IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS “W” STANDS FOR WOMEN IN “WHY” AND “(NO)WHERE”

Abstract

As the tittle proposes the aim of this paper is to understand the position of women in International Relations (IR) by utilizing feminism as an approach and the individual as the referent object of security. The essay is divided in 3 sections consecutively. The first section deals with the “why” and “where”; why women are marginalized in IR, this section touches upon epistemology and western philosophy that in turn allows us to locate the position of women in IR. The second section demands that rape is recognized as a weapon of war because it represents a threat to national security even by assessing it using a realist approach to IR with the state as a security referent object. Lastly, the third section discusses how realism took centre-stage as an approach after the catalyst event of 9/11 which resulted in some optimism and pessimism by feminists because the administration adopted its own kind of feminist rhetoric.