How can we use the intellectual tools of gender studies to analyze international politics? Although a gap between the two fields has been wide open, the author will try to bridge it in order to analyze engendered phenomena in international politics.
Firstly, gender studies have refreshed an old concept of regime, patriarchy, which originally meant the rule of father or “patriarch” over women, children and servants, referring “to male dominance, to the power relationships by which men dominate women, and to characterize a system whereby women are kept subordinate”, as an Indian feminist, Kamla Bhasin, described. Although this is one of the oldest forms of dominance, it was hardly noticed by intellectuals, mostly male, who discussed about politics and rule. Aristotle even argued that male was “naturally” born to rule, while female, born to be ruled.
Such a form of dominance has been inherited until today. Many concepts of politics and rule embody the essence of patriarchy: sovereignty, supremacy, dichotomy of domestic and foreign, non-interference, and so on. Everybody learns that the state of nature is the essence of international politics, but this Hobbesian idea implies the nature which requires men to fight for security as well as women to obey men. Logic of power politics is based on patriarchal organization of society, and it causes engendered chains of events in international politics, that is, gender dynamics of international politics.
Let's see the phenomena of “War, Democracy and Women's Liberation” in the 20th century: what kind of change was brought to women after the First World War in victorious nations such as the United Kingdom and the Unites States of America, defeated nations such as Germany, and dependent or colonial societies such Canada and British India. The total war forced marginalized peoples to suffer from incredible damage, in spite of the fact that they were not treated as equal as male citizens in the imperial center. The states had to persuade them to fight and the easiest method was concession to give voting rights after the war to women, young generation, immigrants, racially discriminated residents and colonial subjects.
It might suggest a dangerous statement that wars make women free. But it is too crude to conclude so. Wars also subjugate women cruelly, as we see in the recent cases of Bosnia, Rwanda and Afghanistan. However, here is a new tendency: more empowered women take key roles in international politics with new ideas alternative to the patriarchal ways of management. The gender dynamic of the 21th century is not predetermined and could go beyond a male-dominated Hobbesian international politics.