consideration.

Several months after a 2014 operation in the Gaza Strip, fifty-three Israeli Defense Forces combatants and combat-support soldiers were awarded military decorations for exhibiting extraordinary bravery. From a gendered perspective, the most noteworthy aspect of these awards was not the fact that only 4 of the 53 recipients were women, but rather the fact that the men were uniformly praised for being "brave," being "heroes," "actively performing acts of bravery," "protecting," and "preventing terror attacks," while the women were repeatedly commended for "not panicking." This pattern is not unique to the Israeli case, but rather reflects the patriarchal norms that still prevail in military institutions worldwide. One might expect that, now that women serve on the battlefield as combatants, some of the gendered norms informing militaries would have long disappeared. As it stands, women in the military still face a double battle--against the patriarchal institution, as well as against the military's purported enemies. Drawing on interviews with 100 women military veterans about their experiences in combat, this book asks what insights are gained when we take women's experiences in war as our starting point instead of treating them as "add-ons" to more fundamental or mainstream levels of analysis, and what importance these experiences hold for an analysis of violence and for security studies. Importantly, the authors introduce a theoretical framework in critical security studies for understanding (vis-à-vis binary deconstructions of the terms used in these fields) the integration of women soldiers into combat and combat-support roles, as well as the challenges they face. While the book focuses on women in the Israeli Defence Forces, the book provides different perspectives about why it is important to explore women in combat, what their experiences teach us, and how to consider soldiers and veterans both as citizens and as violent state actors--an issue with which scholars are often reluctant to engage. Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies raises methodological considerations about ways of evaluating power relations in conflict situations and patriarchal structures.

Radicalization, and the terrorism that is frequently linked to it, have been subject to much study and governmental intervention. Nevertheless, the processes that lead to radicalization remain thinly conceptualized although governments and their agencies worldwide have invested heavily in counter and de-radicalization programs. There are at least 34 anti-radicalization programs worldwide, most of which were initiated post-2001, with a focus on Muslims and Muslim communities. These policies and programs have led to interventions in the daily lives of thousands, often in ways that push the boundaries of human rights law and norms. However, the effectiveness of these programs is unclear. This book compares anti-radicalization programs that target Islamic extremism in the UK, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, the Netherlands and Pakistan. It looks particularly at the ways in which the program tactics differ depending on the gender of the target, arguing that the gendered way in which anti-radicalization is pursued helps to reveal its limitations. These programs fail to take into account how masculinity and femininity inform the radicalization process. Moreover, the programs tend to link men's radicalization to excessive, but flawed, masculinity, and women's radicalization to passivity, which consequentially limits understandings of the various modes of belief, belonging, and behavior of those they are trying to engage. Solutions for male de-radicalization hinge on particular ideals of masculinity that few men can obtain, while the de-radicalization of women is seen as a rescue mission. Although the rhetoric of battling terrorism is often couched in a narrative of "women's rights" and "liberal values", the book demonstrates that the consequences of the programs often run counter to such ideals. The book's findings are applicable not just to de-radicalization programs, but also to broader counter-radicalization agendas that address resilience and community engagement. The book also highlights the way in which anti-radicalization measures hew to or differ from older programs addressing right-wing extremism, anti-cult measures, and sectarianism. Ultimately, Gender, Religion, Extremism proposes an alternative way of implementing anti-radicalization efforts that are rooted in a feminist peace--one that is transformative, inclusive, and sustainable.

The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (UNPBC) was established in December 2005 to develop outlines of best practice in post-conflict reconstruction, and to secure the political and material resources necessary to assist states in transition from conflict to peacetime. Currently, the organization is involved in reconstruction and peacebuilding activities in six countries. Yet, a 2010 review by permanent representatives to the United Nations found that the hopes of the UN peacebuilding architecture "despite committed and dedicated efforts...ha[d] yet to be realized." Two of these hopes relate to gender and power, specifically that peacebuilding efforts integrate a "gender perspective" and that the Commission consult with civil society, NGOs, and women's organizations. This book is the first to offer an extensive and dedicated analysis of the activities of the UN Peacebuilding Commission with regard to both gender politics, broadly conceived, and the gendered dynamics of civil society participation in peacebuilding activities. Laura J. Shepherd draws upon original fieldwork that she conducted at the UN to argue that the gendered and spatial politics of peacebuilding not only feminizes civil society organizations, but also perpetuates hierarchies that privilege the international over the domestic realms. The book argues that the dominant representations of women, gender, and civil society in UN peacebuilding discourse produce spatial hierarchies that paradoxically undermine the contemporary emphasis on "bottom-up" governance of peacebuilding activities.

Recent developments such as Sweden's Feminist Foreign Policy, the "Hillary Doctrine," and the integration of women into combat roles in the U.S. have propelled gender equality to the forefront of international politics. The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, however, has been integrating gender equality into peacekeeping missions for nearly two decades as part of the women, peace, and security agenda that has been most clearly articulated in UNSC Resolution 1325. To what extent have peacekeeping operations achieved gender equality in peacekeeping operations and been vehicles for promoting gender equality in post-conflict states?While there have been major improvements related to women's participation and protection, there is still much left to be desired. Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley argue that gender power imbalances between the sexes and among genders place restrictions on the participation of women in peacekeeping missions. Specifically, discrimination, a relegation of women to safe spaces, and sexual exploitation, abuse, harassment, and violence (SEAHV) continue to threaten progress on gender equality. Using unique cross-national data on sex-disaggregated participation of peacekeepers and on the allegations of SEAHV, as well as original data from the UN Mission in Liberia, the authors examine the origins and consequences of these challenges. Karim and Beardsley also identify and examine how increasing the representation of women in peacekeeping forces, and even more importantly through enhancing a more holistic value for "equal opportunity," can enable peacekeeping operations to overcome the challenges posed by power imbalances and be more of an example of and vehicle for gender equality globally.

Of all of the lies, fragile alliances, and predatory financial dealings that have been revealed in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, we have yet to come to terms with the ways in which structural inequalities around gender and race factor into (and indeed make possible) the current economic order. Scandalous Economics is about "silences" - the astonishing neglect of gender and race in explanations of the Global Financial Crisis. But, it is also about "noises" - the sexual scandals and gendered austerity policies that have relegated public debate, and the crisis itself, into political oblivion. While feminist economists and movements such as Occupy Wall Street have pointed to the distributional inequalities that are an effect of financial deregulation, scholars haven't really grappled with the representational inequalities inherent in the way we view the politics of the market. For example, capitalism won't be made more equitable simply by appointing women to leadership positions within financial firms or corporations. And the next crisis will not be averted if our understandings of gendered inequalities are framed by sexual scandals in media and popular culture. We need to look at the activities and the privileges of the advantaged - the "TED women" of the crisis -- as much as the victimization of the disadvantaged - to fully grasp the interplay between gender and economy in this fragile age of restoration. Scandalous Economics breaks new ground by doing precisely this. It argues that normalization of the post-GFC economic order in the face of its obvious breakdown(s) has been facilitated by co-optation of feminist and queer perspectives into national and international responses to the crisis. Scandalous Economics builds upon the Occupy movement and other critical analysis of the GFC to comprehensively examine gendered material, ideational and representational dimensions that have served to make the crisis and its effects, 'the new normal' in Europe and America as well as Latin America and Asia.

Of all of the lies, fragile alliances, and predatory financial dealings that have been revealed in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, we have yet to come to terms with the ways in which structural inequalities around gender and race factor into (and indeed make possible) the current economic order. Scandalous Economics is about "silences" - the astonishing neglect of gender and race in explanations of the Global Financial Crisis. But, it is also about "noises" - the sexual scandals and gendered austerity policies that have relegated public debate, and the crisis itself, into political oblivion. While feminist economists and movements such as Occupy Wall Street have pointed to the distributional inequalities that are an effect of financial deregulation, scholars haven't really grappled with the representational inequalities inherent in the way we view the politics of the market. For example, capitalism won't be made more equitable simply by appointing women to leadership positions within financial firms or corporations. And the next crisis will not be averted if our understandings of gendered inequalities are framed by sexual scandals in media and popular culture. We need to look at the activities and the privileges of the advantaged - the "TED women" of the crisis -- as much as the victimization of the disadvantaged - to fully grasp the interplay between gender and economy in this fragile age of restoration. Scandalous Economics breaks new ground by doing precisely this. It argues that normalization of the post-GFC economic order in the face of its obvious breakdown(s) has been facilitated by co-optation of feminist and queer perspectives into national and international responses to the crisis. Scandalous Economics builds upon the Occupy movement and other critical analysis of the GFC to comprehensively examine gendered material, ideational and representational dimensions that have served to make the crisis and its effects, 'the new normal' in Europe and America as well as Latin America and Asia.

In 1915, women from over thirty countries met in The Hague to express opposition to World War I and propose ways to end it. The delegates made three demands: for women to be present at all international peace conferences, a womens-only peace conference to be convened alongside any official negotiations, and the establishment of universal suffrage. While these demands went unmet at the time, contemporary womens groups continue to seek participation in peace negotiations and to have language promoting gender equality inserted into all peace agreements. Between 1975 and 2011 about 40% of all conflicts that produced peace agreements resulted in at least one with references to women. Many of these clauses addressed compensation for wartime gender-based violence and guarantees for womens participation in the post-conflict transitional period. Others included electoral quotas and changes to inheritance legislation. Curiously, the language used to address women is near consistent across these agreements, and that is because it reflects international womens rights norms rather than more local norms. Why is it that though a peace agreements primary objective is to end conflict, some include potentially controversial provisions about gender that might delay or complicate reaching an agreement? Why do these provisions echo international norms rather than local, cultural ones? And which factors make it more likely that womens rights will appear in peace agreements? Windows of Opportunity answers these questions by examining peace negotiations in Burundi, Macedonia, and Northern Ireland along with 195 peace agreements signed between 1975 and 2011. It looks at the key actors involved in lobbying for womens participation, along with their motivations, objectives, and strategies. It also explores the reasons for similarities among the gender provisions.

From Global to Grassroots looks at how transnational activism aimed at combating violence against women is used to instigate changes in local practice. Focusing on the case of the European Union, this book provides empirical and intersectional feminist analysis to demonstrate the transnational processes that connect global and grassroots advocacy efforts. It does this by taking an in-depth look at the roles played by regional organizations and networks in efforts to address violence against women. Over the past decades, the complex and evolving system of EU multilevel governance has provided new venues for women's transnational activism. Despite a predominantly economic focus, the EU has undertaken various initiatives that utilize different tools of authority to combat violence against women. This book first traces the processes by which violence against women became a European Union issue, examining the role played by global movements and organizations as well as European advocates within and outside of EU institutions. Second, it explores and analyzes the different strategies that the EU has utilized to influence its member and candidate states to change their practices. Third, it evaluates the impact that these strategies have had at the local level by investigating the interaction of international and regional efforts with domestic characteristics. The geographic and institutional variation found in the EU makes it a particularly rich case study for comparing the way that different strategies, power relationships, and domestic circumstances interact to provide a range of responses in member and candidate states. While other studies have emphasized formal policy change as evidence that domestic change has occurred, From Global to Grassroots looks beyond the rhetoric to examine the extent to which violence against women is addressed on the ground, paying special attention to the disparate impact strategies may have on particular groups of women.

Cosmopolitan Sex Workers is a groundbreaking look into the phenomenon of non-trafficked women who migrate from one global city to another to perform paid sexual labor in Southeast Asia. Through a new, innovative framework, Christine B.N. Chin shows that as neoliberal economic restructuring processes create pathways connecting major cities throughout the world, competition and collaboration between cities creates new avenues for the movement of people, services and goods. Loosely organized networks of migrant labor grow in tandem with professional-managerial classes, and sex workers migrate to different parts of cities, depending on the location of the clientele to which they cater. But while global cities create economic opportunities for migrants (and depend on the labor they provide), states react with new forms of securitization and surveillance. As a result, migrants must negotiate between appropriating and subverting the ideas that inform global economic restructuring. Chin argues that migration allows women to develop intercultural skills that help them to make these negotiations. Cosmopolitan Sex Workers is innovative not only in its focus on non-trafficked women, but in its analysis of the complex relationship between global economic processes and migration for sex work. Through fascinating interviews with sex workers in Kuala Lumpur, Chin shows that sex work can provide women with the means of earning income for families, for education, and even for their own businesses. It also allows women the means to travel the world - a form of cosmopolitanism "from below."

What are the root causes of sexual violence in war? From times of antiquity through the most recent conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, the Congo, and Syria, rape and other forms of sexual violence have been a consistent feature of war. Analyses of these more recent conflicts have prompted a surge of research into rape as a weapon of war and prompted a number of international and national initiatives to address this form of violence. This work has helped to identify rape as a deliberate tool of war-making rather than simply an inevitable side effect of armed conflict. However, much of what has been written on rape as a weapon of war has suggested that the underlying causes stem from a single motivation--whether individual, symbolic, or strategic. This singular focus has led to disagreement in the field about how we can understand the causes and consequences of sexual violence in war and about how to respond to this atrocity. Sara Meger argues that it is this approach to sexual violence in war that has rendered ineffective recent attempts by the UN, national governments, and aid and advocacy organizations to address it. Rather than identifying conflict-related sexual violence as an isolated phenomenon, this book argues that sexual violence is a form of gender-based violence (perpetrated against both men and women) and a manifestation of unequal gender relations that are exacerbated by the social, political, and economic conditions of war. She looks at trends in the form and function of sexual violence in recent and ongoing conflicts to argue that, in different contexts, sexual violence takes different forms and is used in pursuit of different objectives. Taking a political economy perspective she argues that these variations can be explained by broader struggles over territory, assets, and other productive resources of contemporary armed conflicts. As it is a reflection of global political economic struggles, she argues that sexual violence in war can't be addressed only at the local level, but must be addressed through regional and international policy. She concludes by providing some initial ideas about how this can be done via the UN and national governments.

Recent developments such as Sweden's' Feminist Foreign Policy, the "Hillary Doctrine," and the integration of women into combat roles in the U.S. have propelled gender equality to the forefront of international politics. The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, however, has been integrating gender equality into peacekeeping missions for nearly two decades as part of the women, peace and security agenda that has been most clearly articulated in UNSC Resolution 1325. To what extent have peacekeeping operations achieved gender equality in peacekeeping operations and been vehicles for promoting gender equality in post-conflict states?While there have been major improvements related to women's participation and protection, there is still much left to be desired. Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley argue that gender power imbalances between the sexes and among genders place restrictions on the participation of women in peacekeeping missions. Specifically, discrimination, a relegation of women to safe spaces, and sexual exploitation, abuse, harassment, and violence (SEAHV) continue to threaten progress on gender equality. Using unique cross-national data on sex-disaggregated participation of peacekeepers and on the allegations of SEAHV, as well as original data from the UN Mission in Liberia, the authors examine the origins and consequences of these challenges. Karim and Beardsley also identify and examine how increasing the representation of women in peacekeeping forces, and even more importantly through enhancing a more holistic value for "equal opportunity," can enable peacekeeping operations to overcome the challenges posed by power imbalances and be more of an example of and vehicle for gender equality globally.

NGOs headquartered in the North have been, for some time, the most visible in attempts to address the poverty, lack of political representation, and labor exploitation that disproportionally affect women from the global South. Feminist NGOs and NGOs focusing on women's rights have been successful in attracting funding for their causes, but critics argue that the highly educated elites from the global North and South who run them fail to question or understand the power hierarchies in which they operate. In order to give depth to these criticisms, Sara de Jong interviewed women NGO workers in seven different European countries about their experiences and perspectives on working on gendered issues affecting women in the global South. Complicit Sisters untangles and analyzes the complex tensions women NGO workers face and explores the ways in which they negotiate potential complicities in their work. Weighing the women NGO workers' first-hand accounts against critiques arising from feminist theory, postcolonial theory, global civil society theory and critical development literature, de Jong brings to life the dilemmas of "doing good." She considers these workers' ideas about "sisterhood," privilege, gender stereotypes, feminism, and the private/public divide, and she suggests avenues for productive engagement between these and the inevitable tensions and complexities in NGO work.

Two decades ago, V. Spike Peterson published a book titled Gendered States in which she asked, what difference does gender make in international relations and the construction of the sovereign state system? In the intervening years, a wealth of feminist scholarship has responded to her question, but in doing so, has looked past the nation state to consider the gendered dimensions of issues such as human rights, nationalist movements, development, and economic globalization. Moreover, since 2001, feminist international relations has also focused on international security, forging a new subfield of feminist security studies that revisits more traditional IR topics such as war and national security, albeit from very different perspectives. With a preface by V. Spike Peterson, this book aims to connect the earlier debates of Peterson's book with the gendered state today, one that exists within a globalized and increasingly securitized world. Bringing together an international group of contributors from the Global South, United States, Europe, and Australia, this volume will answer three overarching questions. First, it will answer whether the concept of a "gendered state" is generic or if some states are particularly gendered in their identities and interests, and with what implications for the type of citizenship, society, and international security. Second, it will look at the continued theoretical significance of the gendered state for current IR scholarship. And, finally, it will explain to what extent postcolonial states are distinctive from metropolitan states with regard to gender. Including scholars from International Relations, Postcolonial Studies, and Development Studies, this volume collectively theorizes the modern state and its intricate relationship to security, identity politics, and gender.

Two decades ago, V. Spike Peterson published a book titled Gendered States in which she asked, what difference does gender make in international relations and the construction of the sovereign state system? In the intervening years, a wealth of feminist scholarship has responded to her question, but in doing so, has looked past the nation state to consider the gendered dimensions of issues such as human rights, nationalist movements, development, and economic globalization. Moreover, since 2001, feminist international relations has also focused on international security, forging a new subfield of feminist security studies that revisits more traditional IR topics such as war and national security, albeit from very different perspectives. With a preface by V. Spike Peterson, this book aims to connect the earlier debates of Peterson's book with the gendered state today, one that exists within a globalized and increasingly securitized world. Bringing together an international group of contributors from the Global South, United States, Europe, and Australia, this volume will answer three overarching questions. First, it will answer whether the concept of a "gendered state" is generic or if some states are particularly gendered in their identities and interests, and with what implications for the type of citizenship, society, and international security. Second, it will look at the continued theoretical significance of the gendered state for current IR scholarship. And, finally, it will explain to what extent postcolonial states are distinctive from metropolitan states with regard to gender. Including scholars from International Relations, Postcolonial Studies, and Development Studies, this volume collectively theorizes the modern state and its intricate relationship to security, identity politics, and gender.

The international movement against the trafficking of women, which has gained momentum over the past two decades, is driven largely by the United States, in tandem with state governments and NGO workers. Feminist organizations have played a key role in carrying out anti-trafficking policies, but are increasingly divided over what those policies should look like. The primary divide exists between those feminists who want to abolish prostitution (as a key link to trafficking) and those who argue that what sex workers need is not to have their livelihoods taken away through paternalistic policies, but improved working conditions to alleviate the dangers associated with their work. A primary criticism of US NGO workers, well-intentioned as they may be, is that they misunderstand the cultural and economic conditions of the women they purport to help. This book provides a unique response to this misunderstanding. On one level it shows how this movement is, in fact, based on a Western mindset that problematizes women and puts its own interests before those of the women it is trying to help. But the project's primary innovation is in the method that it develops to explore the conflict of cultural values that gives rise to the aforementioned debates: what Erin M. Kamler calls Dramatization as Research (DAR).Through writing and producing "Land of Smiles," a musical inspired by field research that includes over fifty interviews with female migrant laborers, sex workers, activists, NGO employees, and other members of the anti-trafficking movement, Kamler presents one of the dominant stories about human trafficking and critiques the discourse about the trafficking of women in Thailand. The book examines how the musical aimed to facilitate communication between stakeholders in the anti-trafficking movement in Thailand and prime a dialogue to explore the policies, practices, and outcomes of actions in this environment. Through researching, writing and producing the musical for the individuals on whose experiences the story of the musical is based, Kamler shows how the arts can be used as a feminist communication intervention and a vehicle for understanding the cultural dimension of human rights.

Between 2009 and 2014, an anti-homosexuality law circulating in the Ugandan parliament came to be the focus of a global conversation about queer rights. The law attracted attention for the draconian nature of its provisions and for the involvement of US evangelical Christian activists who were said to have lobbied for its passage. Focusing on the Ugandan case, this book seeks to understand the encounters and entanglements across geopolitical divides that produce and contest contemporary queerphobias. It investigates the impact and memory of the colonial encounter on the politics of sexuality, the politics of religiosity of different Christian denominations, and the political economy of contemporary homophobic moral panics.In addition, Out of Time places the Ugandan experience in conversation with contemporaneous developments in India and Britain--three locations that are yoked together by the experience of British imperialism and its afterlives. Intervening in a queer theoretical literature on temporality, Rahul Rao argues that time and space matter differently in the queer politics of postcolonial countries. By employing an intersectional analysis and drawing on a range of sources, Rao offers an original interpretation of why queerness mutates to become a metonym for categories such as nationality, religiosity, race, class, and caste. The book argues that these mutations reveal the deep grammars forged in the violence that founds and reproduces the social institutions in which queer difference struggles to make space for itself.

Between 2009 and 2014, an anti-homosexuality law circulating in the Ugandan parliament came to be the focus of a global conversation about queer rights. The law attracted attention for the draconian nature of its provisions and for the involvement of US evangelical Christian activists who were said to have lobbied for its passage. Focusing on the Ugandan case, this book seeks to understand the encounters and entanglements across geopolitical divides that produce and contest contemporary queerphobias. It investigates the impact and memory of the colonial encounter on the politics of sexuality, the politics of religiosity of different Christian denominations, and the political economy of contemporary homophobic moral panics.In addition, Out of Time places the Ugandan experience in conversation with contemporaneous developments in India and Britain--three locations that are yoked together by the experience of British imperialism and its afterlives. Intervening in a queer theoretical literature on temporality, Rahul Rao argues that time and space matter differently in the queer politics of postcolonial countries. By employing an intersectional analysis and drawing on a range of sources, Rao offers an original interpretation of why queerness mutates to become a metonym for categories such as nationality, religiosity, race, class, and caste. The book argues that these mutations reveal the deep grammars forged in the violence that founds and reproduces the social institutions in which queer difference struggles to make space for itself.

What difference does gender make to foreign diplomacy? What do we know about women's participation as decision-makers in international affairs? Is it fair to assume, as many observers do, that female elites will mirror the relatively pacifist preferences of women in the general public as well as the claims of progressive feminist movements? And, of particular importance to this book, what consequences follow from the appointment of "firsts" to these posts? Inspired by recent work in the field of feminist diplomatic history, this book offers the first comparative examination of women's presence in senior national security positions in the United States executive branch. Sylvia Bashevkin looks at four high-profile appointees in the United States since 1980: Jeane Kirkpatrick during the Reagan years, Madeleine Albright in the Clinton era, Condoleezza Rice during the George W. Bush presidency, and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the first Obama mandate. Bashevkin explores the extent to which each of these women was able to fully participate in a domain long dominated by men, focusing in particular on the extent to which each shaped foreign policy in meaningful ways. She looks particularly at two specific phenomena: first, the influence of female decision-makers, notably their ability to make measurable difference to the understanding and practice of national security policy; and second, leaders' actions with respect to matters of war and women's rights. The track records of these four women reveal not just a consistent willingness to pursue muscular, aggressive approaches to international relations, but also widely divergent views about feminism. Women as Foreign Policy Leaders shows how Kirkpatrick, Albright, Rice, and Clinton staked out their presence on the international scene and provided a crucial antidote to the silencing of women's voices in global politics.

According to this book, the United States is currently in a moment of crisis, fomented by anxieties around race and gender politics. Unlike fear, which is usually focused on a particular object, anxiety is indeterminate and uncertain. It is also the emotion that led to the election and continued support of President Trump. But Caron Gentry says that we can deal with this anxiety in a productive way. To do so, she turns to Reinhold Niebuhr, whose philosophy of Christian realism has been an abiding influence on foreign policy since the Cold War. According to Niebuhr "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." Anxiety is central to Niebuhr's ideas: an emotion that is abiding because we lack control over the circumstances of our lives. In turn, anxiety prompts a desire for unity, but also an intolerance for difference. Niebuhr suggests that anxiety can be dealt with destructively or creatively, and that power must be balanced to prevent destructive action. Gentry is critical of Niebuhr, saying that he gives in to destructive tendencies in humans by elevating power above other, more creative solutions. In This American Moment, she offers feminist Christian realism as an alternate approach to anxiety in international politics. Gentry's feminist Christian realism differentiates itself from Niebuhr's Christian realism by re-engaging the importance of love and relationships over power. It suggests that we can arrive at creative solutions to anxiety through a conversation about the imago dei and the inherent commitments to community borne of one's relationship with God, including the recognition of obligation in the face of vulnerability. Throughout Gentry applies her ideas to the problems of police brutality, women's reproductive health, and the rise in fascist politics.

Violence against women has been a focus of transnational advocacy networks since the early 1980s, and the United Nations has, in intervening years, passed a series of resolutions to condemn, prevent, investigate, and punish this violence. Member states have committed to implementing this agenda. Yet, despite this buy-in at the global level, implementation at the domestic level remains uneven. Scholars have found that states are more likely to translate global standards into national laws when pressured by women's movements and international organizations. However, a dearth of research on the implementation — at the national and street-levels — of these international women's rights norms hampers an understanding of what happens after states pass laws. In Africa, where most states have not prioritized the prevention of violence against women, and the majority of perpetrators act with impunity, there is a major implementation gap. This gap is acute in some post-conflict countries on the continent. Thus, despite the presence of laws on various forms of violence against women in most African countries, justice remains inaccessible to most victims.In Global Norms and Local Action, Peace A. Medie studies the domestic implementation of international norms by examining how and why two post-conflict states in Africa, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire, have differed in their responses to rape and domestic violence. Specifically, she looks at the roles of the United Nations and women's movements in the establishment of specialized criminal justice sector agencies, and the referral of cases for prosecution. She argues that variation in implementation in Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire can be explained by the levels of international and domestic pressures that states face and by the favorability of domestic political and institutional conditions. Medie's study is based on interviews with over 300 policymakers, bureaucrats, staff at the UN and NGOs, police officers, and survivors of domestic violence and rape — an unprecedented depth of research into women's rights and gender violence norm implementation in post-conflict countries. Furthermore, through her interviews with survivors of violence, Medie explains not only how states implement anti-rape and anti-domestic violence norms, but also how women experience and are affected by these norms. She draws on this research to recommend that states adopt a holistic approach to addressing violence against women.

In global politics, women's bodies are policed, objectified, surveilled, and feared, with particular attention paid to both their met or unmet procreative potential. While the significance of motherhood varies across cultures, it is, as this book argues, connected not just to gender and sexuality, but also to religion and nationality. Reproduction is central to the flourishing of any nation or culture, and therefore motherhood is a major signifier of women's relationship to the state. This is so much the case that states enact laws about which women can bear children and have supported sterilization efforts in cases where women are not deemed appropriate bearers of the nation. States also legislate reproductive technologies, adoption, and government support for parenting. By considering representations and narratives of maternity, this volume shows how practices of global politics shape and are shaped by the gendered norms and institutions that underpin motherhood. Motherhood matters in global politics. Yet, the diverse ways in which performances and practices of motherhood are constituted by and are constitutive of other dimensions of political life are frequently obscured, or assumed to be of little interest to scholars, policymakers, and practitioners. Featuring innovative and diverse chapters on the politics of motherhood as an institution, this collection shows that maternality is troubled, complicated, and heterogeneous in global politics. Thus, performances and practices of motherhood warrant closer and more sustained scrutiny. This book builds on work by feminist international relations scholars, extending into disruptive spaces of queer theory, literary critique, and post-colonial studies. The chapters in this book consider the meaning of motherhood, particularly during times of war versus peace; the connections between motherhood and nationhood (and reproduction of the state); and care work and maternal labor, particularly as performed by transnational workers. Ultimately, this book demonstrates the complex interconnections between the individual, the state, and the global through the lens of maternality.

It has been shown time and again that even though all citizens may be accorded equal standing in the constitution of a liberal democracy, such a legal provision hardly guarantees state protections against discrimination and political exclusion. More specifically, why do we find pervasive gender-based discrimination, exclusion, and violence in India when the Indian Constitution supports an inclusive democracy committed to gender and caste equality? In Gendered Citizenship, Natasha Behl offers an examination of Indian citizenship that weaves together an analysis of sexual violence law with an in-depth ethnography of the Sikh community to explore the contradictory nature of Indian democracy--which gravely affects its institutions and puts its citizens at risk. Through a situated analysis of citizenship, Behl upends longstanding academic assumptions about democracy, citizenship, religion, and gender. This analysis reveals that religious spaces and practices can be sites for renegotiating democratic participation, but also uncovers how some women engage in religious community in unexpected ways to link gender equality and religious freedom as shared goals. Gendered Citizenship is a groundbreaking inquiry that explains why the promise of democratic equality remains unrealized, and identifies potential spaces and practices that can create more egalitarian relations.

What difference does gender make to foreign diplomacy? What do we know about women's participation as decision-makers in international affairs? Is it fair to assume, as many observers do, that female elites will mirror the relatively pacifist preferences of women in the general public as well as the claims of progressive feminist movements? And, of particular importance to this book, what consequences follow from the appointment of "firsts" to these posts? Inspired by recent work in the field of feminist diplomatic history, this book offers the first comparative examination of women's presence in senior national security positions in the United States executive branch. Sylvia Bashevkin looks at four high-profile appointees in the United States since 1980: Jeane Kirkpatrick during the Reagan years, Madeleine Albright in the Clinton era, Condoleezza Rice during the George W. Bush presidency, and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the first Obama mandate. Bashevkin explores the extent to which each of these women was able to fully participate in a domain long dominated by men, focusing in particular on the extent to which each shaped foreign policy in meaningful ways. She looks particularly at two specific phenomena: first, the influence of female decision-makers, notably their ability to make measurable difference to the understanding and practice of national security policy; and second, leaders' actions with respect to matters of war and women's rights. The track records of these four women reveal not just a consistent willingness to pursue muscular, aggressive approaches to international relations, but also widely divergent views about feminism. Women as Foreign Policy Leaders shows how Kirkpatrick, Albright, Rice, and Clinton staked out their presence on the international scene and provided a crucial antidote to the silencing of women's voices in global politics.

As ongoing controversies over commercial sex attest, the relationship between capitalism and sexuality is deeply contentious. Economic and sexual practices are assumed to be not only separable but antithetical, hence why paid sex is so often criminalized and morally condemned. Yet, while sexuality is highly politicized in moral terms, it has largely been overlooked in the discipline devoted to the study of global capitalism, international political economy (IPE). Likewise, the prevailing field in sexuality studies, queer theory, has frequently sidelined questions of political economy. This book calls for critical scholarship to challenge the economy/sexuality dichotomy as it not only structures disciplinary debates but is part and parcel of capitalism itself.Capitalism's Sexual History brings IPE and queer theory into close dialogue to explore how the division between economy and sexuality has been historically produced to appear both natural and moral. By examining sex work in Britain, Nicola J. Smith draws on in-depth archival research to chart a history of capitalism's sexual relations from medieval times to the present day. She shows how capitalist development was made possible by the appropriation of unpaid sexual labor that relied, in turn, on the repression and production of paid sex. By tracing the historical construction of boundaries around sex and work, this book exposes how capitalism has long profited from the notion that the sexual and economic spheres can and must be kept apart. In so doing, it offers a distinctive contribution to the study of sex and work as well as to wider scholarly, activist, and policy debates about political economy, reproductive labor, gender equality, and sexual justice.

As ongoing controversies over commercial sex attest, the relationship between capitalism and sexuality is deeply contentious. Economic and sexual practices are assumed to be not only separable but antithetical, hence why paid sex is so often criminalized and morally condemned. Yet, while sexuality is highly politicized in moral terms, it has largely been overlooked in the discipline devoted to the study of global capitalism, international political economy (IPE). Likewise, the prevailing field in sexuality studies, queer theory, has frequently sidelined questions of political economy. This book calls for critical scholarship to challenge the economy/sexuality dichotomy as it not only structures disciplinary debates but is part and parcel of capitalism itself.Capitalism's Sexual History brings IPE and queer theory into close dialogue to explore how the division between economy and sexuality has been historically produced to appear both natural and moral. By examining sex work in Britain, Nicola J. Smith draws on in-depth archival research to chart a history of capitalism's sexual relations from medieval times to the present day. She shows how capitalist development was made possible by the appropriation of unpaid sexual labor that relied, in turn, on the repression and production of paid sex. By tracing the historical construction of boundaries around sex and work, this book exposes how capitalism has long profited from the notion that the sexual and economic spheres can and must be kept apart. In so doing, it offers a distinctive contribution to the study of sex and work as well as to wider scholarly, activist, and policy debates about political economy, reproductive labor, gender equality, and sexual justice.

The "narrative turn" has recently influenced theories, methods, and research design within the field of international relations. Its goal is, in part, to show how stories about international events and issues emerge and develop, and how these stories influence the uptake and limitations of global policy "solutions" around the world. Through the lens of narrative, this book examines the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, adopted by the United Nations Security Council twenty years ago. The agenda seeks to increase the participation of women in conflict prevention efforts and to protect the rights of women during conflict and peacebuilding. Those involved in the creation of the WPS agenda, including its strategies, guidelines, and protocols, tend to assume that implementation is the most critical element of it. But what can the stories about the agenda's emergence tell us about its limits and possibilities? Laura J. Shepherd examines WPS as a policy agenda that has been realized in and through the stories that have been told about it, focusing on the world of WPS work at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. She argues that to understand the implementation of the agenda we need to also understand the narration of the agenda's beginnings, its ongoing unfolding, and its plural futures. These stories outline the agenda's priorities and delimit its possibilities--as well as communicate and constitute its triumphs and disasters. As the book shows, much energy and resources are expended in efforts to reduce or resolve the agenda to a singular, essential "thing"--with singular, essential meaning. There is no "true" WPS agenda that practitioners, activists, and policymakers can apprehend and use as their guide; there is only a messy and contested space for political interventions of different kinds. Shepherd shows that the narratives of the WPS agenda incorporate plural logics but that this plurality cannot--should not--be used as an alibi for limited engagement or strategic inaction. Those seeking to realize the WPS agenda might need to live with the irreconcilable, the irresolvable, and the ambiguous.