Towards a Feminist International Political Economy (1999)

To create a feminist international political economy (IPE) we must challenge both scope and assumptions of traditional IPE. The spheres in which women are involved in international political economy, as well as gendered nature of international political, social and trade relations have been excluded from study of IPE. This pervasive exclusion, in a discipline which is consciously critical and open ended, makes IPE look depressingly similar to international relations and scholarship which it originally sought to critique. (1) As many feminist authors demonstrate, theory and practice of international political, social and economic relations is strongly gendered, relying on women's unpaid, or undervalued, labour to allow men to play visible public roles as workers, diplomats, soldiers and refugees. (2) A feminist IPE would widen scope of our study to include spheres dominated by women and to understand gendered nature of international politics which allows systematic differentiation between men and women to be understood as `natural'. In order to develop some suggestions for of a feminist IPE, I will outline what IPE is, why gender should be considered within it, and how IPE has dealt with issues of gender so far. Finally, I will consider what a feminist IPE might look like. I will suggest some new directions IPE should take in order to better represent gendered terms in which international political economy is experienced by people, and markets. IPE developed in 1970s as a response to a number of pressing international issues that could not be adequately explained by international relations and economics. It reconstituted political economy--which had preceded specialisation of disciplines of IR and economics--in a modern form. IPE theorists hoped that, by taking an interdisciplinary approach, they would be better able to grasp complex interaction of interests and events which precipitated break-up of Bretton Woods financial system, OPEC oil crisis, challenge of multi-national enterprises to state sovereignty and difficulties experienced by programs. Simple definitions of IPE's agenda suggest that IPE studies relationships between states and markets, (3) or the linkages between political and economic on one hand, and between domestic and international political economy on other. (4) This nexus is understood in very different ways by three dominant traditions of economic nationalism, economic liberalism and Marxism, and has been subjected to a wide range of interpretations. Continual debate between proponents of three main approaches has led to a vibrant field where new methodologies and interests flourish, albeit primarily within guidelines of each tradition. When, in 1984, Susan Strange attempted to shape direction of IPE research, she included history, population studies, money, trade, technology and law as those elements of international political economy ... that it would be wrong ... for any would-be student or teacher to overlook or ignore. (5) Strange's definition was only inclusive in terms of its methodologies; she explicitly excluded development economics as necessarily concerned with a part of world economy, developing countries, and not whole system. (6) Her definition thereby denied validity of dependency theories which had developed over previous decade as a critique of economics. Dependency theorists argued that, far from being unrelated, underdevelopment of Third World was directly connected to of First World. (7) Like many IPE theorists, Strange was torn between an interest in asking broader, deeper questions (8) and need to find a way to effect a synthesis of some kind. (9) Although IPE has been concerned with adding complexity to conceptual frameworks posed by IR and economics, and so has frequently appeared boundless, its expansionist tendencies have been countered by desire to create a coherent discipline. …