Study Of Feminist International Relations Theory

Feminist IR(International Relations) theory focus on women's unequal status in international relations and the connecting issues. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, feminist study emerged in the west IR theory. Under the gender perspective, feminists criticized and re-explained the IR theory and the important issues, such as power, security, and war and peace. The dissertation summarizes the creation, mainstreams and the main standpoints of the feminist IR theory, and analyses the contributions and the shortages of feminist IR theory. On the bases of these, the dissertation gives the proposals and discusses the future of the feminist IR theory.Taking the feminist political movement as the beginning, the dissertation traces the origin of feminist IR. Feminist political movement is started by the western women, and its purpose is the improvement of women's status in economy, politics, social lives, education, ideology etc. Feminist political movement started in the mid-19th century and has experienced three violent waves. During the second waves, the feminist studies emerged historically, and developed many various schools. Feminist academic studies absorb the advancement of science philosophy. Based on the feminist political movement and the feminist academic study, feminist IR theory emerged in the late 1980s. The transformation of the word situation and the dilemma of IR mainstreams provide the space of the feminist IR.According to different epistemology, feminist theory can be divided into feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint and postmodern feminist. The dissertation generalizes the feminist IR theory according to this epistemology division. Accordingly, there are feminist empiricism IR theory, feminist standpoint IR theory and feminist postmodern IR theory, and the relevant viewpoints of the political schools have also been mentioned here.In the following, the dissertation summarizes the relationships between feminism and the"mainstreams"of international relations. In the perspective of feminist, the mainstreams'opinions are male-centered, and need to be disclosed by the feminist. Feminists have divergence views with the"mainstreams", especially with realists and neo-realists. Respecting liberalists and constructivists, although the differences are mild relatively, there are still disagreements. In the process of criticizing, feminists get the queries and challenges as well, and have shown different relationships with the "mainstreams".Power, security, and peace and war are the core concepts of IR theory. Differentiating and analyzing the basic concepts, the dissertation interprets feminist analysis of mainstream IR perspectives about power, security, and war and peace and makes comprehensively inquiry into interactions between construction of IR knowledge and gender perceptions in it. Gender conceptions reflect social relations between different sexual groups. Feminists have added gender into IR and widened the vision of the field. However, by doing so, feminists exposure their severe shortages and limitations.In the last section, based on the merit and the shortages of the feminist IR theory, the dissertation tries to give the advices of the feminist IR study, and predict the future of it. The dissertation holds the opinion that feminist IR contributes to the IR study but has prominent limitations. Feminists reject the positivism method, and break the communication with the"mainstreams"at the same time. Feminists widen the discipline of the IR, but they overuse the perspective of"gender"as well. Accordingly, the dissertation gives the advices that feminists should combine the advantages of different schools, and accept positivism method. Feminists IR should also enhance the communications and interactions with the"mainstreams", and define the range of its study. By exploring the gender-related issues in the IR discipline, feminists will construct and improve their IR theory.