Give an assessment of the Feminist critique of contemporary global issues. (2017, 10 Marks)
Cynthia Enloe’s question in Bananas, Beaches and Bases (1989), “Where are the women?“, sums up the feminist critique: global issues are framed through states, markets and armies, so those who bear their costs, often women, drop out of view. Feminists ask for a gender-sensitive lens that starts from individuals rather than inter-state relations alone.
The critique, issue by issue
| Issue | Mainstream framing | Feminist critique |
|---|---|---|
| Security and war | Defence of state borders | J. Ann Tickner (Gender in International Relations, 1992): security means freedom from physical, structural and ecological violence; conflict sexual violence is a tactic, not a by-product |
| Globalisation | Growth and efficiency | Feminisation of cheap, flexible labour; global care chains; unpaid care left uncounted |
| Environment | Technical, inter-state bargaining | Vandana Shiva: women dependent on nature bear degradation first |
| Human rights | Public, state-centred violations | Abuse in the home ignored until Vienna (1993) declared women’s rights human rights |
| Democracy | Formal voting rights | Women hold 27.5% of parliamentary seats (January 2026); presence is not power |
The strands within
- Liberal feminists seek to remove legal barriers and raise women’s share of decisions.
- Postmodern feminists probe the knowledge–power link: Carol Cohn showed how nuclear “technostrategic” language makes mass death discussable.
- Postcolonial feminists, following Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes” (1984), reject a monolithic “Third World woman” and insist that race, class and location shape subordination.
Assessment
Strengths:
- It changed practice: rape became a war crime and a form of torture at the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals, Resolution 1325 (2000) placed women in peace and security, and SDG target 5.4 recognises unpaid care.
- It exposes how “neutral” policy reproduces hierarchy, the rationale for gender mainstreaming.
Limits:
- Robert O. Keohane (1989) asked for testable propositions; much of the critique remains interpretive.
- Essentialism cuts both ways: Bina Agarwal (1992) faulted Shiva for romanticising women’s bond with nature instead of tracing it to property and labour.
- Women’s rights can be instrumentalised: the 2001 Afghanistan intervention was justified partly in their name, and their collapse after 2021 fuels the charge of selective Western concern.
- Recognition outruns resources: the 2026 Global Gender Gap Report projects about 120 years to parity, and a UN Women survey (July 2026) found that aid cuts had cost at least a million women in crises access to support.
Conclusion
The feminist critique is most persuasive as a corrective that widens what counts as a global issue and who counts in it, less so as a complete alternative theory. Its unfinished task is to turn recognition into funded, enforceable commitments without reproducing a Northern template.