Embedded feminism is the attempt of state authorities to legitimize an intervention in a conflict by co-opting feminist discourses and instrumentalizing feminist activists and groups for their own agenda. This term was introduced in the analysis of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, but can also be applied to several historical examples where women's rights were used as justification and legitimization of Western interventionism. [1]
Originally, Canadian gender researcher Krista Hunt developed the conceptual framework of embedded feminism to describe the gendered nature of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the practice of the US government to justify the War on Terror in the eyes of the public. Hunt defines the concept as the "incorporation of feminist discourse and feminist activists into political projects that claim to serve the interests of women, but ultimately subordinate and/or subvert that goal". [2] Hunt coined the term embedded feminism referring to the "embedded journalism" or "embedded media" approach of the US Department of Defense which became prominent in the media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. [3] The US government attached journalists, photographers, and camera people to military units and granted them unprecedented access to the battle frontline. [4] Although embedded journalism provided the public with an exclusive view of the situation in Iraq, this practice was regarded as problematic, as it could undermine the independent reporting and promote the preferences of the government. [5]
The "far-reaching process of appropriating and subverting feminism through appeals to women's rights" [6] that is embedded feminism is different from simple co-optation practices by state authorities in so far as it goes beyond the absorption "of the meanings of the original concepts to fit into the prevailing political priorities". [7]
Krista Hunt argues that appeals to women's liberation have been embedded in political projects for centuries to mobilize feminists and their discourses. [8] [9] [10] A large body of feminist literature has analyzed the gender-related dimensions of (post-) colonial projects where feminists from the Global North were convinced to get involved in order to "save" other oppressed women. [11] [12] [13] [14] Such "white savior" narratives generally presuppose a homogeneity of women as an oppressed group, as demonstrated in the work of Chandra Mohanty, and put into play the orientalized nature of the seemingly dangerous "brown man". [15] [16] Thus, feminism which was incorporated in the modernization and civilization projects of imperial countries is argued to have helped strengthening colonialism and patriarchy instead of promoting women's rights. [17] Feminists also claim that feminist activists and their discourses have been instrumentalized for nationalist projects. During the Nasser era in Egypt for example, feminists are said to have played a major role in helping create a sense of cohesion and bonding and therefore directly contributed to the emergence of a national identity during and after the struggle for independence. [18] Nevertheless, women remained mostly absent from the public sphere of politics once the project succeeded. [19]
The history of the War on Terror throughout realm of international relations consistently showcases a male-stream discipline and a hyper-masculine war hero narrative. In other words, the story is narrated by these men, who hold high positions of power and are fixated to exemplify their heroic qualities to shield women from harm and collide with the world’s difficulties. [20] For example, according to the former US President, George W. Bush, the central goal of the terrorists is the brutal oppression of women…that is the reason this great nation, with our friends and allies, will not rest until we bring them all to justice. [21] This rallying cry by the Bush administration is exactly the narrative that is at question. Statements such as these can suggest that Western (and more specifically American) men and women are obligated to free the oppressed Afghan woman, and therefore provide reasoning for interventionist international policy. [22] It Furthermore, such statements often ignore the power dynamic between liberated white western women and the perceived oppressed Afghan women.
In 2001, the Bush administration began expressing their concerns for the situation of women under the Taliban regime. [23] According to Hunt, it invoked the struggle for women's rights and women's liberation as a rationale to justify the invasion of Afghanistan. This increased gender awareness can be interpreted as part of a framing strategy which conflated the War on Terror with the fight for women's rights as a proxy for universal human rights. In the eyes of many feminists, the rescue of oppressed women from the Taliban became the powerful normative legitimation of the invasion which obtained broad public approval. [24] More importantly, this strategy could align itself with feminist groups that are traditionally pacifist, and could win their approval, thereby removing a critical opposition. The doubts in the government's commitment to further women's rights through war arose due to its lack of interest before the September 11 attacks. [25] It was only after the terror attacks, that politicians in the US and in Europe began broadly supporting women's liberation from the Taliban. [26] [27] [28] Despite its usual non-violent stance, the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) supported the policies of the Bush administration and is therefore regarded as one of the most vocal feminist supporters embedded in the War on Terror. [29] Although the FMF saw the government's increased gender awareness as a success of their ‘Stop Gender Apartheid’ campaign, their involvement in Bush's political project was strongly criticized by other NGOs and the critical public because their role was considered to be legitimizing. [30] [31] Hunt sees embedded feminism as a concept that was used to advance the engendered war story of the Bush administration that the invasion of Afghanistan could liberate Afghan women. It has further created a division between feminist groups that supported the war and those groups that refused to get involved in the usurpation of feminism for war. [32] A division also emerged between "Western" feminists who strived to save the "other" women from an orientalised enemy and Afghan feminists who criticized the notion that war could liberate them. [33]
Hunt notes that there is a striking similarity between the logic of embedded feminism in colonialist projects and the War on Terror. Both are inherently Eurocentric and present the West as culturally and normatively superior to the "unmodern" Eastern societies. [34] This rationale would give the West a prerogative to intervene and rescue the "monolithic group" of other women [35] who have no agency on their own. Gayatri Spivak's post-colonial critique of the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized subjects in "Can the Subaltern speak?" condenses this relationship to the strategy of "white men saving brown women from brown men". [36] This analysis can also be applied to the seemingly neo-imperialist strategy that the US government pursued by framing Taliban men in Afghanistan as a danger to women of which were presented as victims in need of help from the West. Characteristic of Western hegemonic feminism was the disregard of Western actors for the opinions of Afghan women's groups who argued that a war would certainly have a negative impact on women and fuel fundamentalist sentiments. [37] [38] [39] In the aftermath, Bush's agenda was in fact interpreted as an attack on Islamic values and resulted in a backlash from the conservative forces. [40] Hegemonic feminism also tends to reproduce binary gender roles, especially in the visual representation of women and children as victims of war or oppression in the media. Cynthia Enloe has called this conflation of women and children as victimized subjects "womenandchildren", a single trope that is being invoked in patriarchical narratives to support state security interests. [41]
The unique nature of embedded feminism as a state strategy is not just the argumentation based on the representation of women and children as victims, but the conjunction of this discourse with the struggle for women's rights. Hunt's concept has made an impact on gender-related conflict research and has been applied to the wars in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan. [42] [43] Embedded feminism can also be used in other contexts such as neo-liberal globalization and can be applied to several other policy fields where pseudo-feminist arguments and feminist groups are misused to legitimize a state-led action or to construct an alternative story.
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field now overlaps with queer studies and men's studies. Its rise to prominence, especially in Western universities after 1990, coincided with the rise of deconstruction.
Postcolonial feminism is a form of feminism that developed as a response to feminism focusing solely on the experiences of women in Western cultures and former colonies. Postcolonial feminism seeks to account for the way that racism and the long-lasting political, economic, and cultural effects of colonialism affect non-white, non-Western women in the postcolonial world. Postcolonial feminism originated in the 1980s as a critique of feminist theorists in developed countries pointing out the universalizing tendencies of mainstream feminist ideas and argues that women living in non-Western countries are misrepresented.
Feminist geography is a sub-discipline of human geography that applies the theories, methods, and critiques of feminism to the study of the human environment, society, and geographical space. Feminist geography emerged in the 1970s, when members of the women's movement called on academia to include women as both producers and subjects of academic work. Feminist geographers aim to incorporate positions of race, class, ability, and sexuality into the study of geography. The discipline was a target for the hoaxes of the grievance studies affair.
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
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The men's movement is a social movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, primarily in Western countries, which consists of groups and organizations of men and their allies who focus on gender issues and whose activities range from self-help and support to lobbying and activism.
Laura Elizabeth Sjoberg is an American feminist scholar of international relations and international security. Her work specializes in gendered interpretations of just war theory, feminist security studies, and women's violence in global politics.
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Feminism is a broad term given to works of those scholars who have sought to bring gender concerns into the academic study of international politics and who have used feminist theory and sometimes queer theory to better understand global politics and international relations as a whole.
Equity feminism is a form of liberal feminism that advocates the state's equal treatment of women and men without challenging inequalities perpetuated by employers, educational and religious institutions, and other elements of society. The concept has been discussed since the 1980s. Equity feminism has been defined and classified as a kind of classically liberal or libertarian feminism, in contrast with social feminism, difference feminism, gender feminism, and equality feminism.
A variety of movements of feminist ideology have developed over the years. They vary in goals, strategies, and affiliations. They often overlap, and some feminists identify themselves with several branches of feminist thought.
Feminist ethics is an approach to ethics that builds on the belief that traditionally ethical theorizing has undervalued and/or underappreciated women's moral experience, which is largely male-dominated, and it therefore chooses to reimagine ethics through a holistic feminist approach to transform it.
Feminist security studies is a subdiscipline of security studies that draws attention to gendered dimensions of security.
Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974). Ecofeminist theory asserts a feminist perspective of Green politics that calls for an egalitarian, collaborative society in which there is no one dominant group. Today, there are several branches of ecofeminism, with varying approaches and analyses, including liberal ecofeminism, spiritual/cultural ecofeminism, and social/socialist ecofeminism. Interpretations of ecofeminism and how it might be applied to social thought include ecofeminist art, social justice and political philosophy, religion, contemporary feminism, and poetry.
Feminism in South Africa concerns the organised efforts to improve the rights of the girls and women of South Africa. These efforts are largely linked to issues of feminism and gender equality on one hand, and racial equality and the political freedoms of African and other non-White South African ethnic groups on the other. Early feminist efforts concerned the suffrage of White women, allowing them to vote in elections beginning from 1930s, and significant activism in the 1950s to demand equal pay of men and women. The 1980s were a major turning point in the advancement of South African women, and in 1994, following the end of the apartheid regime, the status of women was bolstered by changes to the country's constitution. Since the end of apartheid, South African feminism is a contribution associated with the liberation and democratization of the country, however, the movement still struggles with the embedded conservative and patriarchal views within some segments of South African society.
Scholarship on nationalism and gender explores the processes by which gender affects and is impacted by the development of nationalism. Sometimes referred to as "gendered nationalism," gender and nationalism describes the phenomena whereby conceptions of the state or nation, including notions of citizenship, sovereignty, or national identity contribute to or arise in relation to gender roles.
Raka Ray is an American sociologist and academic. She is a full-time professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the departments of Sociology and Southeast Asian Studies. She became the Dean of Social Sciences at UC-Berkeley in January 2020. Ray's research interests include gender and feminist theory, postcolonial sociology, emerging middle classes, South Asia, inequality, qualitative research methods, and social movements. Her current project explores changes in the meanings and relations of servitude in India. Ray is also an editor of the publication Feminist Studies.
Imperial feminism, also known as imperialist feminism, colonial feminism or intersectional imperialism refers to instances where, critics argue, feminist rhetoric is used to justify empire-building or imperialism. The term has come into greater usage in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with one scholar declaring it as something which "privileges inequality through gender bending that masquerades as gendered equality... Imperial feminism privileges empire building through war." The related term intersectional imperialism has applied to the foreign policy of Western nations which are perceived as engaging in, or supporting, imperialistic policies while at the same time promoting inclusive and progressive rhetoric at home.
