A Century of International Relations Feminism: From WWI Women's Peace Pragmatism PDF

International Studies Quarterly (2018) 62, 221–233 A Century of International Relations Feminism: From World War I Women’s Peace Pragmatism to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda...

International Studies Quarterly (2018) 62, 221–233 A Century of International Relations Feminism: From World War I Women’s Peace Pragmatism to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda J. ANN TICKNER AND JACQUI TRUE Monash University We examine feminism in international relations from the emergence of women’s peace pragmatism during WWI to the de- velopment of the United Nations (UN) Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda a century later. We argue that feminism did not come late to international relations. Rather, international relations came late to feminism. Moreover, we show how the principles articulated by women peace activists at the 1915 Hague Conference represent distinct contributions to the dis- cipline. These principles reflect a pragmatic approach derived from women’s experiences of promoting peace and inclusion. The pragmatism of these principles is echoed by, and further developed in, four pillars of the WPS agenda—as shaped by advocates of women’s rights, working through processes of trial and error, to gain state support for advance principles of equal and lasting peace. States may have rejected discussion of women’s rights as an appropriate matter for international negotia- tions in 1915. But with the evolution of women’s political rights during the twentieth century, it is now possible to advance a feminist perspective on international peace and security. By recovering neglected aspects of the last century of international re- lations’ feminism, this article helps further an alternative, pragmatist perspective on ways of knowing and doing international relations. We Don’t Know Why We Are Fighting: Can’t You Women Help Us?1 1915, was completely absent. There, more than fifteen hun- International relations emerged as an academic discipline dred women from twelve nations met to draw up plans for in the early twentieth century, around the time of World War peace following “the war to end all wars” (Balch quoted in I (WWI) (see Hill 1999; Lebow 2014). The devastation of Addams et al. 2003, 89). the war drove scholars to try to understand the causes of In The Political Discourse of Anarchy, his revisionist history military conflict, with the aim of making a more peaceful of the discipline, Schmidt (1998, 5) argues that, in order world. In the process, those scholars helped create interna- to critically examine contemporary international relations tional relations as a field of study. In more recent years, the scholarship and help understand its assumptions, it is vital field held a series of retrospectives to mark the centennial that we revisit its history.3 Yet, this disciplinary history rarely of the start of the war. Yet, in spite of claims that WWI is includes women, or issues of concern to women. Aside from the most studied war in history,2 little discussion of women’s Lynch’s (1999) work on interwar peace movements and the peace activities appears in either these retrospectives or the realist-idealist debate, histories of the early discipline have discipline’s broader analyses of WWI. Scholarly discussion of paid little attention to women and gender issues. Until quite an important meeting held in The Hague, Netherlands, in recently, international relations scholarship was almost ex- clusively dominated by men and, in consequence, men’s concerns. Few women numbered among the leading schol- ars in the field.4 Jacqui True is a professor of politics and international relations and director Thus, it should not surprise us that the field has paid no of Monash University’s Centre for Gender, Peace, and Security. She is also an attention to the deliberations of women at The Hague who, Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Global Fellow, Peace Research like early scholars of world politics, also sought to construct Institute, Oslo. knowledge that could contribute to building a more peace- J. Ann Tickner is professor of politics and international relations at Monash ful postwar world. The Hague women wrote insightfully University. She is also a professor emerita in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California, distinguished scholar in residence at about the causes of war and possibilities for its prevention. American University, and past president of the International Studies Association. They developed tools for understanding and preventing mil- Authors’ note: We wish to thank Emma Walsh Alker for her research assistance itary conflict. Throughout the twentieth century women ac- on this paper, Karin Aggestam, Jason Ralph, Sara Davies, as well as the three tivists worked hard to get issues, such as gender-based vio- reviewers for their helpful comments and constructive engagement with the ar- lence and women’s participation in peace processes, on the gument presented here. Jacqui wishes to acknowledge the Australian Research agenda of states. But women have had a hard time having Council Future Fellowship scheme, FT 1048748, which supported her research on this article. We are also grateful for the feedback of the Women’s Interna- their voices seen as authentic in matters of international pol- tional League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and other interested women at itics, particularly those related to war and national security. a public presentation in Canberra, Australia, where we first tested some of these ideas. We dedicate the article to WILPF and women peace activists across nations and generations whose pragmatic commitments to peace inspired us to research 3 and write this article. Claiming that scholars produce unreliable accounts of their field’s histories 1 Emily Balch, a delegate to the Hague Conference, reporting on what sol- in order to obscure certain issues, Vitalis (2015, 1–8) argues that race and empire diers, wounded in WWI, said to their nurses (Balch quoted in Addams, Balch, were central issues for early international relations scholars and key to under- and Hamilton 2003, 89). standing the history and development of the field. 2 4 In a review article marking the one hundredth anniversary of WW1 (Vasquez The 2011 Teaching, Research and International Policy (TRIP) TRIP survey 2014), women wrote only eight out of seventy three articles cited, three had listed only two women among the twenty most influential international relations women coauthors, and the same woman authored six of the eight. scholars around the world. Tickner, J. Ann, and Jacqui True. (2018) A Century of International Relations Feminism: From World War I Women’s Peace Pragmatism to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1093/isq/sqx091 © The Author(s) (2018). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/62/2/221/4969394 by Adam Ellsworth, Adam Ellsworth on 13 July 2018  222 A Century of International Relations Feminism It took nearly a century for feminist international relations, Women’s Peace Movements during World War I: an approach motivated by some of the same concerns, to Early Interventions into Feminist International Relations enter the field.5 And many scholars still see feminist con- cerns as “women’s issues” that lack significance for the wider Women’s Peace Party discipline. In the fall of 1914, Rosika Schwimmer of Hungary and While conventional disciplinary histories suggest that Emmeline-Pethick Lawrence of England, both of whom feminism came late to international relations, we argue were to play a major role in the ICW, traveled around the that, the discipline has come late to feminism. Interna- United States, soliciting support from American women for tional relations has completely neglected the longer tradi- ending the war in Europe. In response, Jane Addams con- tion of feminist theorizing about international peace and vened a meeting of women’s peace groups in Washington security, as well as its pragmatist approach.6 We demon- DC in 1915 out of which the WPP emerged, a party whose strate this argument by showing the connection between platform was very similar to The Hague resolutions. the principles agreed to by women at The Hague and Since the mid- to late-nineteenth century, women those informing women, peace, and security activism at throughout Europe and the United States, had been form- the United Nations (UN) a century later. Both offer a dis- ing women’s peace groups. Swedish feminist Frederika Bre- tinct, feminist form of pragmatism in the context of rela- mer first promoted the idea of a women-only peace move- tions between states that are marked by cooperation as well ment in 1854. This idea that was realized in practice in 1868 as war. when a Swiss woman, Marie Geogg, founded the Association We begin by documenting some of the early history Internationale des Femmes (Berkman 1990, 145).9 Bertha of feminist contributions to understanding international Von Sutter, a Viennese feminist who published an influen- politics. While women’s writing on these issues precede tial book Lay Down Your Arms (1889), was an early advocate the twentieth century,7 we begin our story with women’s of arbitration, an important principle of the international peace activities during WWI. We focus specifically on the peace activism of the late nineteenth century that was, in Women’s Peace Party (WPP) and the International Congress turn, enshrined in The Hague resolutions. of Women (ICW) held at The Hague in 1915. We do so The linking of peace with economic and social justice, because their agendas were similar to that of early interna- found in many of these early movements, was also an im- tional relations. Foreshadowing issues that came much later portant aspect of The Hague resolutions. And as in these to the discipline, these women claimed that, in the modern earlier movements, leaders of the WPP claimed that, since world, principles of gender equality, social justice, and peace women were responsible for the care of children, they best were crucially intertwined.8 understood the values of preserving life and could there- We focus on the writings and activities of Jane Addams fore better resolve international conflicts without resorting since she was president both of the WPP and the ICW, as to violence. While the WPP women saw women and men as well as one of the founders of the pragmatist school of different, they saw this difference leading to a radically re- philosophy. We show how a feminist form of pragmatism vised society based on sexual equality and peaceful human is reflected in principles that emanated from The Hague relations—in other words, the creation of an egalitarian, an- Women’s Congress. drogynous society (Schott 1985, 18–20).10 In part two we explore how feminist activists and scholars The WPP, with Addams as its first president, was formed have debated and researched these same foundational prin- in response to the pleas of European women in the midst ciples over the past thirty years, principles that have con- of conflict. Its platform addressed issues related to that tributed to the emergence of the UN Women, Peace and war, most of which were later incorporated into resolutions Security (WPS) agenda and to pro-feminist foreign policies. adopted at the ICW. The 1915 platform stated that the term We analyze both continuities and departures from the ear- “concert of nations” should supersede “balance of power” lier principles revealing their shared pragmatism. In part and called for the formation of an international police force three we discuss the similarities between the pragmatism to replace national militaries. It also urged removal of the deployed by early feminist peace activists and contempo- economic causes of war and singled out the private man- rary feminist knowledge-building. In the conclusion, we pro- ufacture and sale of arms as of special concern. Claiming pose that feminist international relations and, in particular, that women have a vested interest in developing a global its scholarship and activism surrounding WPS both reflects consciousness, Addams exhorted the women to protest what and extends the feminist pragmatist century-long tradition she termed “a tribal form of patriotism” (see Addams 1907, of theorizing for social change. 216). International in its orientation from the start, the WPP merged into the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in 1919 with Addams as its first pres- ident (see Confortini 2012). 5 While women had been writing about international relations for a long time, feminist international relations only entered the discipline in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the publication of works such as Elshtain (1987), Enloe (1989), Tickner (1992), Sylvester (1994b), and True (1995). 6 International relations feminists have discussed women’s peace activism dur- 9 ing the early twentieth century (see Confortini 2012; Sluga and James 2016; Until the outbreak of WWI, the suffrage and peace movements were linked. Ashworth 2011; Lynch 1999). However, many suffragettes did support the war, and the International Woman 7 Although not specifically focused on international politics, some earlier ex- Suffrage Alliance did not support The Hague Congress (see Kamester and Vel- amples of feminist writings include Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Vindication of the lacott 1987). For a more detailed analysis of women’s peace movements in the Rights of Women (1792), Harriet Taylor Mill’s The Enfranchisement of Women (1851), nineteenth century, see Berkman (1990). 10 and John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869). Women peace activists’ claims about women’s unique perspective on peace 8 The Hague women used the term women’s equality. We use gender equality in need not be based on an account of innate biological differences. See Weldon recognition of the multiple masculinities and femininities explored by contempo- (2011) and Young (1997, 12–37) for a political theory of women’s perspective rary feminists. rather than women’s (inherent) “interests.” Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/62/2/221/4969394 by Adam Ellsworth, Adam Ellsworth on 13 July 2018  TICKNER J. ANN AND JACQUI TRUE 223 The International Congress of Women ated to offer continuous mediation and that foreign poli- cies of all states be subject to democratic control. Democracy The days in The Hague gave me an answer to the question meant equal political rights and participation for women. In which I had asked myself since the outbreak of war in anxious this respect, the women’s peace principles were prospective days and weary nights: where are the women?11 international norms interconnected with, but also predat- In April 1915, shortly after the WPP meeting, fifteen hun- ing, the full realization of the international suffrage move- dred women from twelve countries on both sides of the con- ment. Section four urged that another Hague conference flict, as well as women from neutral states, traveled to The be convened immediately following the war, as well as the es- Hague, Netherlands, to attend a congress. The Congress’s tablishment of a permanent International Court of Justice. aim was to draw up a set of peace proposals and initiate talks The Congress advocated that representatives of the people, to end the war. The women undertook this journey to The including women, should also participate in peace negotia- Hague, a city chosen because it symbolized international- tions. H.M. Swanwick, a member of the British delegation, ism, at considerable personal peril. Traveling in wartime was noted that it was unacceptable that only the men who made dangerous, due to the presence of warships and submarines. war were permitted seats at the peace table. Recognizing Some of the women’s home countries put prohibitions on that private profits accruing from arms sales were a great their travel; the British government refused permits to 180 hindrance to abolishing wars, the Congress recommended women; French women who tried to attend were arrested that states, rather than private industry, should control the (New York Times 1915a, 4). manufacture and international sales of arms and munitions. While certain newspapers reported fairly on the meet- The final section recommended that the Congress ap- ing, most were condemnatory. Alice Hamilton of the US point envoys to carry the messages expressed in the reso- delegation reported that the Dutch press was contemptu- lutions to the rulers of belligerent and neutral nations of ous and the English press nasty (Chambers 1991, 57). In Europe. Addams, as ICW president and as a delegate from an article in Metropolitan Magazine of 1915, condemning the the United States, a country that was still neutral at the time, United States’ reluctance to enter the war, former presi- participated in all the groups that toured the major Euro- dent Theodore Roosevelt bemoaned America’s “lapse from pean capitals. The delegations found that older men ex- virile manliness.” He took aim at the Hague women, de- pressed more enthusiasm for war, while the younger men scribing them as a “shrieking sisterhood of pacifists,” “ami- who did the fighting were more pragmatic and more ready able peace prattlers” who uttered silly platitudes of com- to accept that war was an illegitimate method of settling in- fort to the enemy (Roosevelt 1915, 12). While the women ternational disputes (Addams et al. 2003, 70–73). Although were condemned for being idealistic and impractical (New Addams conceded that they were received cordially, she con- York Times 1915b, 10; Cavillier 1915),12 many points in cluded that militarism is firmly lodged in men’s minds. Both the Congress’s resolutions were remarkably forward look- Addams and Emily Balch spoke with US President Woodrow ing. Elshtain (2002, 225) claims that the resolutions antic- Wilson and presented the ICW resolutions to him. While ipated what was to become the League of Nations. They they failed to convince him of their mediation plan, many were also strikingly similar to the eight UN Security Council of the resolutions looked very similar to Wilson’s Fourteen (UNSC) resolutions adopted between 2000 and 2015, res- Points.15 olutions that comprise today’s UNSC’s WPS agenda as we discuss in the second section of this article. The twenty resolutions adopted at The Hague were di- Feminist Pragmatism vided into seven sections, the first of which was called Better it is for philosophy to err in active participation in the Women and War.13 Section one challenged the notion that living struggles and issues of its own age and times, than to women could be protected in war, noting that, in all wars, maintain an immune monastic impeccability … women are especially vulnerable to violence.14 In a speech to the WPP several months earlier, Jane Addams, who was John Dewey (in Seigfried 1996, 261)16 elected president of the Congress, had noted that civilians Life in a settlement … teaches you that education and culture more generally were dying at a rate of five civilians to one have little to do with real wisdom, the wisdom that comes from soldier killed on the battlefield. She also argued that giving life experience. care to children, the sick, and the elderly had to be sacri- Alice Hamilton (in Seigfried 1996, 77) ficed in times of conflict (Chambers 1991, 55). Deegan (2003, 24) claims that The Hague resolutions Recognizing the rights of self-determination and self- are clear statements of the theory and practice of feminist government, sections two and three urged states to begin pragmatism, the key principles of which are the importance immediate negotiations for a just peace. These negotiations, of democracy as a group process in which women’s par- the resolutions held, should include arbitration efforts— ticipation is crucial and education as a rational force for the implication being that no nation should be required to social change. Deegan (2003, 29) asserts that much of to- surrender unconditionally (Elshtain 2002, 224). They also day’s women’s peace activism, for instance around the WPS recommended that a conference of neutral nations be cre- agenda, carries forward ideas articulated in feminist prag- matism a century ago. And the pragmatism, espoused by 11 Lida Gustava Heymann, German delegate to the ICW (quoted in Addams these thinkers, bears a striking resemblance to contempo- et al. 2003, 118). A century later, Enloe (2014, 6) asked this same question. rary feminist knowledge building articulated in feminist in- 12 In a letter to the New York Times, dated April 20, 1915, Louis Cavillier, chair- ternational relations and WPS scholarship today. man of the New York Assembly Committee on Military Affairs, described The Hague principles as “silly, base, and hysterical in the extreme.” 13 15 Content of The Hague resolutions and discussion at the Congress are taken Wilson’s Fourteen Points, a statement of principles for world peace, deliv- from a report entitled “Towards Permanent Peace” issued by the British Commit- ered in a speech on January 8, 1918, contained similarities with the Hague prin- tee of the International Congress, published in June 1915. ciples as Addams pointed out (Elshtain 2002, 225; see also Lynch 1999). 14 16 Wartime propaganda focused on men “rescuing” women and children Certain male philosophers, including John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, (Berkman 1990, 154). The Hague women already articulated the “protection and William James, were important allies of feminist pragmatists (Addams et al. myth,” an idea central to contemporary feminism. See Stiehm (1982). 2003, 26). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/62/2/221/4969394 by Adam Ellsworth, Adam Ellsworth on 13 July 2018  224 A Century of International Relations Feminism First introduced in a lecture delivered by William James could live with, and educate, the least privileged in a form in 1898, American pragmatism holds that people need to of communal (rather than top-down) learning. question what they think in order to move beyond abstract Seigfried (1996, 199) claims that it was the Hull House thought and create useful knowledge for solving everyday women who pioneered a feminist pragmatist approach to problems. James claimed that what makes beliefs true is not problem solving that put knowledge at the disposal of soci- their ability to stand up to logical scrutiny but their ability ety’s poorest members. Addams defined a settlement as an to lead us to more useful relations with the world (Menand attempt to express the meaning of life in terms of life itself, 1997, xiv).17 John Dewey, another noted pragmatist of the in forms of activity. “The settlement stands for application as period, was also a friend of, and collaborator with, Jane Ad- opposed to research; for emotion as opposed to abstraction; dams. for universality as opposed to specialization” (Daynes and Dewey criticized the distinction between mind and mat- Longo 2004, 78). While specialized knowledge seeks to find ter prevalent in the philosophy of his time, a split that has clinical material with the motive of analyzing it in a labora- been foundational for feminist critiques of western knowl- tory, universal knowledge aims to discover what knowledge a edge (Lloyd 1984; Harding 1991; Cochran 1999). Dewey at- group may possess. Addams (1997, 275) believed that schol- tributed the origins of this dualism to classical Greek phi- ars should become members of communities plagued by the losophy that formalized the Greeks’ separation of rational problems their theories were supposed to solve. In other and theoretical knowledge, the domain of aristocrats and words, knowledge must be useful for solving life’s problems. free citizens (all of whom were men), and practical knowl- Addams (1997, 283) was deeply critical of the association edge, the concern of those tasked with menial labor (women of knowledge with its monetary value. She castigated scien- and slaves) (Seigfried 1996, 241). He chastised the formal- tists’ idle thirst for knowledge that lacked any relation to ism of philosophy for withdrawing from the social problems human life. Early feminist pragmatists frequently used the of his time (Cochran 1999, 178). Dewey also wrote about term sympathetic understanding. Its meaning is similar to con- education and founded the Laboratory School, a children’s temporary feminism’s emphasis on empathetic cooperation as a experimental school attached to the University of Chicago. method of inquiry (Sylvester 1994a; Aggestam and Bergman The school adhered to his philosophy of learning by doing, Rosamond 2016). an idea that was adopted, and possibly partly formulated by, By talking about social (public) claims of her settle- Addams. Dewey greatly respected Addams and cited her in- ment work, Addams questioned the gendering of the pub- fluence on his own work. He called her first book Democracy lic sphere for political matters and the private sphere for and Social Ethics “one of the great books of our time” and domestic and personal ones (Knight 2005, 256). She saw used it in a course he taught at the University of Chicago women as caught in an oppressive system of power that con- (Seigfried 1996, 228). Indeed, Addams made equal contri- fined them to the private sphere. Knight (2005, 256) claims butions to the early formulation of pragmatism, yet later that this was one of Addams’ most original, if neglected, con- philosophers have never credited or cited her work.18 tributions to social and feminist thought. Addams described The University of Chicago had been coeducational since the settlement founders as “experimenters,” learning from its founding in 1892. By 1902, women undergraduates out- experience and always willing to change their methods as numbered men, something that greatly alarmed its presi- the environment demanded. Contrary to her earlier idealist dent. Fearing the “feminizing” of the university, which he beliefs, she had come to realize that truth was contingent, claimed would discourage men from attending, he pro- not absolute, and must be discovered through experience.19 posed gender segregation, a move that was never fully in- In Twenty Years at Hull House, Addams tells how she stituted in practice (Seigfried 1996, 82). Pragmatist philoso- learned not to assume a patronizing attitude, but to interact phy being contextual, grounded in experience and rejecting sympathetically with her neighbors and come to understand the neutral observer, proved especially appealing to women by listening to those with whom she worked, rather than im- students; it allowed them to trust their own experiences, posing solutions upon them. More recent feminist political even when these might run counter to accepted norms. theory likewise stresses listening attentively to the voices of Women pragmatists took pragmatism one step further by others and sees it a political practice crucial to the quality of claiming that scholars should become members of commu- democracy and as an ethic of responsibility in international nities plagued by the problems that their theories aimed relations (Robinson 2011). to solve (Seigfried 1996, 58). But since women were largely Knight (2005, 357) claims that the revelation that truth excluded from tenured positions in US philosophy depart- must be discovered through experience was what started Ad- ments, their ideas were not carried forward. Those who did dams on the path toward becoming a pragmatist philoso- follow the pragmatist tradition worked mainly outside aca- pher. This path was complete by the time she gave her 1895 demic institutions (Seigfried 1996, 107). speech on the Pullman strike of 1894 in Chicago, which Whereas Dewey developed his ideas on pragmatism as pitted workers against the paternalistic management style chair of Chicago’s philosophy department, Addams articu- of George Pullman. In that speech, Addams elaborated on lated hers through her work at Hull House (Menand 1997, the parallels she saw between, on the one hand, the power xxiii) where Dewey was a frequent visitor, giving lectures and imbalance between workers and management and, on the engaging in philosophical conversations with Addams. Ad- other hand, the imbalance in the father-daughter relation- dams implemented her ideas about pragmatist knowledge ship, a relationship that severely constrained women’s pub- through the establishment of settlements in the most de- lic role (Knight 2005, 357). Published ten years later under prived city neighborhoods where those with more education the title “A Modern King Lear,” the speech compared Pull- man to King Lear and his industrial paternalism to domes- tic paternalism. Addams claimed that the emancipation of 17 This has been a key epistemological debate in international relations theory since the 1950s. Jackson (2011, 188–212) provides an excellent analysis of this 19 debate. Addams’ evolving attitude to truth is consistent with her developing prag- 18 Dewey himself was reluctant to acknowledge his female collaborators matist philosophy. For a fuller articulation of the contingency of truth claims ar- (Seigfried 1996, 49). Seigfried (1996, 45) claims that philosophers have relegated ticulated by early pragmatist philosophers such as Dewey, see Cochran (1999,178– Addams to sociology while sociologists describe her as a social worker. 79). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/62/2/221/4969394 by Adam Ellsworth, Adam Ellsworth on 13 July 2018  TICKNER J. ANN AND JACQUI TRUE 225 the worker cannot come about without the emancipation of ing for women in city government signaled that women had the employer. Critiquing both the state and the family for much to offer the public sphere (Fischer 2006, 6). their patriarchal structures, she asserted that both are pre- The WPP also sought to break down the dichotomous re- served through continuous reconstruction (Seigfried 1996, lationship between reason and emotion in thinking about 229–31). international relations. In her presidential address to the It is interesting to note that, at the end of the nineteenth ICW, Addams suggested that war occurred because appeals century, there was also an emergent school of race theo- to peace had principally been made through appeals to rists. Like feminists, race theorists were attracted to prag- men’s reason. Instead, she argued, appeals to peace must matism because of its illumination of oppressive social and also rely on emotion and the “human urgings to foster life” economic hierarchies and its openness to possibilities of on- (Addams 2003 , 78). She claimed that these qualities going social change. Both Alain Locke and W.E B. Du Bois are not peculiar to women (or to mothers) but to broader were students of William James.20 Du Bois, who drew on human desires. Blurring the dichotomy between rational the Hull House model, was the only male pragmatist who men and emotional women, while emphasizing women’s made the link between racism and sexism. While explicitly longer experience as nurturers of human life, Addams was dealing with the oppressions of black women and their rela- able to lessen the distinction that has been used to exclude tionship to slavery, Du Bois, writing in 1920, claimed that all women from the supposedly rational arena of policy and women were oppressed by their roles in the private sphere. diplomacy without diminishing women’s special responsibil- Recognizing that black women worked outside the home ity for peace (Fischer 2006, 20). in greater numbers than white women, Du Bois noted that Many of the early pragmatists were also evolutionists, a their wages fell considerably below those of working males theory popular at the end of the nineteenth century. Evo- (Seigfried 1996, 106). lutionary theory claimed that civilization was progressing beyond warfare and that militarism was becoming anachro- nistic, due to increased international trade and support for Pragmatism Meets Women’s Peace Activism international law. In light of her commitment to this evo- Besides supplying the building blocks for the WPP platform, lutionary paradigm, Addams believed that it was time to pragmatism also provided the foundation upon which Ad- displace “the juvenile propensities to warfare” propelled dams and other attendees at the ICW built their ideas about by tribal loyalties (Fischer 2006, 4). She claimed that the peace. Since Addams wrote extensively about her views on United States was moving from industrialism to humanitari- peace, combining them with her pragmatist philosophy, we anism and that people’s sympathies would increasingly cross use her ideas as exemplary of feminist pragmatist think- class and national lines, evolving into what she called cos- ing about peace. Addams, and those around her, had come mopolitan humanitarianism (Fischer 2006, 4–5). Although to their thinking through their experiences at Hull House, Addams’, the WPP’s, and the ICW’s vision is far from being working amongst multinational immigrant communities in achieved, in the next section we show how the emergence Chicago. Other WPP members had similar experiences in of a feminist perspective on international relations, prac- social reform movements in the United Kingdom and Eu- tically manifested in and through the WPS agenda, both rope. Residents were learning through their daily interac- echoes and further develops this cross-cutting, humanistic tions with people from different nationalities how to care approach. for, and deal peacefully with, each other. Hull House was a microcosm of the world where people were learning to live together in multicultural and multinational settings; for Women, Peace, and Security at the United Nations these women, the local and the global were closely inter- It took almost one hundred years for states to make it twined (Fischer 2006, 3). They viewed democracy, social jus- their prerogative to discuss and address women’s rights tice, and international peace as mutually defining concepts within and across societies, including women’s rights to par- that must be achieved through nonviolent means (Fischer ticipate in peace and security decision-making. Significant 2006, 1–2). developments to advance women’s rights at the interna- The platforms of the WPP and the ICW were full of mater- tional level occurred during the twentieth century as a re- nalist rhetoric that assumed an essentialist logic, associating sult of women’s social movement activism (Rupp 1997) and women with a static conception of motherhood. Contempo- changes in the norms within international society toward rary feminists have criticized maternalism for its tendency to the inclusion of gender equality as a key principle of rep- relegate women to the private sphere, thereby disqualifying utable statehood (Towns 2010). These changes presaged the them from participating in the public sphere.21 Certainly acceptance of women’s participation in peace and security Jane Addams used maternalist rhetoric in her writings on processes (for a fuller account see Krook and True 2012). peace. However, Marilyn Fischer claims that Addams was us- The 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of ing maternalism, not as an essentialist static concept, but as Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the 1995 Bei- an example of her pragmatist method of social change. For jing UN Women’s Conference Platform for Action were example, in her book Newer Ideals of Peace, Addams described milestones that enabled the subsequent WPS agenda (see women’s (and men’s) experiences in city government as en- Jain 2005; True and Mintrom 2001). larged housekeeping, to which women could bring the special The WPS agenda, forged through eight main UNSC res- skills they used working in households. Enlarged housekeep- olutions to date, is the product of women activists’ ongo- ing responded to the needs of the modern city. Advocat- ing struggles for peace and human rights.22 Like the ear- lier principles that women established at The Hague in 20 Vitalis (2015, 13) claims that both Locke and Du Bois were early interna- 1915, these resolutions reflect a pragmatic attempt on the tional relations theorists overlooked by the discipline. Both were members of the part of women’s rights activists to address the significant Howard School that emphasized the importance of race and imperialism as foun- dations of the discipline. violence and inequality that characterizes conflict and war 21 Elshtain (1987) and Ruddick (1989), two contemporary feminists associ- 22 ated with maternal thinking, both build a sophisticated analysis of maternalism The WPS resolutions in order are: UNSCR 1325 (2000), 1820 (2008), 1888 that is careful not to essentialize all women. (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2011), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/62/2/221/4969394 by Adam Ellsworth, Adam Ellsworth on 13 July 2018  226 A Century of International Relations Feminism and that affects women and children disproportionately. Prevention This pragmatism has evolved, however, attending to our In 1915 women activists called for states to begin peace greater awareness of ostensibly hidden social problems such negotiations immediately and to refer their international as gender-based violence. It also recognizes the reality of a disputes to arbitration and/or employ neutral nations to multilateral system based on international law and organiza- mediate disagreements between them. They prescribed a tion in which women have political rights and have become rules-based international system—prefiguring the establish- political leaders and diplomats (see Towns 2010). Today, ment of the League of Nations, the UN, and postwar mul- feminist pragmatism is different, in that it advocates both tilateralism. Almost a century later, women peace activists outside and inside the state and through the UN system. It argued that, without women’s representation and partici- has sought to harness the international security apparatus pation, such a rule-based system, harnessing the tools of and to expand the community of inquiry, with greater global diplomacy and mediation as opposed to those of warfare, diversity of women’s voices, to further develop and imple- could not be realized. In UNSCR 1325 (2000, para 1), the ment many of the women’s rights and peace principles first UNSC urges member states “to ensure increased represen- articulated in 1915. Inevitably, there have been trade-offs as- tation of women at all decision-making levels in national, sociated with this contemporary feminist pragmatism as we regional, and international institutions and mechanisms for discuss. the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict.” The UNSC resolution 1325 provided an international During WWI women advocated for legal mechanisms for the framework for applying a gender perspective to interna- peaceful resolution of conflicts and women’s participation tional peace operations and security policy that acknowl- in peace talks from outside the system. However, in 2000 edges women’s and men’s different needs and experiences the UN argued that, for these legal mechanisms to work, of conflict. Resolution 1325 also stresses women’s rights to women must be recruited into roles as mediators and ne- equal participation in peace negotiations, conflict resolu- gotiators and their local prevention efforts supported (1325 tion, and prevention. This landmark resolution echoes the OP8, OP15; 2242 OP1, OP8). The UNSC resolution 1888 1915 principles and their call to attend to the impact of war (2009) further called for the deployment of women pro- on civilians and the lack of care for vulnerable populations tection advisors, alongside gender advisors, to be deployed during war. The 1915 principles call for democratic control in peace operations (followed up in the UNSC resolution of security and foreign policy, including the political partic- 1960). In the UNSC resolution 2242 (2015) the Council ipation of women, the expansion of participation in peace mandated the establishment of an Informal Experts Group negotiations to include women and civil society groups, an on Women, Peace, and Security to routinely brief the Secu- international court of justice to provide redress to victims, rity Council on peace operations. and control over the arms industry to remove the economic Complete disarmament and state control of the arms in- interests fueling war. dustry was a key principle at the 1915 Congress. The roots The seven resolutions following the UNSC resolution of the WPS agenda today lie in this basic premise, although 1325 that constitute the WPS agenda have reaffirmed most disarmament is not expressed in any WPS Security Council of these commitments by calling for urgent state action and resolution (WILPF Manifesto 2015). Today, states as well as accountability to protect all civilians, including women and corporations profit from the sales of arms and munitions. children during and after conflict; to end the widespread or Contrary to The Hague Congress’s recommendation, state systematic use of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) control of arms sales, ownership, and regulation has hardly as instruments of conflict; for increased women’s participa- made a difference to this flourishing trade. With the emer- tion in all peace, security, and post-conflict processes, in- gence of a post–World War II military-industrial complex, cluding in foreign policymaking and peace negotiations; global arms expenditures have grown massively and are on and for national action plans (NAPs) and other institutional an upward trajectory.24 mechanisms to address implementation of the agenda. We However, the WPS agenda has allowed for greater critical argue that the WPS agenda represents a significant step to- scrutiny of this trade in weapons and the purpose for which ward the practical realization of the principles put forward weapons are used. The UNSC resolution 2242 (2015, OP15) by the Hague women in 1915. However, the UNSC resolu- calls for women’s involvement in the prevention of the il- tions and wider gender mainstreaming efforts within UN op- licit transfer, accumulation, and misuse of small arms and erations have yet to alter the international reality that men light weapons and notes their particular impact on women both make wars and negotiate the terms of peace. Yet, a fem- and girls’ security. The 2013 Arms Trade Treaty (United Na- inist perspective on war and security is both valid and in- tions 2013) includes groundbreaking language on human creasingly influential, if continually challenged and not fully rights and gender-based violence. Article 7.4 requires state realized. Integral to feminist pragmatism today, as in Jane parties “to prohibit the export if … the arms will be used, Addams’ work, is the recognition that truth is always con- inter alia, to commit or facilitate a serious violation of in- tingent and that knowledge about how to bring peace and ternational humanitarian or human rights law or … seri- security for those most affected by conflict is always evolving ous acts of gender-based violence or violence against women through processes of trial and error. and children” (United Nations 2013, Article 7.4; see also the WPS principles expressed in the UNSC resolution 1325 UNSC resolution 2217). Implementation of this provision have evolved into four pillars of prevention, participation, is challenging, given complex supply chains and the illegal protection, and relief and recovery (see UN Women 2011). weapons trade. Sweden was the first country to do so, when Whereas the twenty Hague principles for peace were re- Foreign Minister Margot Wallström legally rescinded a co- ceived as idealistic and impractical,23 WPS pillars are readily operation agreement on arms exports with Saudi Arabia in translated (if incompletely) into organizational policies and 2015. While the WPS agenda falls short of the commitment peace and security operations on the ground. to peace through comprehensive disarmament, as originally 23 In her book Approaches to the Great Settlement published in 1918, Emily Balch 24 argued for more ameliorative and less humiliating peace terms than those en- Military spending globally is increasing. In 2015 the world spent $1.7 trillion acted in 1918, terms that contributed to the rise of Hitler (Addams et al. 2003, on arms according to SIPRI (2016), reflecting escalating conflicts and tensions 19). with conflict deaths on the rise since 2014 and now again at Cold War levels. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/62/2/221/4969394 by Adam Ellsworth, Adam Ellsworth on 13 July 2018  TICKNER J. ANN AND JACQUI TRUE 227 envisioned by the women activists in 1915 and by advocates unless there are specific concrete mechanisms that provide of UNSCR 1325, a gender perspective on the use and sale of a normative and operational requirement for institutions to arms is clearly present in international debate, and the dis- do so. armament principle remains integral to ongoing WPS advo- The lack of women’s participation in peace and secu- cacy (Acheson and Butler 2018; Shepherd and True 2014, rity has practical implications for international relations not 16).25 least because, as new evidence demonstrates, women and As well as recognizing the diversity of women’s prevention women’s organizations have a positive impact on peace pro- and conflict-resolution roles from the community level to cesses. This evidence shows that the presence of women as global diplomacy, the WPS agenda, like the 1915 Congress witnesses, signatories, mediators, and/or negotiators makes and Addams’ Hull House experiment, shares a pragmatist it 20 percent more likely that a peace agreement will last at commitment to building the foundations of positive peace on least two years and 35 percent more likely that it will endure the ground within communities. It rejects the idea of nega- (Stone 2015; UN Women 2015a). It also reveals that when tive peace, the mere absence of major war, or the view that women’s groups exercise a strong influence on the negotia- conflict is inevitable, a view that predominates in the realist tion process, whether at the peace table or in protest move- approach to international relations theory.26 ments, the chance of a peace agreement being both reached and implemented is significantly higher (Paffenholz, Ross, Dixon, Schluchter, and True 2016). Participation A further Hague Congress principle pertaining to par- The Hague Congress called for women and civilians more ticipation calls for the use of an international police force generally to participate in peace negotiations and for demo- rather than militaries to bring peace. The WPS agenda cratic control over decisions to go to war. This principle res- has taken that principle further by promoting increases in onates with the WPS agenda’s attention to the need to signif- women’s representation in the security sector (in defence, icantly increase women’s participation in peace processes. policing, disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration) Only when women achieved political rights to vote and seek through NAPs and commissioning the establishment of all- election (itself a century-long process), could they express female police forces in UN peacekeeping missions (Pruitt these rights in demands for greater participation in peace 2016; Karim and Beardsley 2017). For example, Australia’s processes and in relief and recovery (Krook and True 2012, NAP (2012–2018) has sought to implement targets to in- 119). However, the record of women’s participation and rep- crease women’s participation in security sector institutions, resentation in peace talks is extremely poor. especially in frontline and leadership roles in the Australian The 2015 fifteen-year review of the UNSC resolution Defence Force (Lee Koo 2016). Peacekeepers are encour- 1325 identified a major implementation gap with respect to aged to engage in culturally sensitive ways with all com- the absence of women in peace and transitional decision- munity members, not just the leaders. Women police on making processes and institutions (UN Women 2015a). the ground are conceived as a practical mechanism for Since the creation of the UN in 1945, formal peace and increasing this effectiveness and operational engagement mediation processes have lagged behind involving women, with communities in conflict-affected places. This inclusive whether as parties to a conflict or as members of the teams approach to peacekeeping recalls Addams’ pragmatist ap- facilitating and leading peace processes. Between 1990 and proach to learning by listening to those in communities in 2011, across thirty-one peace processes in which the UN was conflict. involved, just 2 percent of chief mediators were women, 4 percent were witnesses and signatories, and 9 percent ne- gotiators at the peace table (Bell 2015). As a result, a num- Protection ber of states have prioritized the recruitment and training of women for international mediation and peacemaking in In its efforts to end the war in 1915, The Hague Congress their WPS NAPs. For example, the African Union has seen noted the long-lasting effects of conflict and the dispropor- the benefits of women mediators in resolving conflicts in tionate impact on civilian injury and loss life (cf. Ghoborah, the region and is supporting the development of a core Huth, and Russett 2003). We think of civilian casualties and network of women experts in conflict resolution ready to targeting as a feature of today’s “new wars,” based on civil be deployed (for example, see UN Women 2015b). Swe- rather than interstate conflict, but the same was true in den and Norway, countries with a track record in third- WWI. The 1915 Congress’s analysis of war’s dark shadow of party mediation, have also created a professional develop- disease, loss, and trauma resembles that of feminist inter- ment network for women peace mediators and negotiators national relations scholars and peace activists today (Enloe (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2016; Tryggestad and 2010; True 2015; Cohn 2013; Sjoberg 2013). They have Lorentzen 2014).27 In this way, the Hague women’s ideas broadened our analysis of the continuum of violence before, during WWI have evolved into pragmatic mechanisms in- during, and after conflict and what needs to be done. The side states and the UN to change the war system. A century’s WPS agenda has put the earlier principle recognizing the ef- experience has brought home the lesson that women’s calls fects of war into the institutional, UN-mandated practices of for peace will not be heeded, nor their expertise included, protection. Recent WPS resolutions stress the distinct pro- tection needs and vulnerabilities of female displaced per- 25 For example, WILPF’s (2015) current goal is to move the money from a sons, minorities, and victims of SGBV, including LGBTQI culture of war to a culture of peace. persons and people with disabilities. The resolutions rec- 26 Galtung (1964) and Boulding (1978) introduced the term positive peace into ognize that these groups face specific challenges related to the peace research literature. Diehl (2016) claimed that the international rela- health, reproductive health, livelihoods, education, and se- tions community has been slow to adopt the concept, extending peace beyond curity that are often ignored in state and humanitarian re- the mere absence of war to issues of equity and justice. The 1915 Hague Women’s Congress articulated this concept one hundred years before Diehl issued his cri- sponses. In particular, the UN Secretary-General’s annual re- tique of the discipline’s failure to adopt the notion of positive peace. port on situations of conflict-related sexual violence calls for 27 For more information about the Nordic Women Mediators (NWM), see attention to the protection of minority women from SGBV, https://www.prio.org/Projects/Project/?x=1725. which is frequently used to fuel and escalate conflict. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/62/2/221/4969394 by Adam Ellsworth, Adam Ellsworth on 13 July 2018  228 A Century of International Relations Feminism Whereas in 1915, the Hague women knew that women tional meetings. Though a century apart, women’s transna- and children were adversely affected by war and conflict, tional activism has sought to transform the principles of they had little understanding of just how crucial the violence peace and security by bringing women’s experiences into against these groups of civilians is to the dynamics of con- state and international policy and practice and to hold states flict more generally. Mainstreaming a gender perspective, accountable for putting these principles into practice with the WPS agenda has changed the UN’s, states’, and other ac- the ultimate purpose of ending conflict.28 tors’ approach to protection (Bjorkdahl and Selimovic 2015; In the next section we explore how women peace activists Davies, Nwokora, Stamnes, and Teitt 2013). WPS advocacy in the early twentieth century developed a distinctive ap- has forced the UN and member states to address protection proach to knowing and researching international relations, failures with respect to the human rights of women and girls, prefiguring and also consistent with contemporary interna- failures that have been shown to perpetuate the cycle of vi- tional relations feminism. We examine the feminist pragma- olence (Heathcote 2012; Davies and True 2015). The UN tist parallels and insights in both traditions, showing that Secretary-General’s 2016 conflict-related sexual violence re- women’s peace activism and feminist scholarship are con- port notes that “misogynistic media propaganda and crack- nected, and suggesting a re-reading of the conventional ac- downs on women’s rights and freedoms have presaged the count of feminism as a subfield that came late to interna- use of sexual violence as a tactic of war, terrorism, and polit- tional relations. ical repression” (2016, OP13). As a result, states, including known perpetrators, have begun to tackle the impunity for SGBV that is linked to women’s disempowerment (Jenkins Striking Parallels: Feminist Pragmatism and and Goetz 2010; Davies and True 2017). Methodology for International Relations In 1915 women peace activists called for an International Disputing claims that the international relations discipline Court of Justice to be convened following the war to address is gender-free, feminists have long since claimed that its sub- violations of international law with respect to civilians. Sim- ject matter has, for the most part, been written by elite, white ilarly, WPS advocates have highlighted the gender-specific men, for these men, and about these men. While this has experiences of displaced women and girls and their needs been changing over the last thirty years, this was particu- for postconflict gender justice. While we now have an In- larly true in the early days of the discipline that coincided ternational Criminal Court to arbitrate cases of war crimes, with the time when Addams and other feminist pragma- crimes against humanity, and crimes of genocide, few inter- tists were writing and women were organizing transnation- national prosecutions or transitional justice processes, es- ally for peace and building their own vision of international tablished during the last twenty-five years, have addressed relations. But, as feminist historians have claimed, women’s violations of women’s human rights (Harris-Rimmer 2010; “her-stories” have consistently been erased from history. Durbach 2016; Hovil 2013). This is especially true of international relations where only elite, white men’s stories about the early days of the disci- Relief and Recovery pline have survived (see Schmidt 1998; Vitalis 2015). Many scholars and commentators appeared genuinely surprised Women, peace, and security advocates today challenge the in 2015, during the centenary of WWI, to learn that women depiction of women and girls as vulnerable, weak, and peace activists had convened a conference at The Hague as victims in need of protection. They argue that women to put an end to WWI and that they had developed key are agents of community resilience and recovery (Faxon, principles for international cooperation that anticipated Fulong, and Sabe Phyu 2015; Majidi and Hennion 2014). Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points.29 The Hague women also appreciated women’s resilience in Feminist theory and practice has emerged from a deep everyday life, often in dire conditions. They argued that war skepticism about knowledge that claims to be universal and was not only men’s business because, as men took up arms, objective but which, in reality, is knowledge based on men’s it was left to women to take on their jobs. It was on this lives. When we construct knowledge only from men’s lives, basis that the women peace activists during WWI argued we deny ourselves a complete picture of reality. We also fail that women should have the right to participate in postcon- to observe the totality of social relations and “the amounts flict institutions. Such an approach has been advanced in and varieties of power that it takes to form and sustain” exist- the WPS agenda over the past decade and through NAPs ing relations and divisions between and among states (Enloe designed to advance practical mechanisms and targets to 1996, 186). Feminists have also claimed that international ensure women’s participation in the relief and recovery of relations’ “scientific” rationalist form of knowledge build- their societies at all decision-making levels. To take one ex- ing, an epistemology that took hold after World War II, is un- ample, Nepal, a country recovering from years of devas- suitable for answering the kinds of questions that feminists tating Maoist conflict and natural disaster, has adopted a ask (Tickner 1997). Feminist perspectives redirect our atten- plan that explicitly involves war widows and Dalit women tion “to ask questions that have not fallen within the purview in postconflict decision-making, key groups of women with of how the discipline has traditionally defined knowledge” relevant experiences and knowledge who, historically, have (Ackerly and True 2008, 704). Like Addams and early fem- been completely excluded from such processes (Swaine inist pragmatists, many later feminists have claimed that 2010). knowledge emerges from practice. International relations Conflict resolution and peace activism entail a long- feminism has generally adopted critical, reflexive forms of term process of change where theories of change emerge from learning by listening and doing. Feminist scholars, 28 activists, and policymakers today, working collaboratively Feminist scholars promote critical engagements with the gendered nature and independently, draw on many of the same strategies of security politics and the tendency to stereotype the protection of women and girls and their peace-building capacities in the UNSC resolutions (Pratt and as the women in 1915. They seek to make rational argu- Richer-Devroe 2013; Shepherd 2011). ments about how to end conflict, they listen to and en- 29 See McCarthy (2015). In 2015 WILPF (2016) celebrated a century of ac- gage with conflict-affected women and men, and they bring tivism to stop war and end the arms trade, and connected this to a century of women’s testimonies directly to political leaders at interna- economic, racial, and gender injustice. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/62/2/221/4969394 by Adam Ellsworth, Adam Ellsworth on 13 July 2018  TICKNER J. ANN AND JACQUI TRUE 229 knowledge building that starts from ontologies and epis- zones have been brokered by women’s International Non- temologies different from those of the conventional disci- Governmental Organizations (INGOs) that, together with pline (Ackerly, Stern, and True 2006; Wibben 2016). It has feminist scholars, played such an important role in getting developed a research practice that asks researchers to sit- the UNSC to adopt the resolutions that comprise the WPS uate themselves within the power dynamics of epistemol- agenda (Cockburn 1998; Giles and Hyndman 2004). These ogy, boundaries, and human relations “and to attend to efforts exemplify the feminist pragmatist method, amplify- these as a matter of methodology” (Ackerly and True 2008, ing the voices of refugee and displaced women and survivors 698). We demonstrate the evolution of knowledge practices of conflict-related SGBV by bringing them to international from which both women’s peace building in the early twen- fora to share their practical knowledge of how best to pro- tieth century and the WPS agenda in the twenty-first century tect vulnerable populations and enable their participation. emerged, in order to show how and why international rela- Most recently, solidarity dialogues facilitated by the WILPF tions feminism is pragmatist. and the Swedish women’s rights organization, Kvinna til Kvinna, involved bringing together women from Syria and Bosnia, and from Bosnia and Ukraine, to learn from one Ontology another’s experiences of conflict and postconflict (WILPF In contrast to an ontology that depicts states as individualis- 2014; 2015). These dialogues have enabled women activists tic autonomous actors, typical of conventional social science to analyze and learn from what works in their compara- perspectives on international relations, and of liberal think- tive experiences, in order to plan and implement a human ing more generally, feminist ontologies are grounded in rights and social justice–informed platform to end conflict social relations that are constituted by historically unequal and build peace. Like many of the WWI peace activists, these political, economic, and social structures. Whereas conven- activists from conflict zones argue that an egalitarian and tional international relations theory usually starts its analy- lasting peace requires the elimination of gender oppression ses at the structural level, seeing a world of states, feminists and injustice. In other examples, women’s INGOs, coordi- employ a bottom-up strategy, starting from the lives of in- nated by the NGO working group on WPS, have brought dividuals and their relationships. Focusing much of its at- women activists from conflict zones to brief UNSC members tention on the behavior of great powers, international re- on their analysis of the conflict, their experiences of insecu- lations depicts states as like units whose internal behavior rity, and the peace-building challenges they are confronting is not necessary to understanding their international behav- on the ground (Cook 2016).30 ior in an anarchical system. Working from the local to the It is significant, however, that, in spite of this ongoing global, feminists begin from the lives of individuals, examin- activism inside interstate institutions, highlighting “truths” ing how they are situated in historically gendered and racial- about conflict from local experiences, the earlier commit- ized social and economic structures and how these unequal ment of WWI women’s peace activists to complete disarma- structures impact their lives. They connect the lives of indi- ment and regulating the global arms industry has mostly dis- viduals to international structures and proposals for more appeared from today’s WPS agenda. This illustrates a fem- just and equal forms of global governance. These proposals inist pragmatic choice of what issues can best be pursued were evident in the Hague women’s call for an International through international institutions today. But it also exposes Court of Justice in 1915; they were present also in WPS ad- the lack of compatibility between the ontologies of feminist vocates’ call for an International Criminal Court in the 1990 peace and the state system. and a reformed UN today (see Chappell 2016). Rather than In all these examples, feminist knowledge emerges from seeing states as “like units,” feminists see “gendered states,” practice and vice versa, to inform further strategy, advo- although this gendering manifests in quite different ways, cacy, and theorizing about how to build positive peace. The given geopolitical locations and intersecting identities and challenge for international relations scholarship is to make inequalities (see Parashar, Tickner, and True 2018; Peterson visible and recover this alternative, feminist tradition of 1992). knowledge about peace and war. Whose knowledge is re- Jane Addams’ settlement movement reflected this dis- membered and whose is forgotten, and how ideas are put tinct feminist ontology—starting from social relations rather into practice or sustained and built on in the academy, are than the system level of relations between states (Waltz as much a feature of global power politics as are relations 1979). Comprised of immigrants from various countries, among states. When early feminists were writing, women did Hull House was a cosmopolitan microcosm of the world, not yet have the right to vote and were barred from many where residents learned to live together in spite of their institutions of higher learning and research. As a result, differences. Addams described the settlement founders as Addams and other feminists who were thinking and writ- “experimenters.” However, unlike the scientific approach ing on pragmatist approaches to peace could not directly to conducting natural experiments, where the researcher shape the international relations discipline that emerged af- stands at a distance from the object of study to generate ter WWI. That task has passed to contemporary feminists empirically verifiable knowledge, the settlement residents to excavate this knowledge as they have developed femi- thought of themselves as both the knowers and the known of nist international relations. Feminists have adopted a similar the experiment. Similar to feminist methodology today, the grounded approach, asking questions about “where are the process of working together to explore new ideas for cross- women in international politics” (Enloe 2014) and forging cultural cooperation was judged as more meaningful than an ontology of global politics from the personal to the inter- research findings that could withstand falsification. “Truth” national. Such an approach involves including the experi- in Hull House, in WWI women’s peace activism, and in inter- ences of communities most disempowered, such as conflict- national relations feminism today is always provisional, open affected women and girls, all the way to the structures and to and shaped by human relations and experience. institutions of global governance. The settlement movement and women’s transnational peace activism of the early twentieth century foreshad- 30 For instance, in 2016 women from Syria told UNSC members how countert- owed WPS feminist activism today. Over the past thirty errorism financing measures had prevented local women’s organizations from years, dialogues between women from different conflict receiving crucial funding for service delivery in conflict areas. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/62/2/221/4969394 by Adam Ellsworth, Adam Ellsworth on 13 July 2018  230