What do you think?
Rate this book
Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War
Laura Sjoberg positions gender and gender subordination as key factors in the making and fighting of global conflict. Through the lens ofgender, she examines the meaning, causes, practices, and experiences of war, building a more inclusive approach to the analysis of violent conflict between states.
Considering war at the international, state, substate, and individual levels, Sjoberg's feminist perspective elevates a number of causal variables in war decision-making. These include structural gender inequality, cycles of gendered violence, state masculine posturing, the often overlooked role of emotion in political interactions, gendered understandings of power, and states' mistaken perception of their own autonomy and unitary nature. Gendering Global Conflict also calls attention to understudied spaces that can be sites of war, such as the workplace, the household, and even the bedroom. Her findings show gender to be a linchpin of even the most tedious and seemingly bland tactical and logistical decisions in violent conflict. Armed with that information, Sjoberg undertakes the task of redefining and reintroducing critical readings of war's political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions, developing the beginnings of a feminist theory of war.
Considering war at the international, state, substate, and individual levels, Sjoberg's feminist perspective elevates a number of causal variables in war decision-making. These include structural gender inequality, cycles of gendered violence, state masculine posturing, the often overlooked role of emotion in political interactions, gendered understandings of power, and states' mistaken perception of their own autonomy and unitary nature. Gendering Global Conflict also calls attention to understudied spaces that can be sites of war, such as the workplace, the household, and even the bedroom. Her findings show gender to be a linchpin of even the most tedious and seemingly bland tactical and logistical decisions in violent conflict. Armed with that information, Sjoberg undertakes the task of redefining and reintroducing critical readings of war's political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions, developing the beginnings of a feminist theory of war.
480 pages, Paperback
First published July 23, 2013
5 people are currently reading
169 people want to read
About the author
Laura Sjoberg
32 books20 followersLaura Sjoberg is Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Her first book Gender, Justice and the Wars in Iraq was published in 2006. She has published articles on just war theory in the International Journal of Feminist Politics, International Politics and International Studies Quarterly. Her research focuses on gender, just war theory, international security and international ethics.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 5, 2020
This book completely reframes how war is traditionally discussed and determined. Sjoberg gives a necessary retransformation of the scope of war theory; exploring the nature, causes, consequences, and ethics of it through a gendered lens. It can get a little jargon-y and repetitive at some points, but it's easy enough to follow along so you don't get too lost. At its core, this book is a huge dunk on the gendered social hierarchy.
April 29, 2021
A fantastic if flawed work which both surveys present feminist IR/strategic theories, adds onto the discourse around those theories and inserts some wholly original theories as well.
As a relatively hard-boiled IR realist, I was surprised and impressed by what feminist theory had to offer to challenge, augment and even replace existing work. I look forward for more.
Note: Can be challenging to read due to often intensely academic language but worth the effort.
As a relatively hard-boiled IR realist, I was surprised and impressed by what feminist theory had to offer to challenge, augment and even replace existing work. I look forward for more.
Note: Can be challenging to read due to often intensely academic language but worth the effort.
December 19, 2024
This is a great book for those with a background in international relations who are looking for a place to start in exploring the relationship between gender (and gender subordination) and the making and fighting of war. I read the majority of this book in preparation for my thesis, and months later, decided that I ought to finish the last couple chapters before the end of the year. This book is NOT for those who haven’t studied IR before. I have a masters in IR and still found parts of this book to be heavy and confusing with IR jargon. Fortunately (and intentionally), Sjoberg has wonderful notes and citations for readers to further explore all the ideas she attempts to synthesize into a feminist theory(ies) of war.
Sjoberg argues that war is constituted by and constitutes gender and gendering is a key cause of war, as well as key impact. She uses a gender lens to analyze and critique existing systemic, dyadic, state-level, and individual approaches to theorizing wars’ causes, and also uses a gender lens to analyze how the strategic, tactical, and logistical elements (the fighting of war) are gendered.
Some aspects of this outline of a feminist theory of war I found to be suspect, confusing, or dubious, but other parts I found very helpful, enlightening, or at least interesting!! Below:
1. Sjoberg critiques and reformulates Walz’s neorealism. Anarchy as a permissive cause of war is either untrue or trivial. If anarchy is constant and invariable, it may explain the existence of war, but it cannot explain individual wars since war is not constant. Thus anarchy is never a sufficient cause of war. Sjoberg offers a different structural property of the international system that might explain both the possibility and occurrence of war: gender hierarchy. I’m not sure if I agree with Sjoberg that gender hierarchy functions as gendering state identities or dictating/distributing capability as it ought if it were the defining feature of the international system, but it definitely influences the political processes between states that could potentially lead to war. “Gendered competition between states select for a particular (masculinized) sort of power (dominance)….policy options such as empathy, positive-sum collaboration….empowerment are often missing from states’ toolboxes because the gendered system selects for power-over rather than power-to or power-with as a political process among units.”
2. War relies on gender stereotypes. In creating justificatory stories for war, states constructs linkages between masculinity and the military (“militarized masculinity”). Men are able to prove their masculinity through military service, particularly combat, and all men are expected to be transformed into people willing to go through the terror of soldiering, war-fighting, and killing. In these same justificatory narratives, women are constructed as feminized, vulnerable “beautiful souls” in need of protection. This both creates a motivation for war (protecting women) and a resource by which states are able to engage in war (men’s bodies). “War cannot be understood without the gendered notion of protection used to inspire male soldiers to fight.”
3. Sjoberg also uses a gender lens on classical strategic thought to understand how intentional civilian victimization is gendered. Using Clausewitz’s idea of “center of gravity,” a focal point where physical and psychological forces come together, Sjoberg argues that states (consciously and unconsciously) see their own centers of gravity in women as the symbolic and material centers of their collectives as women are biological reproducers, cultural reproducers, and the feminized others in need of protection. This makes them particularly vulnerable to intentional victimization by enemy belligerents because if belligerents fight for their women, it follows that an enemy belligerent can win by exterminating the women understood to be belonging to their opponent. By intentionally violating an enemy’s women (typically through wartime rape or forced impregnation), belligerents assault the masculinity of their opponents, emasculating them. A salient example is the mass rape of German women by the Soviets. “Hitler saw Soviet destruction of German women and children as the symbolic and material destruction of German civilization…women’s bodies are the markers and notepads of the destruction of others’ masculinity, abstracted as they suffer, bleed, and die.
4. Feminization, often through male rape, is an effective and frequently employed war tactic. It’s like that Oscar Wilde quote, “everything is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” Men are raped and feminized during wartime to indicate dominance and power-over. Sjoberg gives a great example of tactical feminization with the abuse of male prisoners in Abu Ghraib by American soldiers. The most public image that came out of that prison abuse scandal was a picture of Lynndie England standing over the sexually abused body of an Iraqi prisoner. This picture became so powerful and disturbing because it told a “story of the ultimate humiliation of Iraqi masculinity because Iraqi men were deprived of their manliness by American women.”
Way too long review is over, but those were the most interesting points and arguments I gleaned from the book!!
Sjoberg argues that war is constituted by and constitutes gender and gendering is a key cause of war, as well as key impact. She uses a gender lens to analyze and critique existing systemic, dyadic, state-level, and individual approaches to theorizing wars’ causes, and also uses a gender lens to analyze how the strategic, tactical, and logistical elements (the fighting of war) are gendered.
Some aspects of this outline of a feminist theory of war I found to be suspect, confusing, or dubious, but other parts I found very helpful, enlightening, or at least interesting!! Below:
1. Sjoberg critiques and reformulates Walz’s neorealism. Anarchy as a permissive cause of war is either untrue or trivial. If anarchy is constant and invariable, it may explain the existence of war, but it cannot explain individual wars since war is not constant. Thus anarchy is never a sufficient cause of war. Sjoberg offers a different structural property of the international system that might explain both the possibility and occurrence of war: gender hierarchy. I’m not sure if I agree with Sjoberg that gender hierarchy functions as gendering state identities or dictating/distributing capability as it ought if it were the defining feature of the international system, but it definitely influences the political processes between states that could potentially lead to war. “Gendered competition between states select for a particular (masculinized) sort of power (dominance)….policy options such as empathy, positive-sum collaboration….empowerment are often missing from states’ toolboxes because the gendered system selects for power-over rather than power-to or power-with as a political process among units.”
2. War relies on gender stereotypes. In creating justificatory stories for war, states constructs linkages between masculinity and the military (“militarized masculinity”). Men are able to prove their masculinity through military service, particularly combat, and all men are expected to be transformed into people willing to go through the terror of soldiering, war-fighting, and killing. In these same justificatory narratives, women are constructed as feminized, vulnerable “beautiful souls” in need of protection. This both creates a motivation for war (protecting women) and a resource by which states are able to engage in war (men’s bodies). “War cannot be understood without the gendered notion of protection used to inspire male soldiers to fight.”
3. Sjoberg also uses a gender lens on classical strategic thought to understand how intentional civilian victimization is gendered. Using Clausewitz’s idea of “center of gravity,” a focal point where physical and psychological forces come together, Sjoberg argues that states (consciously and unconsciously) see their own centers of gravity in women as the symbolic and material centers of their collectives as women are biological reproducers, cultural reproducers, and the feminized others in need of protection. This makes them particularly vulnerable to intentional victimization by enemy belligerents because if belligerents fight for their women, it follows that an enemy belligerent can win by exterminating the women understood to be belonging to their opponent. By intentionally violating an enemy’s women (typically through wartime rape or forced impregnation), belligerents assault the masculinity of their opponents, emasculating them. A salient example is the mass rape of German women by the Soviets. “Hitler saw Soviet destruction of German women and children as the symbolic and material destruction of German civilization…women’s bodies are the markers and notepads of the destruction of others’ masculinity, abstracted as they suffer, bleed, and die.
4. Feminization, often through male rape, is an effective and frequently employed war tactic. It’s like that Oscar Wilde quote, “everything is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” Men are raped and feminized during wartime to indicate dominance and power-over. Sjoberg gives a great example of tactical feminization with the abuse of male prisoners in Abu Ghraib by American soldiers. The most public image that came out of that prison abuse scandal was a picture of Lynndie England standing over the sexually abused body of an Iraqi prisoner. This picture became so powerful and disturbing because it told a “story of the ultimate humiliation of Iraqi masculinity because Iraqi men were deprived of their manliness by American women.”
Way too long review is over, but those were the most interesting points and arguments I gleaned from the book!!
Read
May 3, 2021if you're not an IR based academic I wouldn't even attempt this book.. the jargon makes it largely inaccessible. Even as an academic I struggled to cut through it.
November 8, 2024
I wrote an entire book review, this book is so incredibly worth your time and intellectual engagement.
December 2, 2024
Fantastic insights, even if quite heavily academic.
January 3, 2022
I read this book many years ago when I was inundated with other IR reads that blurred together during the chaotic haze of grad school, yet this one remains in mind even today, along with Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era by Ann Tickner.
Unfortunately, in political science academia, you spend years being fed the western male canon – the English, American, Chicago, and German schools – and are lucky to even have a prof who includes a 'gender unit' in their syllabus (such pluralism!). Of course, this type of pedagogy is antithetical to IR feminist theory, so it's moot. Going on 6 years in the profession, I was unsatisfied. How can anybody be satisfied with an ontology informed by Mill, Schmitt, Kant, Burk, Tocqueville, Milton, Morgenthau, Thucydides, Waltz?? The 'masculinist' and eurocentric pedestal in rationalism and [neo]liberalism is not subtle.
"But WAIT, we also have Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, and Fanon texts about 'the state of man', war, economy, and the social phenomenon of ‘law’. That makes it better right?" ... no.
I acutely felt there was a self-reproducing ‘soft violence' in the different configurations of essentialism, determinism, and empiricism for which these theorists are celebrated, but the fact that I didn't have the language to articulate it grated me. These classics are pumped out with, what to me, was a baffling sense of authority and legitimacy. We go to lecture and scribble down notes, and the whole time I'm thinking, am I crazy?? This can’t be it.
I'd long developed feminist principles and they were in friction with the prevailing IR epistemology. When I got to post-positivism, constructivism and post-structuralism, it was like a drip-feed that provoked my need. I'm positive this sensation was fomented by the fact that as a Brazilian-American, I have one toe in the global south and one in the north, one in the empire and one in the subjugated.
Needless to say, Sjoberg book blew my mind with her feminist theory of war and I desperately wanted more. One of these days I’ll come back to it again.
Unfortunately, in political science academia, you spend years being fed the western male canon – the English, American, Chicago, and German schools – and are lucky to even have a prof who includes a 'gender unit' in their syllabus (such pluralism!). Of course, this type of pedagogy is antithetical to IR feminist theory, so it's moot. Going on 6 years in the profession, I was unsatisfied. How can anybody be satisfied with an ontology informed by Mill, Schmitt, Kant, Burk, Tocqueville, Milton, Morgenthau, Thucydides, Waltz?? The 'masculinist' and eurocentric pedestal in rationalism and [neo]liberalism is not subtle.
"But WAIT, we also have Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, and Fanon texts about 'the state of man', war, economy, and the social phenomenon of ‘law’. That makes it better right?" ... no.
I acutely felt there was a self-reproducing ‘soft violence' in the different configurations of essentialism, determinism, and empiricism for which these theorists are celebrated, but the fact that I didn't have the language to articulate it grated me. These classics are pumped out with, what to me, was a baffling sense of authority and legitimacy. We go to lecture and scribble down notes, and the whole time I'm thinking, am I crazy?? This can’t be it.
I'd long developed feminist principles and they were in friction with the prevailing IR epistemology. When I got to post-positivism, constructivism and post-structuralism, it was like a drip-feed that provoked my need. I'm positive this sensation was fomented by the fact that as a Brazilian-American, I have one toe in the global south and one in the north, one in the empire and one in the subjugated.
Needless to say, Sjoberg book blew my mind with her feminist theory of war and I desperately wanted more. One of these days I’ll come back to it again.
Read
December 18, 2013Laura Sjoberg, AB'01
Author
From our pages (Jan–Feb/14): "Many current theoretical approaches to war are reductive, argues Laura Sjoberg. Realism, for instance, boils war down to a product of the state’s rational self-interest and military force. Sjoberg advances a new paradigm that examines international relations through a gendered lens to address factors including gender inequality, gendered violence, and the influence of emotion in politics. Gendering Global Conflict sheds light on the theory of war and offers practical insights for mitigating conflict in global politics."
Author
From our pages (Jan–Feb/14): "Many current theoretical approaches to war are reductive, argues Laura Sjoberg. Realism, for instance, boils war down to a product of the state’s rational self-interest and military force. Sjoberg advances a new paradigm that examines international relations through a gendered lens to address factors including gender inequality, gendered violence, and the influence of emotion in politics. Gendering Global Conflict sheds light on the theory of war and offers practical insights for mitigating conflict in global politics."
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews