Foreword

When SAIS Review discussed a proposal to center an issue around the topic of gender and international relations in 1998, there was little interest among the editors. Instead, the topic of choice was a review of NSC-68, the document that encompassed the roots of America's containment policy and for decades was the backbone of U.S. foreign policy. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, every contributor to that issue was male--after all, the topic belongs in the field of Strategic Studies. Last fall, SAIS Review decided to dedicate its Summer-Fall 2000 issue to the very theme that had barely been given a second thought only a year earlier: Gender and International Relations. In the former case all three senior editors were female, and in the latter case they all were male. This point has repeatedly been remarked upon as being curious, if not ironic. It is still rare that women break into the male-dominated field of Strategic Studies, just as few men dedicate themselves to Gender Studies--even if only as editors. There are, however, good reasons why it may not be so surprising that an all-male senior editorial team has decided to take on this topic.

First, Gender and International Relations is, as Diane Thorburn explains in her introduction to this issue, "in the process of becoming fully established as an accepted and legitimate sub-field of International Relations throughout the academy." It is frequently suggested that the study of gender is all political correctness and a passing trend. Yet, gender is one of the basic, defining factors in people's identity and relations, and thus impacts virtually every area of social science research, including, its seems safe to assume, International Relations.

Second, even if a look at the more prominent literature in the sub-field of Gender and International Relations suggests otherwise, gender is not only about women. Instead, the term gender describes the social aspect of relations between the sexes. Homosexual, transsexual, and transgendered individuals are just as much the subject of gender studies as are heterosexual men and women. A glance at the table of contents of this issue, however, reflects the dominance of women both as authors and as the subject of enquiry. Given that context, then, the initial reactions to our decision to put together an issue on gender may have been justified.

Yet, it has to be recognized that the almost exclusive focus of Gender and International Relations on women is itself a skewed development. Moreover, International Relations was one of the last social science disciplines to be reevaluated in the light of gender issues. Taken together, these points beg the question whether there is anything particular about the field that precludes a fruitful and comprehensive application of the approach. That is, does a gender perspective really add anything to International Relations? And what aspects of gender are relevant to the theory and practice of International Relations. Or, to cut it differently, what was missing before gender perspectives entered the stage?

Traditionally, International Relations has avoided thinking of men and women as embodied and socially constituted subject categories in at least three respects: First, people have been subsumed in the "more relevant"--and ostensibly gender-neutral--categories of statesmen, soldiers, refugees, prisoners of war, and publics. Second, International Relations has too readily accepted the common assumption that women are located inside a separate sphere of private life, where they engage in activities that have nothing to do with the usual activities International Relations chronicles and theorizes, such as war, crisis decision-making, regime formation, trade, and so on. Finally, the discipline has retreated to abstractions (the state) that mask a masculine identity (as competitive, rational, egoistic, power-seeking).

Diane Thorburn, in her survey of the literature on Gender and International Relations, identifies two key areas of enquiry: "What work is gender doing?" and "Where are the women?" The first question seeks a better and more complete understanding of the processes of identity formation and the impact on international relations. The second question aims to insert women into the International Relations discourse...