Aidana Sultan

20161526
Research and Design Methodology
Research proposal

Feminist IR theory as a new domain of terrorism research

Abstract
This paper focuses on the Feminist International Relations theory perspective on
Terrorism studies and its conventional framework. This work covers Feminist IR theory as
such and then goes to analyzing the lack of gender-sensitive perspective while analyzing
terrorism. The goal of the paper is to draw attention to the importance of including different
perspectives that Feminist IR offers while conducting research on terrorism.

Since the attack of the World Trade Center, political science has shifted to researching
ways to define, recognize as well as to understand the causes and consequences of terrorism.
At the beginning of 2000s political science, international relations and the international
community have changed the academic field, all in the attempt to prevent future potential
terrorist threats. Andrew Silke, a terrorism researcher, has estimated that every six hours a
new book in English was published in 2007 on the topic of terrorism. Another scholar of
Critical Terrorism Studies, Richard Jackson, made an evaluation of the increase of research
on terrorism, which shows that since the 9/11 attack, it increased by 300%. Therefore
terrorism, the term of which first used in 1794 by the French philosopher François-Noël
Babeuf, has begun to become a central issue for political science academia. The fact that
terrorism class is a part of every International Relations major is another example of
increased importance. But where are the women? We have not covered gender and its role
in terrorism in our class. There is less than a page in Terrorism in the Twenty first century
devoted to gender, although it is about female attackers’ cases, not how gender affects
prescribes and affects these roles. Statement of the problem is that while we see this sharp
rise in the total number of research conducted, the correlation between gender and terrorism
studies have not grabbed as much attention, women are underrepresented in the field of
terrorism studies as the international community has not considered Feminist IR to be a part
of Security Studies in the framework of terrorism. The research question is how Terrorism
Studies can benefit from Feminist IR perspective.
Researchers in the field of Feminist IR advocate the need to seek unconventional
methods for understanding the notions of war and conflict. In order to do that, they claim
that we need to look through the lenses of participants’ experience (Enloe 2000). Feminist IR
academics adopt gender perceptions that affect power relations and communication.
Furthermore, using these gendered lenses to look at any phenomenon in global politics gives
us a wider view to explore and observe politics and its impacts (Sjoberg 2013, p. 285). "The
international is personal" (Enloe 2014, p. 351), which implies a correlation between a
government and the role gender plays within society. According to Enloe, a feminist
viewpoint on these private relationships expose the power that women possess or lack in
these roles. While Enloe suggests that by analyzing the power dynamics we could find its
influence on females, and how power dynamics of an international government that affects
women's lives, Feminist IR also suggests another view on international relations, which
contradicts its fundamental conceptions of realistic nature.
Ann Tickner – a Feminist IR author, criticizes the realistic doctrine of IR. She
suggests that Morgenthau's interpretation of human nature as immoral is inadequate as it does
not take into account the perception of women, they are simply out of the picture. She also
writes that realistic representations of the international domain such as Morgenthau could be
devastating as nowadays weaponry development has gone much further – there is a
possibility of nuclear bomb usage. Scholar Tickner suggests that it is Feminist approach that
can bring new interpretations for the International Relations studies, which could help to
prevent global damages. As she suggests, it is possible to do by changing the interpretations
of power and security: by looking at these concepts from a feminist perspective, we could
find an alternative to zero-sum outcome proposed by the realists.
Christine Sylvester (2012) questions how war is traditionally perceived in IR,
suggesting not to look at it from the traditional perspective of security, but instead from the
perspective of those who encounter conflict. She suggests that IR lacks a central aspect of
war – "injures human bodies and undermines conventional forms of social interaction" (p.
484). To better understand war, we should look include and base definitions on the
experience of those harmed by war. Subsequently, she agrees with Tickner and claims that an
adequate methodology, including interviews and discourse analysis, are needed. In order to
fully comprehend and be able to assist those affected by the war, we need to step past the
abstract theoretical analysis of war and address more specific security problems arising from
the experiences of the war (Sylvester 2012).
Jacqui True (2015) comments in her work that popular Steven Pinker's thesis on
declining of violence globally is biased as only looked from one perspective. Such claims
can be dangerous as undermines that violence that many minorities remain silenced, if we
look at a comprehensive analysis of violence through this lense, then, violence, gendered
violence especially, is rising.
Robert Keohane (1998), on the other hand, criticizes Feminist IR methodologies, as
he writes: "international Relations Theory is portrayed as problem-solving, positivist, and
asocial; feminist theory as critical, post-positivist, and sociological" (Keohane 1998, p. 194)
According to him, of these extreme definitions and perceptions, in reality, can not serve to the
study of IR politics. Annick Wibben (2004) argues that Feminist Theory is not to be studied
by International Relations Theory as a subject, but that it is an object of the study itself, and
we can apply its methods to research IR through its theory. Feminist IR is should not be
treated as something to study, rather, we can explore IR through it. Due to how we perceive
IR, using different methods would show us how gender stereotypes and their role in a society
affects the system and our perception of the world.

Applying to terrorism and security studies, the U.S President at the time of 9/11,
George W. Bush’s, famous quote “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”, the
dichotomy of which divides international community as either of the choices offers no middle
ground, the formulation of which can be described as reductive, as it does not consider the
context and the causal complexity that led to the attack, but rather offers a militaristic
approach to counterattack. It is the manifestation of dichotomy that global politics offer
refrain to in the modern history of terrorism studies.
Significance of this research is to bring new paradigm (or already existing one) to the
Terrorism Studies, which is Feminist IR, that would give the voices of marginalized. In
addition to that, it attempts to give insight into the Feminist theory.
While by using various methodologies, including non-traditional investigative
methods, feminist IR scholars have contributed to the study of international relations, through
reevaluating the roles gender play in the international arena and how it affects the notions of
dominance, authority, supremacy, and security. Feminist IR helps to dismantle the
formulations of hegemonic masculinity that has been rooted in IR politics – whereas
militarization and security are considered to be one of the main national interests,
securitization is viewed as the realm caused by potential risks to the state, feminist
perspective analyzes various interpretations of security, asking a question: "Who is being
secured?" ( Harel-Shalev 2017). The main objective of the feminist IR (Tickner, 1997) is to
consider in IR analysis and address gender inequality – a problem that is still concealed or
overlooked in international theory.
Purpose of this work is to analyze Feminist IR theory in the framework of Terrorism
and Security Studies. Thesis of the research is that terrorism studies can benefit from
Feminist IR, which offers an often disregarded perspective by applying the gender approach
to the analysis on the issues of security. The significance of this work is brought by looking
at situations that traditional IR theories, particularly realism, lack, and ask questions that are
usually neglected. By doing this, feminist IR scholars redefine security definition,
spotlighting the issues that are covered or silenced.
I expect to find at the voids that terrorism studies have not covered yet because of
gender-sensitive lense was neglected. I will use the research of Feminist IR theory and apply
that to the terrorism domain. My hypotheses is that if to apply the perspective that can be
reached following Feminist IR theory, counterterrorism can be enriched with new structure
and strategies.

Reference List

Enloe, C. (2000). Maneuvers: The international politics of militarizing women’s lives.

Univ of California Press.
 Enloe, C. (2014). Bananas, beaches and bases: Making feminist sense of
international politics (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Harel-Shalev, A. (2017). Gendering ethnic conflicts: Minority women in divided
societies–the case of Muslim women in India. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(12), 2115–2134.

Herschinge, E. (n.d.). Special Issue: Terrorism, Gender, and History. State of

Research, Concepts, Case Studies. Historical Social Research/ Historische Sozialforschung,
39(3), 149th ser., 46-66. Retrieved 2014, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/24146113?seq=1

International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. (n.d.).

Retrieved July 01, 2020, from https://www.un.org/law/cod/finterr.htm
Keohane, R. O. (1998). Beyond dichotomy: Conversations between international
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Sylvester, C. (2012). War experiences/war practices/war theory. Millennium: Journal
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Tickner, J. A. (1988). Hans Morgenthau’s principles of political realism: A feminist
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Tickner, J. A. (1997). You just don’t understand: Troubled engagements between
feminists and IR theorists. International Studies Quarterly, 41(4), 611–632.
Wibben, A. T. R. (2004). Feminist international relations: Old debates and new
directions. Brown Journal of World Affairs, 10(2), 97–114.