“’Where are the women?’” This is the central question to Cynthia Enloe’s pioneering book Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, in her endeavour to resituate women and women’s labour (whether domestic, sexual, manual or emotional) in their deserved spot within the centre of both the discipline and day-to-day practice of international politics. Enloe skilfully demonstrates the fundamental role women continue to play in the international arena through a series of observations spanning from the sexism of the international tourism industry, through the essential – if varied and frequently exploitative – roles of women on military bases, to the tragically unrecognised labour of “third world” women in the sweatshop
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However, Enloe succeeds in avoiding this categorisation not in her acknowledgement of the injustices of women across the globe but in her involvement in it, constantly questioning what life is like from the perspective of women, both white and non-white, frequently citing how the increased mobility of white American women has in fact limited the social mobility of women in less developed areas of the world. She does, however, fall down in her attempts to cover such a wide span of feminist issues, as other critiques such as Walsh have acknowledged, resulting in falling short of in-depth explanations in favour of covering more ground. Her discussion on “Nationalism and the Veil”, for example, spans a mere two pages and does not do justice to the “fierce debates about veiling [that] erupted during the 1980s” (Burhanudin and Dijk, Islam …show more content…
Free from the binary categories and camps of thought often associated with IR, such as realism/liberalism, Enloe can jump straight to focussing on other often unnoticed dichotomies that shape power relations, such as the reliance on the masculine/feminine divide to effectively sustain the economic trade system. One example of this is her focus on individual women such as Pocahontas and Carmen Miranda. In the case of the latter, Enloe demonstrates how the feminised Latina image was commodified to maintain friendly relations between the US and Latin America and “construct a new, intimate relationship between American housewives and a multinational plantation company” (Bananas 2). Since feminism is relatively new to IR, some scholars are preoccupied with ‘slotting’ it into an existing overarching theoretical arena, most commonly within a branch of liberalism. For example, although Ruiz acknowledges “how feminist theory explains the shortcomings of realism and liberalism” she also contends that “realism is the antithesis to achieving gender equality” (“Challenge” n.pag.). Enloe does not make a case for which ‘side’ she is on, instead observing the multifaceted implications of gender norms and restrictions within the social and political
However, Enloe succeeds in avoiding this categorisation not in her acknowledgement of the injustices of women across the globe but in her involvement in it, constantly questioning what life is like from the perspective of women, both white and non-white, frequently citing how the increased mobility of white American women has in fact limited the social mobility of women in less developed areas of the world. She does, however, fall down in her attempts to cover such a wide span of feminist issues, as other critiques such as Walsh have acknowledged, resulting in falling short of in-depth explanations in favour of covering more ground. Her discussion on “Nationalism and the Veil”, for example, spans a mere two pages and does not do justice to the “fierce debates about veiling [that] erupted during the 1980s” (Burhanudin and Dijk, Islam …show more content…
Free from the binary categories and camps of thought often associated with IR, such as realism/liberalism, Enloe can jump straight to focussing on other often unnoticed dichotomies that shape power relations, such as the reliance on the masculine/feminine divide to effectively sustain the economic trade system. One example of this is her focus on individual women such as Pocahontas and Carmen Miranda. In the case of the latter, Enloe demonstrates how the feminised Latina image was commodified to maintain friendly relations between the US and Latin America and “construct a new, intimate relationship between American housewives and a multinational plantation company” (Bananas 2). Since feminism is relatively new to IR, some scholars are preoccupied with ‘slotting’ it into an existing overarching theoretical arena, most commonly within a branch of liberalism. For example, although Ruiz acknowledges “how feminist theory explains the shortcomings of realism and liberalism” she also contends that “realism is the antithesis to achieving gender equality” (“Challenge” n.pag.). Enloe does not make a case for which ‘side’ she is on, instead observing the multifaceted implications of gender norms and restrictions within the social and political