Integrating women/gender and development and human rights into IR curricula
Jane S. Jaquette
August 25, 2011
This is a written version of the points I plan to make at the APSA workshop panel on integrating gender
into the IR curriculum. I have provided citations for the references I use, and added some additional
bibliography I have found useful. But the list is not intended to cover what has become a substantial
literature on women and development and related issues. What I actually say in Seattle will depend on
where the conversation is going, so this is not a preview but rather an anchor.
Two issues seem to be at the heart of the essays I have read thus far: how to integrate a topic
substantively and how to take into account how the ways students learn today can be barriers to
integrating gender into the curriculum.
My own experience is that students will engage with a subject if the professor is engaged and is open to
various ways of thinking about it. The most effective way to get there is for the professor him or herself
to see gender as a useful window into a complex problem. The professor has to find this approach to
gender provocative and interesting, not just a politically correct add-on.
IR has some advantages for mainstreaming gender. Development and human rights are standard
elements of many IR syllabi. In my experience, students easily see taking a gender approach to these
issues as appropriate and useful, in contrast to their reactions to gender approaches to, say, security
issues. In his paper on teaching, Robert Peters (see circulated papers) notes that students are more
likely to accept concepts that don’t challenge their own class/status positions. IR is an easier point of
entry because it takes issues of inequality, the environment, even “family values” out of the US frame.
Most IR courses cover development and human rights. There are many ways (books, films, websites,
essays in journals and anthologies) to weave gender into these topics. The challenge is to avoid
exoticism, easy generalizations, and victimization. (I have found chapters from Enloe’s Bananas, Beaches
and Bases as well as Chandra Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes” very effective to alert students to these
pitfalls, but for an even stronger critique, see Wendy Hesford’s Spectacular Rhetorics.) Ironically, I have
found it harder to introduce women in development into “women’s studies” classes, where students are
usually allergic to economics in any form. At least IR students are expected to be able to use economic
concepts and to develop a minimal working knowledge of IPE.
I have found that the “window onto a complex problem” approach works very straightforwardly with
democratization, which became a development focus for the multilaterals, the US and various European
countries beginning in the mid-1980s. The mainstream literature has only recently begun to reflect the
roles women have played in transitions to democracy across the globe, but there are good articles and
even texts that do address this, and some that go beyond the transition phase to talk not only about
how women’s and other social movements have fared under democratic governments, but how
studying them can be a sensitive measure of the quality of democracy as well. The wide range of
possible topics, from social movements, to the impact of gender quotas and accounts of women in “post
communist” regimes, for example, means a wide range of methodological approaches, from
quantitative studies on elections, public opinion surveys, institutional analysis, memory and personal
witness. Although these readings might technically belong under the “comparative” rather than the “IR”
rubric, I strongly favor using comparative materials in IR classes, which can otherwise become very
abstract. I should add that, for Latin America at least, there is also a substantial literature on women in
revolutionary movements, in urban resistance movements, such as Argentina’s piqueteros, and on
indigenous women. There also many biographies of women leaders, which students—especially women
students--love, but I find these less helpful from an IR standpoint than books or films that raise broader
issues and require developing analytical skills.
The topic of development poses a different challenge because women and men do not participate in the
same way in any economy, whether socialist, capitalist, pre-capitalist, or post capitalist. The ideal of
equality of citizenship for men and women is widely accepted as desirable. But many (including many
feminists) do not want women to become “economic actors,” although most development projects
intended to reach women have tried to do just that by improving women’s ability to navigate the market
and expanding their access to education, skills training, extension services, land, and credit. As foreign
assistance programs expanded to include democracy and human rights, programs were added to
improve women’s participation and leadership skills, focus on the rights of girl children, promote
women’s reproductive rights (as opposed to “population control”), and fight trafficking.
(Antidiscrimination legislation and private sector employment practices have received insufficient
attention, however, although private capital flows greatly outweigh “aid” flows in today’s international
system). Because of gender differences, however, women’s economic inequality is not perceived as an
injustice on a par with class or ethnic inequalities. Discussions of women’s reproductive rights can
rapidly become debates on the family, abortion and religious values that, unless well managed, can
generate more heat than light.
Thus gender does not map as directly onto development as onto democracy, and can easily become
topic apart rather than a case in point. But finding ways for students to take into account the differences
as well as the similarities in attitudes about gender role shifts that are taking place in the “developed”
and “developing” (or postindustrial and industrializing) worlds can be a very fruitful topic. International
normative change today does not unambiguously support women’s increasing involvement in the
workforce or women’s reproductive rights, however, despite the optimism of a book like Norris and
Inglehart’s Rising Tide (2003). And, although women who are educated and who work cannot easily be
excluded from citizenship (as is clearly an issue in much of the Arab world), labor force participation
does not make women equal, even when there is cultural support, as US and Northern European
experiences show. Since the high points of the UN conferences in Cairo (1994) and Beijing (1995), the
conditions needed to move forward on women’s equality have become highly contested, with Muslim,
Catholic and evangelical Christian groups in full resistance mode. An interesting view of this can be
found in Virginia Vargas’s account of feminist activism at the World Social Forum.
Rather than being a “window into” economic development, the issues raised by a gender focus provide
ways both to support and to question the idea of development itself. On the one hand, Amartya Sen
and Martha Nussbaum’s “capabilities” approach (which is reflected in the goals of the Gates
Foundation) emphasizes the human costs of poverty and the importance of health and wellbeing, with
strong emphasis on women’s empowerment. But much of the literature on women and development in
the last twenty years has been highly critical of “neoliberalism,” globalization, and ultimately of
capitalism itself. Some feminist economists, like Isabelle Bakker and Diane Elson, have used the negative
effects of the “structural adjustment” programs of the late 1980s and early 1990s to question a science
based on the concept of “economic man,” just as feminist IR theorists have attacked the “rational actor”
assumptions of the realist paradigm (although they have been less willing to use similar arguments
against human rights, which are also based on “Enlightenment” individualism).
On many of these issues, I have been a contrarian, convinced that capitalism is here to stay, and that
feminists therefore need to focus on how to build institutions to regulate it and ameliorate its negative
consequences, rather than arguing (from life experiences that are not their own) that capitalism should
be (somehow) replaced. In this context I would also note that the more radical leftist governments in
Latin America today (e.g. Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, or Evo Morales’s Bolivia) are far from feminist in
practice. Claims that indigenous gender complementarity could or should replace the goal of equality for
women are not supported by evidence of gender equity in indigenous communities (see, for example,
Maruja Barrig). For a serious and thoughtful effort to use postmodern and postcolonial critiques of
development, like those of Arturo Escobar, while taking into account the values of indigenous women—
all with the intent to improve development programs for women—see Sarah Radcliffe’s work.
Several interesting issues can be the starting point for making gender central to students’ understanding
of development and human rights from an IR perspective. One I find particularly intriguing (but for
which no text yet exists) is tracking the evolution of “North/South” feminist dialogues, which could
begin by contrasting Robin Morgan’s feminist outrage in Sisterhood is Powerful with Chandra Mohanty’s
“Under Western Eyes,” and would include Deniz Kandiyoti’s essay on the “patriarchal bargain,” Maxine
Molyneux’s analysis of women in revolutionary Nicaragua, and Gayatri Spivak’s still provocative “Can the
Subaltern Speak?” The ongoing debate over the relevance of feminism to “Third World women,” which
took off after the first UN conference on women in Mexico City in 1975, raises all the “big” questions—
capitalism, individualism, globalization, citizenship—in a world that has shrunk in ways that make
confrontations likely and understandings possible. It would make a good book.
Of course, debates about the relevance of feminism do not exhaust the list. What about gender and
migration, both voluntary and as a result of war, famine and trafficking? Women’s reproductive rights,
but also the impact of highly distorted gender ratios in Asia? The value of legal strategies to secure
women’s rights? The pros and cons of microcredit? The digital divide?
There are some very good readings to look at gender in what IR (as opposed to IPE) calls
“neoliberalism”—that is, the role of multilateral institutions in the international system. Gender was
“mainstreamed” by Keck and Sikkink, who used women’s rights along with environmentalism to show
how international NGOs set the UN agenda and reset international norms. Meyer and Prugl’s book on
global governance (2003) has excellent chapters on the Vienna (human rights), Cairo (population) and
Beijing conferences. Anne Winslow’s Women, Politics and the United Nations remains the best single
source on the UN Decade for Women, with chapters on the origins of the Decade and the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and Devaki Jain’s assessment of
the UN is also useful. An important contemporary topic, and one that works well for those who want to
use data sets, is to track progress on reaching the Millennium Development Goals. The UN “gender”
indexes like the Gender Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Index are also worth
assessing.
And finally, for those who want to engage students by emphasizing the linkages between theory and
practice, between academia and the real world, Developing Power, edited by Arvonne Fraser and Irene
Tinker, is a good place to start. As noted earlier, many students have or will have internships with NGOs
in these areas should they go abroad, and these experiences, and the stake students have in anticipating
what they will face, can be very rich sources of class discussion and analysis.
References and some bibliographic suggestions
Auyero, Javier, Contentious Lives: Two Argentine Women, Two Protests, and the Quest for Recognition
(Duke, 2003)
Ackerly, Brooke A., Maria Stern and Jacqui True, Feminist Methodologies for International Relations
(Cambridge, 2006)
Bakker, Isabella and Stephen Gill, eds, Power, Production and Social Reproduction (Palgrave, 2003)
Baldez, Lisa, Why Women Protest: Women’s Movements in Chile (Cambridge, 2002)
Barrig, Maruja, “What is Justice? Indigenous Women in Andean Development Projects,” in Jane S.
Jaquette and Gale Summerfield, Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice (Duke,
2006).
Coleman, Isobel, Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East (Random
House, 2010)
Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (UC Press,
2000).
Elson, Diane, “Gender Justice, Human Rights, and Neo-Liberal Economic Policies,” in Maxine Molyneux
and Shahra Razavi, Gender Justice, Development, and Rights (Oxford, 2003)
Escobar, Arturo, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton,
1995)
Fraser, Arvonne and Irene Tinker, Developing Power: How Women Transformed International
Development (Feminist Press, 2004)
Ghodsee, Kristen Rogheh, Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life After Communism (Duke,
2011)
Goetz, Anne Marie and Shireen Hassim, No Shortcuts to Power: African Women in Politics and PolicyMaking (Zed, 2003).
Hesford, Wendy S., Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights, Visions, Recognitions, Feminisms (Duke, 2011)
Inglehart, Ronald and Pippa Norris, Rising Tide: Gender Equity and Cultural Change Around the World
(Cambridge, 2003)
International Feminist Journal of Politics
Jain, Devaki, Women, Development and the UN: A Sixty Year Quest for Equality and Justice (Indiana,
2005)
Jaquette, Jane S., “Gender and Justice in Economic Development,” in Irene Tinker, ed., Persistent
Inequalities (Oxford, 1990)
_____________ and Kathleen Staudt, “Women as “At-Risk Reproducers’” (a critique of US population
policy) in Virginia Sapiro, ed., Women, Biology and Public Policy (Sage, 1985).
_____________ and Sharon L. Wolchik, eds., Women and Democracy in Latin America and Central and
Eastern Europe (Johns Hopkins, 1998).
Kabeer, Naila, Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought (Verso, 1994).
Kandiyoti, Deniz, “Gender, Power and Contestation: Rethinking Bargaining with Patriarchy,” in Cecile
Jackson and Ruth Pearson, eds., Feminist Visions of Development, Gender, Analysis and Policy
(Routledge, 1998)
Kardam,Nuket, “The Emerging Gender Equality Regime from Neoliberal and Constructivist Perspectives
in International Relations,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 4:1 (2004).
Keck, Margaret and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Policy
(Cornell, 1998).
Krook, Mona Lena, Quotas for Women in Politics (Oxford, 2010).
Lebon, Nathalie and Elizabeth Meier, Women’s Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean (Rutgers,
2010)
Meyer, Mary K. and Elisabeth Prugl, eds., Gender Politics in Global Governance (Rowman and Littlefield,
1999)
Moghadam, Valentine, Globalization and Social Movements: Islam, Feminism and Global Justice
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).
Mohanty, Chandra, “Under Western Eyes,” in Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres,
Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Indiana, 1991).
Molyneux, Maxine, “Mobilization Without Emancipation? Women’s Interests, the State, and Revolution
in Nicaragua, Feminist Studies 11 (Summer, 1985), and Women’s Movements in International
Perspective: Latin America and Beyond (Palgrave, 2001) and widely reprinted.
Morris, Rosalind, Can the Subaltern Speak? Essays on the History of an Idea (Columbia, 2010)
Nussbaum, Martha, “Capabilities as Fundamental Social Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice,” Feminist
Economics 9:2-3 (2003)
_______________, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Harvard, 2011)
Radcliffe, Sarah, (chapter on gender) in Robert Andolina, Nina Laurie and Sarah A. Radcliffe, eds.,
Indigenous Development in the Andes: Culture, Power, and Transnationalism (Duke, 2009)
Rueschemeyer, Marilyn and Sharon L. Wolchik, Women in Power in Post-Communist Parliaments
(Indiana, 2009)
Smith, Charles Anthony and Heather M. Smith, “Human trafficking: the unintended effects of United
Nations intervention,” International Political Science Review 32:2 (March, 2011). Includes broader
bibliography, but interesting focus on effect of UN interventions
Staudt, Kathleen, “Gender in the Classroom,” The International Studies Encyclopedia Volume IV (WileyBlackwell, 2010)
____________, Human Rights along the US-Mexico Border: Gendered Violence and Insecurity (Arizona,
2009)
Tinker, Irene. Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development (Oxford, 1990)
Vargas, Virginia, “International Feminisms: The World Social Forum,” in Jaquette, Jane S., ed., Feminist
Agendas and Democracy in Latin America (Duke, 2009).
Winslow, Anne, ed., Women, Politics, and the United Nations (Greenwood, 1995).