Hidden From International Relations: Women and the International Arena

Among the rare exceptions of relevant discussion of international relations literature are Georgina Ashworth , 'The UN Women's Conference and International Linkages in the Women's Movement' in Peter Willetts (cd.), Pressure Groups in the Global System (London: Frances Pinter, 1982), and Ellen Bonepath (cd.), Women, Power and Policy (New York and Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982), part 4.

Sheila Rowbotham , Hidden from History: Thirty Years of Women Oppression and the Fight Against it (London: Pluto, 1973).

For discussion of this issue see Edward Crapol (ed.), Women and American Foreign Policy (Westport, CT Greenwood Press. 1987). In the mid-1980s a Women's Foreign Policy Council was established by a group of US women, including Bella Abzug and Mim Kelber, calling for the location of a critical mass of women in senior foreign policy and defense positions.

See the article by J. Ann Tickner in this issue of Millennium.

For an overview of literature on this see Ruth Pearson , 'Latin American Women and the New International Division of Labour: A Reassessment', Bulletin of Latin American Research (Vol. 5, No. 2, 1986), and, for an earlier analysis, Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson , 'The Subordination of Women and the Internationalisation of Factory Production' in Kate Young, Carol Wolkowitz and Rosalyn McCullagh, Of Marriage and the Market: Women's Subordination in International Perspective (London: CSE Books, 1981).

For discussion of these issues see Sharon Macdonald , Pat Holden and Shirley Ardener (eds.), Images of Women in Peace and War (London: Macmillan, 1987), especially the essay by Ruth Roach Pearson who develops the distinction between a feminist critique based upon ideas of motherhood and one deriving from women's separation from the means of warfare. An excellent discussion of issues involved is Micaela di Leonardo 'Morals, Mothers and Militarism: anti-militarism and feminist theory', Feminist Studies (Voi. 11, No. 3, Fall 1985).

See Anne Wiltsher , Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War (London: Pandora 1985 ), and Lela Costin in Judith Stiehm (ed.) Women and Men's War (Oxford: Pergamon, 1983 ). A fascinating study of the relationship between the suffragette movement, the trades unions and the Irish independence movement on the eve of the First World War is given in George Dangerfield , The Strange Death of Liberal England (New York: Capricorn, 1961). Dangerfield's thesis is that the combination of these three opposition forces was threatening to overthrow the British state, and that the challenge was only deflected by the outbreak of war.

Judith Stiehm (ed.), op. cit ; Jean Bethke Elshtain , Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987). Elshtain's earlier work has been subject to considerable debate as in Judith Stacey , 'The New Conservative Feminism', Feminist Studies (Autumn 1983).

Judith Stiehm , Bring Me Men and Women: Mandated Change at the US Air Force Academy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972); Cynthia Enloe , Does Khaki Become You? The Militarisation of Women's Lives (London : Pluto Press, 1983); Wendy Chapkis (ed.), Loaded Questions: Women in the Military, (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 1981).

On the UN Decade for Women, see Carolyn Stephenson in Stiehm (ed.), op. cit. The classic study of women and development remains Ester Boserup , Women's Role in Economic Development (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970). Also, Gita Sen and Caren Grown , Development, Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World Women's Perspectives ( New York: Monthly Review Press, 1987).

On women and the EEC, see Catherine Hoskyns , 'Women, European Law and Transnational Politics', International Journal of the Sociology of Law (Vol. 14, No. 3/4, Winter 1986) and 'The Community of Women', Marxism Today (January 1987).

For a comprehensive overview, see Kumari Jarawardena , Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (London: Zed, 1986).

J.P. Nettl , Rosa Luxemburg , Abridged Ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 500-19; and Horace B. Davis (ed.), The National Question: Selected Writings by Rosa Luxemburg (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976).

These issues of women's rights and nationalist 'authenticity' have been posed especially sharply in countries where religion constitutes the national position on women: Ireland, Algeria and Iran have all been cases of this. A searing critique of 'reverse ethnocentricity' and the use of national-religious ideology to subordinate women in Iran is given by Azar Tabari , 'The women's movement in Iran: a hopeful prognosis', Feminist Studies (Vol. 12, No. 2, Summer 1986). Similar issues with regard to Iran are posed by Kate Millett , Going to Iran , (New York: Coward, McCann and Geohegan, 1982). For a recent spirited debate on 'feminist orientalism', see New Left Review (No. 170, July-August 1988).

Georgina Ashworth , 'A Feminist Foreign Policy', talk given to LSE International Relations Department General Seminar , February 1987.

I have developed this further in 'State and Society in International Relations: A Second Agenda', Millennium: Journal of International Studies (Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1987).