1.
“
Once again, this is the place to begin if you are organizing a course on gender and world
politics.” — Craig N. Murphy, Wellesley College
“
This is exactly the book we all want to introduce students to feminist IR: it’s global in
its reach, it’s down-to-earth in its style, it shows why ideas matter, and it offers stu-
dents the most up-to-date scholarly findings. Spike Peterson and Anne Runyan are them-
selves the creators of this whole field, so who better to entice students into thinking
new thoughts about this complex world?” — Cynthia Enloe, Clark University, author of
The Curious Feminist
Accessible and student-friendly for both undergraduate and graduate courses, Global
Gender Issues in the New Millennium analyzes gendered divisions of power and resources
that contribute to the worldwide crises of representation, violence, and sustainability.
The authors emphasize how hard-won attention to gender equality in world affairs can
be co-opted when gender is used to justify or mystify unjust forms of global governance,
international security, and global political economy.
In the new fourth edition, Anne Sisson Runyan and V. Spike Peterson examine the chal-
lenges of forging transnational solidarities to de-gender world politics, scholarship, and
practice through renewed politics for greater representation and redistribution. This
edition is revised to provide more support to readers with less of a background in gender
politics and includes framing questions at the opening of each chapter, discussion ques-
tions and exercises at the end of each chapter, updated data on gender statistics and
policymaking, case studies, and web resources.
ANNE SISSON RUNYAN is professor and former head of the Department of Women’s, Gen-
der, and Sexuality Studies, and recently directed the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center
at the University of Cincinnati. Her book publications include Gender and Global Restruc-
turing and Feminist (Im)Mobilities in Fortress(ing) North America.
V. SPIKE PETERSON is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the Univer-
sity of Arizona, where she holds courtesy affiliations in the Department of Gender and
Women’s Studies, the Institute for LGBT Studies, and International Studies. Her books
include Gendered States and A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy.
COVER IMAGE © ED KASHI/CORBIS
COVER DESIGN: MIGUEL SANTANA WENDY HALITZER
A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP
www.westviewpress.com
GLOBAL GENDER
ISSUES IN THE
NEW MILLENNIUM
Anne Sisson Runyan and
V. Spike Peterson
GLOBAL
GENDER
ISSUES
IN
THE
NEW
MILLENNIUM
FOUR
TH
EDI
T
ION
FOURTH EDITION
Runyan
Peterson

2.
Global Gender Issues
in the New Millennium
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3.
Dilemmas in World Politics
Series Editor: Jennifer Sterling-Folker, University of Connecticut
Why is it difficult to achieve the universal protection of human rights? How can
democratization be achieved so that it is equitable and lasting? Why does agree-
ment on global environmental protection seem so elusive? How does the concept
of gender play a role in the shocking inequalities of women throughout the globe?
Why do horrific events such genocide or ethnic conflicts recur or persist? These
are the sorts of questions that confront policy-makers and students of contem-
porary international politics alike. They are dilemmas because they are enduring
problems in world affairs that are difficult to resolve.
These are the types of dilemmas at the heart of the Dilemmas in World Politics
series. Each book in the Dilemmas in World Politics series addresses a challenge
or problem in world politics that is topical, recurrent, and not easily solved. Each
is structured to cover the historical and theoretical aspects of the dilemma, as well
as the policy alternatives for and future direction of the problem. The books are
designed as supplements to introductory and intermediate courses in interna-
tional relations. The books in the Dilemmas in World Politics series encourage
students to engage in informed discussion of current policy issues.
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4.
BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
Global Environmental Politics, Sixth Edition
Pamela S. Chasek, David L. Downie, and Janet Welsh Brown
International Human Rights, Fourth Edition
Jack Donnelly
The United Nations in the 21st Century, Fourth Edition
Karen A. Mingst and Margaret P. Karns
Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium, Fourth Edition
Anne Sisson Runyan and V. Spike Peterson
United States Foreign Policy in the 21st Century: Gulliver’s Travails
J. Martin Rochester
Democracy and Democratization in a Changing World, Third Edition
Georg Sørensen
Southern Africa in World Politics
Janice Love
Ethnic Conflict in World Politics, Second Edition
Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr
Dilemmas of International Trade, Second Edition
Bruce E. Moon
Humanitarian Challenges and Intervention, Second Edition
Thomas G. Weiss and Cindy Collins
The European Union: Dilemmas of Regional Integration
James A. Caporaso
International Futures, Third Edition
Barry B. Hughes
Revolution and Transition in East-Central Europe, Second Edition
David S. Mason
One Land, Two Peoples, Second Edition
Deborah Gerner
The Global Spread of Arms
Frederic S. Pearson
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5.
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6.
FOU RT H EDI T ION
Global Gender
Issues in the
New Millennium
ANNE SISSON RUNYAN
University of Cincinnati
V. SPIKE PETERSON
University of Arizona
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
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7.
WESTVIEW PRESS was founded in 1975 in Boulder, Colorado, by notable publisher
and intellectual Fred Praeger. Westview Press continues to publish scholarly titles and high-
quality undergraduate- and graduate-level textbooks in core social science disciplines.
With books developed, written, and edited with the needs of serious nonfiction readers,
professors, and students in mind, Westview Press honors its long history of publishing
books that matter.
Copyright © 2014 by Anne Sisson Runyan and V. Spike Peterson
Published by Westview Press,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may
be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case
of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address
Westview Press, 2465 Central Avenue, Boulder, CO 80301.
Find us on the World Wide Web at www.westviewpress.com.
Every effort has been made to secure required permissions for all text, images, maps, and
other art reprinted in this volume.
Westview Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United
States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please
contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street,
Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810–4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail special
.markets@perseusbooks.com.
Design by the Perseus Books Group
Composition by Cynthia Young
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Runyan, Anne Sisson.
Global gender issues in the new millennium / Anne Sisson Runyan, University of
Cincinnati, V. Spike Peterson, University of Arizona.—Fourth Edition.
pages cm.—(Dilemmas in world politics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8133-4916-9 (pbk.)—ISBN 978-0-8133-4917-6 (e-book) 1. Women—
Political activity. 2. World politics—21st century. I. Peterson, V. Spike. II. Title.
HQ1236.P45 2013
320.082—dc23
2013027993
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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8.
To our sisters,
for all that we share
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9.
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10.
ix
Contents
Acknowledgments to the Fourth Edition xi
Acknowledgments to the Third Edition xv
Acknowledgments to the Second Edition xix
Acknowledgments to the First Edition xxiii
Acronyms xxv
1 Introduction: Gender and Global Issues 1
The Intersectional Study of Gender 2
Gender as a Lens on World Politics 5
Gender and Global Issues 8
Gender and Global Crises 11
Gender Gains: Repositionings of Women and
Men in World Politics 17
Global Crises: Remasculinizations of World Politics 25
Mapping the Book 30
2 Gendered Lenses on World Politics 39
How Lenses Work and Why They Matter 40
The Power of Gender 54
The Power of Gender as a Meta-Lens in World Politics 64
Feminist World Politics Lenses 73
Global Gendered Divisions of Power, Violence,
Labor, and Resources 82
3 Gender and Global Governance 99
Feminist Approaches to Politics 102
Women Actors in Global Governance 104
Barriers to Women’s Participation in Global Governance 111
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11.
x Contents
Institutionalizing Global Gender Equality 121
Neoliberal Governmentality and the New Global Politics of
Gender Equality 131
Women in Politics versus Feminist Politics 133
4 Gender and Global Security 139
Feminist Approaches to Security 142
Gendered Security 144
Women, Militaries, and Political Violence 148
Men, Militaries, and Gender Violence 158
Gendered Peacemaking, Peacekeeping,
and Peace-Building 169
(De)Militarizing Feminism 173
Disarming Security 177
5 Gender and Global Political Economy 181
Feminist Approaches to Global Political Economy 185
Women, Gender, and Development 188
Anatomies of Neoliberal Globalization 193
Women, Gender, and Neoliberal Globalization 200
Gendered Financialization 215
Gendered Resources 221
Gendered Divisions of Resources 223
Toward Resisting Neoliberalism 232
6 Gendered Resistances 237
Feminist Resistance Politics 238
Toward Degendering World Politics 255
Suggested Activities for Research and Discussion 273
Web and Video Resources 281
References 289
About the Authors 309
Index 311
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12.
xi
Acknowledgments to the Fourth Edition
For the first time in two decades, I, alone, am writing these acknowledg-
ments. Spike elected to pass on continuing this project to engage in other
life activities. Its history and our longtime collaboration on it remain close
to her heart, and she remains a coauthor of this fourth edition in honor of
her guiding force, which launched the project, and in recognition of her
wisdom and words, which still grace the work in this latest permutation. I
am so grateful to her for all that we have shared along the way and for our
continuing friendship.
I also appreciate how supportive she was of my reimagining and re-
working of the third edition, which we both agreed had to capture con-
temporary feminist international relations and transnational feminist
thought and scholarship that foreground intersectional and anti-imperi-
alist analysis. Developments in gender and world politics inquiry to which
we were contributing in other projects had complicated germinal, “first-
generation” feminist international relations (IR) thinking, which gave
primacy to “the woman question” and which our first edition helped for-
mulate and disseminate and our second edition largely updated. We also
saw processes of governmental and corporate co-optation of feminism as
political, economic, and environmental crises were accelerating, which
demanded an analysis of the paradox of increased attention to gender in
the international arena at the same time that neoliberalism and militarism
were deepening. This observation constituted the central theme of our
third edition and led us to focus on complicating and repoliticizing fem-
inist approaches to world politics. The concerns we raised have been af-
firmed by other feminist scholars who noticed similar patterns at the same
time as and since our last edition. Our critical approach to the neoliber-
alization (and militarization) of feminism also has been reaffirmed by the
ways in which the issue of women’s global “empowerment” has been taken
up problematically in popular culture of late.
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13.
xii Acknowledgments to the Fourth Edition
In this edition, I continue our focus on how the increased visibility of
women as world political actors (in governance, militaries, macroeco-
nomic institutions, and peace-building) and yet as the most victimized in
the world (by poverty, disease, disasters, and domestic and international
violence) has made gender equality a new (at least, rhetorical) priority in
official and now popular imaginations. I continue to find in the now more
popularized forms this increased visibility have taken, such as celebrity-
studded philanthropic campaigns, often sponsored by corporations,
that encourage “rescue missions” of poor women in the global South by
Western consumers, can reinforce the very structural processes that are
productive of gender and other interrelated inequities and the human and
planetary crises such inequities reflect and induce. Such campaigns, in
prescribing individualist and market-based solutions to gender inequality
consistent with official responses I also continue to document and update,
shift attention and energy away from political analysis and activism and
do little to stem direct and structural violence. At the same time, there
have also been some very visible and popular political uprisings through-
out the world (Arab Spring, Occupy movements) since the last edition to
which I attend in this one that tell us that collective political resistance
and change are still possible, and that there are other ways of living, doing,
sharing, and being that are more consistent with contemporary feminist
perspectives on and commitments to social justice. The common thread
throughout all our editions of this book has been identifying the gender
and gender-related barriers to the furtherance of more just, less violent,
and environmentally sustainable political, economic, and social thought
and arrangements—a theme consistent with the Dilemmas series, which
assumes, as we do, that this is the central challenge of world politics.
Although I have not altered central arguments made in the third edi-
tion, this edition reflects some of the latest thinking on gender from fem-
inist, masculinity studies, queer, and transgendered perspectives on it and
some of the most recent research on gender in world politics in the areas
covered. New also in this edition are some further evolving critiques and
reformulations of feminism, particularly from postcolonial perspectives
and in an age of both official and popular neoliberal co-optations of it and
new poststructurally informed movements oppositional to neoliberalism
(and neocolonialism) that are reworking its meanings in different ways.
In recognition as well of how much more challenging it is to teach this
much more complicated and complicating treatment of gendered world
politics, which still addresses “women” (and “men”) but much more
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14.
Acknowledgments to the Fourth Edition xiii
intersectionally and in other ways more disruptive of these categories and
the multiple hierarchical dichotomies or binaries they promote, I have re-
organized and reworked several chapters and added more visual aids in
the form of textual tables and figures for each chapter that draw out key
terms and ideas in the text. I have also interspersed more references to
popular culture and given more attention to social media as spaces of both
depoliticization and politicization. As a result, I have also added more
websites and a list of videos to the resource list that can be used in con-
junction with the text. Finally, I have added a section that provides sugges-
tions for further research and discussion activities beyond the questions
posed at the beginning of each chapter to promote critical engagement
with the subject matter.
As always, I am grateful to the burgeoning community of feminist IR
and transnational feminist scholars, happily so large that I no longer know
most of them but benefit from their work and especially all the new work
that is continually represented in the pages of the International Feminist
Journal of Politics, for which I am an associate editor. My many friends
and supports in that community (too many to name, but you know who
you are!) keep me going. As always, I am also indebted to my students and
student supports. Anna Laymon, who recently graduated with her MA in
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Cincinnati
after completing her powerful culminating MA project on military sex-
ual assault, helped me with the research to update parts of the book.
Sean Keating, my fantastic graduate assistant while I directed the Charles
Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati in 2012–2013,
helped with graphics and the end stages of the manuscript production.
And as always, I am most thankful for the love and support of my partner,
Al Kanters, who continues to nurture me along with our delightful twin-
sister cats and to help me heal from the loss of family members, especially
my mother, whom I miss every day.
I finally thank Westview Press for continuing to see value in this proj-
ect, the editorial staff I worked with at Westview for their careful and kind
assistance, and the many faithful and new users of this book who engage
in and engage students in the kind of intellectual activism that can indeed
make better worlds.
Anne Sisson Runyan
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15.
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16.
xv
Acknowledgments to the Third Edition
Far from being merely a third edition, this book is a significantly new
treatment of global gender