Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The instrumental use of Muslim women’s experiences as a symbol and justification for Western countries interventions is not a new business and was not employed for the first time in the post September 11th “war on terror” campaigns. Indeed, the production of stereotypes of Muslim women in political platforms can be tracked back to different colonial enterprises. Clearly, as Lughod (2002) has highlighted, the consistent resort to a cultural framing through the equation women/religion/suffering has always been a tool to hide political and economic interests and consequently to bury more complex political and historical developments. In the academic sphere, debates on Muslim women also widened. However, as Lila Abu-Lughod (2002) contended, the efforts were almost put solely on denouncing the great violent and oppressive contexts where those women were living under the barbaric violations perpetrated to them by Islamist movements. Otherwise, if a scholar tried to problematize the cultural framing of Muslim women’s questions, she (or he) would very likely be accused of cultural relativism (Lughod, 2002). Therefore, a sole and unproblematic focus on the suffering of Muslim women is not only futile, but also contributes to reify the old Orientalist perceptions on Islam and Muslim women, and to provide intellectual foundations for Western imperialist wars. The objective of this article, on the contrary, is to raise another set of questions, which I believe to be more urgent. These questions aim at both unpacking Muslim women as a discursive category, and understanding the major challenges their experiences impose on secular feminist conceptions of agency. I contend that addressing these questions is more urgent for different reasons. Firstly, I argue vigorously that apart from the obsessive and somehow blind criticism that religion is inherently patriarchal and consequently oppressive to women, scholarship especially from within feminist theory remained oblivious to a more systematic and self-reflexive engagement with religion and Muslim women. In addition, I argue that surprisingly, even in a period of post-Orientalist deconstruction, which supposedly would have already dismissed those essentialist and repressive accounts of Muslim women and Islam, subtle but very important remnants can still be found on the so called “corrective” postcolonial feminist scholarship on Muslim women. Indeed, there is a plurality of work on Muslim women in the social sciences. However, they are scattered and apparently separated by their own agendas and claims, with very few attempts at dialogue or debate. Hence, a systematic account of this diversity has been missing, one which could provide an up to date appraisal of the state of scholarship and activism on Muslim women, and build a firm foundation for advancing knowledge both of the subject itself and on interdisciplinary efforts like the one I advance here. Therefore, while doing a systematic and critical literature review, oriented specifically by an interdisciplinary approach, I expect this article to fill part of this gap and raise crucial questions in order to build knowledge of the intersection between Muslim women’s studies and feminist theory. It is here where more research is certainly needed in order to reduce the gulf that exists between both areas. The introduction of this article outlines briefly the ways through which Muslim women have been approached as a discursive category, constructing stereotypes of Muslim women in political platforms, as well as on the academic stage. Politically, the production of stereotypes can be tracked back to different colonial enterprises and more recently to the interventions by Western countries that comprised the “war on terror” campaign. On the academic stage, these stereotypes were reproduced in the sole efforts to denounce the great violent and oppressive contexts where those women are living, as previously mentioned. The first section is concerned with the exclusion of religion and more specifically of Muslim women’s experiences from history and feminist knowledge production, including IR feminist studies. I acknowledge that the ontological and epistemological openness in feminist and gender studies in international relations and other areas ensured the recognition of the existence of differences and of multiple “layers” of identities which affect sexed bodies in distinct ways. These were crucial to challenge Eurocentric narratives as the only legitimate source of knowledge production. However, I put forward in this section that despite a greater plurality in feminist studies, there is still a silence from feminist theorists regarding religious women’s experiences, and hence, the importance of religion to women (Salem, 2013). Using the work of Phyllis Mack (2003) I argue that one of the reasons for this gap resides in the metanarrative of secularization, which is the basis of secular feminist scholarship. Within this analytical framework, I analyse how the conceptions of agency and emancipation underlying the different strands of secular feminism are limiting to the different voices and experiences of Muslim women.  The second section addresses the challenges Islamic feminism imposes to feminist notions of agency. As religion is seen as inherently patriarchal and oppressive to women, Islamic feminism or any other effort to pursue gender equality from within an Islamic framework would be taken as contradictory or incompatible. By locating the struggle within a religious framework, and at the same time claiming for the existence of what seems to be the untouchable foundations of Islam, Islamic feminists are cast away from secular feminisms. I argue that those experiences of activists and scholars make serious challenges to the notions of agency based on rationality and secularity as the only pillars whereby women can struggle for and reach gender equality. As a result, Islamic feminism(s)’s experiences also help to unsettle and complicate some binaries which feminist theory has been contributing to reify, such as secular/spiritual; reason/obscurantism; science/religion; freedom/oppression; modern/backward. In the third section, the article discusses some of the piety women’s movements anchored on Saba Mahmood’s work on pietistic agency, firstly in order to highlight the inability of most feminist scholarship in capturing the diversity of Muslim women’s voices; second to denounce the perilous nature of encapsulating women’s agency solely within “the entelechy of liberatory politics”. These movements advance very different agendas and orientations from the Islamic feminist ones. Those agendas are precisely what denounce the subtle but very important remnants of Orientalist assumptions, particularly its adherence to secular-liberal values, and the teleological conceptions of modernity (Lakhani, 2008). I conclude the article arguing that rather than neglecting the important achievements feminism promoted in the lives of women in different parts of the world, the main intention of this work was to provincialize (to borrow the expression from Chakrabarty) the secular and liberal accounts of agency, feminism, empowerment, freedom and so on, locating them in the historical, political and cultural context that produced the desires that animate them.  

The main motivation that guides this article is the need to contribute to broadening and deepening the objects of study addressed by feminist perspectives in international relations.  This is for two related reasons: firstly, to contribute to the process of ontological revisionism of the discipline that has been inaugurated by these kinds of approaches; and, secondly, to contribute to the visibility of international practices and dynamics that perpetuate logics of subordination and exclusion towards different corporeality based on the matrix of colonial, capitalist and patriarchal domination. This article departs from the premise that international cooperation is a complex and multidimensional object of study that has historically been approached by the liberal tradition of international relations (Pereyra Rodríguez, 2014). Gradually, different approaches to the discipline began to inquire about the motives, procedures and outcomes as a result of the growing importance that these interactions acquired as fundamental dynamics of international relations. In the framework of the academic literature on feminisms, international cooperation has received less attention with respect to another set of processes associated with development, conflicts, and peace and security. In this sense, the purpose of this article is to contribute to the problematization of international cooperation from feminist perspectives broadly, and from decolonial feminism in particular.  This will be done in a systematic way based on the methodology of documentary review. It is important to state that in the field of international relations, feminist perspectives express a “set of ideas woven around the critique of patriarchal values and dynamics on which states and global societies were structured” (Villarroel Peña, 2007, p. 66). According to the author, the new approaches implied a series of disruptions in the ontological, epistemological and methodological dimensions that, consequently, motivated the formulation of new models of knowledge production. In such context of emergence, feminist perspectives were considered dissident proposals in relation to the traditional mainstream theoretical schools because they aimed to highlight the insufficiency of paradigmatic investigations of the discipline that had been based on a partial and not neutral approach of international dynamics and practices (Villarroel Peña, 2007; Salomón, 2002). In order to achieve the proposed aim, in the first section of this article, the general panorama in which gender studies in the Social Sciences was inserted shall be described.  Likewise, the conditions of emergence and enunciation of feminisms in the discipline of international relations will be addressed, and their main ontological, epistemological and methodological contributions will be made explicit. In the second section, the specificity of the situated narrative of decolonial feminisms, understood as a disruption of the homogenizing and falsely universalistic postulates of hegemonic feminisms, will be analyzed. Based on the guidelines offered by the first two sections, the third section will inquire into the implications of international cooperation for feminisms in general, and decolonial feminisms in particular.  The goal here is to elucidate to what extent a perpetuating mechanism of asymmetries is expressed, and how it is possible to overcome patriarchal logics from an emancipatory perspective. Finally, brief conclusions will be shared. In summary, some relevant conclusions have been found through the elaboration of the article. In the first place, it is important to note that, although international cooperation does not represent the object of study most in-depth analyzed by feminist perspectives in international relations, this focus is fundamental for the same two reasons that justify this article. That is, due to the need to contribute to the ontological revisionism of the discipline, and the need to make visible the ways in which international practices and dynamics perpetuate logics of subordination and exclusion towards different corporeality based on the matrix of colonial, capitalist and patriarchal domination. Secondly, the study of international cooperation from perspectives –like feminism- that seek to contribute to the transformation of unequal and hierarchical gender social relations is fundamental not only in academic terms, but also in a practical way. Indeed, the combination of research and political activism promulgated by feminisms should radiate in the elucidation of the practices and dynamics of international cooperation because it is precisely in this field that important opportunities can be detected to make visible and socialize conditions of existence, resistance and struggle shared between different social groups located in different places. In effect, research must be thought of as an inessential component of political practices inasmuch as it offers horizontal action guidelines, and as it contributes to identifying the perpetuation of mechanisms that reproduce asymmetric logics in an androcentric, cisgeneric and colonial way. Thirdly, intersectionality -such a significant category for feminist approaches- can become a central hermeneutical perspective to formulate instances of international cooperation that are devised in a respectful way with the particularities of local identities, interests and expectations. Likewise, it can be shown that it allows for the provision of pragmatic content to the decolonial strategy of building alliances between social groups to promote demands that were historically invisibilized. In short, it has been demonstrated that international cooperation itself does not represent a sign of progress, evolution or emancipation. On the contrary, we state that it is a mere interaction whose content and planning must be based on the capacity of agency of local actors, and whose development must be in accordance with the particularities expressed by each social group. In addition, feminist criticisms of the ways in which international cooperation was traditionally conducted should not be limited to advocating a greater incorporation of female officials as the ultimate goal of the demands. Indeed, recovering the criticism directed towards hegemonic feminism, particular attention should be paid to promoting pinkwashing initiatives that in no way contribute to dismantling the underlying problems that emerge from the matrix of colonial, capitalist and patriarchal domination. On the contrary, it is emphasized that international cooperation should only be a possibility in so far as it is structured on the basis of the demands of the groups involved. In this sense, initiatives must be bottom-up, and should be respectful of local identities and expectations. Lastly, we can conclude that as long as international cooperation initiatives are not structured in a situated and contextual way, it will be very unlikely that collective emancipation strategies can be articulated.  Moreover, this will only contribute to reaffirming the reproductive mechanisms of gender asymmetries in the international system. Contributions from decolonial feminisms, therefore, are essential to generate limitations to the reproduction of unequal and hierarchical gender social relations both in the areas of international cooperation policy formulation, and that of theory formulation.

Review of: Ribeiro, D. (2020). Lugar de enunciación. Ediciones Ambulantes, 157 pp.

Since 2007, after the election of the economist Rafael Correa Delgado for president of the Republic of Ecuador, the country has been experiencing a series of ideological, structural and political changes. A Constitutional Assembly, demanded by a Popular Consultation, materialized Correa’s project of “homeland refoundation” (Ulloa, 2020, p. 19). In 2008, once the Constitution had been drafted, 63,93% of the voting population said “Yes” to the new Constitution, thus establishing what would be a turning point in national politics.On the one hand, until the fall of Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez (2003-2005), the country had undergone turbulence during the nineties due to significant political-institutional instability. There were three political leaders toppled in total; an armed conflict with its neighbor country, Peru; and a deep economic crisis that led the country to embark on dollarization. Correa’s presidency, on the other hand, lasted ten years (2007-2017), after which time he left one of his vice-presidents Lenín Moreno as successor (2017-2021). In addition, despite the corruption during his government, he continues to lead the second largest political party, as can be seen in the 2021 elections.His Plan of Government, called ‘Plan Nacional para el Buen Vivir,’ introduced the indigenous worldview of Sumak Kawsay. Translated from quichua language as Buen Vivir, this philosophy enabled the adoption of social inclusion measures, the enlargement of minority rights, including the expansion of the liberal juridical anthropocentric concept, by offering nature rights (Hernández, 2017). Sumak Kawsay means “life in its fullness […] in its material and spiritual excellence […] in its inner and outer balance of the community” (Macas, 2010, p. 14).Based on this philosophy, Ecuador started moving towards social change, which was impossible without the inclusion of gender equality (Zaragocín, 2017, p. 64). In that sense, many public policies have been planned, creating debates on economic, political and social issues (Acosta, 2012; Acosta y Cajas-Guijarro, 2018; Hernández, 2017; Radcliffe, 2017). Furthermore, these policies targeted one of the most hermetic institutions: the Armed Forces.In this respect, this paper aims to analyze the discursive reproductions and disruptions in gender categories (masculine and feminine) based on an analysis of Ecuadorian defense documents. The masculinities constitute a gender category that reflects the subjugation of the feminine by the masculine, and is connected to a superiority associated with strength, rationality, command, in opposition to feminine values (weakness, emotionality, anarchy) (Hooper, 1999). Nevertheless, masculinities are not personal characteristics concerning individuals. Instead, they should be understood as configurations produced by social actions in a particular context (Connell y Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 832). In this paper, Maya Eichler’s militarized masculinities (MM) concept is used as a reference to the stereotypical masculine characteristics created by the exacerbation of virility in military rituals (military service, combat) (Eichler, 2014, pp. 83-85). The author highlights that the MM are regularly and dynamically produced, making necessary an analysis on its features. Therefore, it is used to identify discursive and ideological formations and interdiscourses associated with gender notions present in the documents through a post-structural feminist approach and a discourse analysis methodology.Gender equality constitutes an unavoidable issue in contemporary democracies and consequently the inclusion of women in the Ecuadorian Armed Forces is an ongoing challenge. Recent studies on the integration of women in the military demonstrate that public policies, mainly regarding gender equality and interculturality, have been militarized (Zaragocín, 2018, p. 436). In other words, the potential for social change has been lost. From this fact, this paper argues that the militarization of gender equality, besides undermining the transformative potential of social inclusion, allowed the reproduction of new manifestations of militarized masculinities in the defense documents, updating the dynamics based on a dialectic and negative masculine/feminine dichotomy.Furthermore, the existence of a gap in the Ecuadorian security and defense literature is identified; despite the increase of women in the military, studies on this phenomenon remain incipient (Chacón, 2014; Iturralde, 2015; Morales et al., 2017; Zaldumbide, 2020; Zaragocín, 2018). Issues concerning military masculinities, hegemonic masculinity in these places and in Ecuadorian society —and their discursive reproductions, continuities and resistances— constitute a fertile ground for the analysis of the consequences of militarization for social inclusion. This paper fills this gap by analyzing the transformation in militarized masculinities in national defense discourse, and it does so through innovative methodological resources that allow a critical perspective on the results of the policies implemented since 2007.In terms of methodology, a framework of analisis is used consisting of defense documents published from 2002 to 2017, namely: Libro Blanco de Defensa (2002, 2006), Agenda Política de Defensa (2009-2013 and 2014-2017), Política de Género de las Fuerzas Armadas del Ecuador (2013) and the Cartilla de Género Fuerzas Armadas del Ecuador (2017). This framework refers to the year of 2002 due to the release of the first Libro Blanco during Gustavo Noboa’s administration (2000-2003). This permits us to determine to what extent the inclusion of gender politics was an unavoidable issue in national defense politics during the documents’ transition.The body of analysis is addressed through the combination of a discourse analysis and a post-structural feminist perspective on gender, using Laura Shepherd’s theoretical lens. The connection between these methodologies permits the identification of the ways that gender manifests itself as an element of power in discourses. It is highlighted how the post-structural feminist perspective allows us to question how the texts signify, enabling the realization of profound analyses that address the documents’ discursive meanings (Shepherd, 2010, p. 9). Discourse should be understood as “word in motion”, whose purpose is the production of effects of meaning (Orlandi, 2012, p. 15). Discourse is represented by oral and written word, and symbols that dispute meanings in subjective and ideological fields (Brandão, 2012, p. 9). For this study, the texts that form the body of analysis are considered discourses. In this way, discourses are understood as neither transparent nor inert (Orlandi, 2012, p. 15), but dynamic and contingent.Besides the introduction and the final considerations, the work has three sections. The first section presents the conceptual tools that will be used to understand the relation between gender and masculinities. After that, a brief description of the methodology employed in the study is developed. Finally, the analysis is conducted on the manifestations of militarized masculinities in the documents. The work finishes by presenting a final argument, that is: besides undermining the transformative potential of social inclusion, the militarization of gender equality allows for the reproduction of new manifestations of militarized masculinities in the defense documents. The dynamics are updated based on a dialectic and negative masculine/feminine dichotomy.Through this analysis three illustrative images of women’s presence in the defense documents were created: “partial citizen”, “authorized citizen” and “military woman”. The three representations show, in a “before” and “after” comparison of gender politics, that women continue experiencing rejection in military spaces, being the “Other”, and inherently a stranger to the ideal of militarized masculinity that prevails in the barracks. The conclusion is that militarized masculinities have experienced a discursive metamorphosis, demonstrating the subtle and resistant armor of the masculine military ethos.

The announcement of Sweden’s adherence to a feminist perspective on its foreign policy contributed to the gender agenda debate being broadened internationally. Therefore, it is considered important to analyze, from the South, how feminist foreign policy (FFP) has modified the discourses on traditional practices in foreign policy. In order to carry out this study, the Swedish International Cooperation agenda was selected as a case to be examined. This research takes into account that the debate on gender and development has been articulated at least since the 1970s, and several contributions have underlined the need to question the power patterns involving the cooperation policies of the countries from North to South (Aguinaga et al, 2011). Moreover, over the years countless alternatives to traditional and hierarchical practices of cooperation have been articulated by feminist women in both the South and the global North. Given that Sweden adopted, as part of the feminist paradigm, the habit of carrying out a review of its policies, this study is developed from an analysis of Swedish rhetoric in the document on FFP policy practices released in 2017. Taking into account the narrative of seven themes, the extent to which there has been an insertion of the debates developed by Southern Feminisms in discourses on practices is debated. In the first part of this article, a theoretical review is carried out on the debate around the construction of feminist solidarity in international politics (Mohanty, 2003; 2008). It is understood that the category of women was included in the cooperation programs and policies through the process of homogenization of differences; that is, it was based on a universal assumption about feminist demands, without including the perspectives of the states receiving policies. Thus, a process of naturalization and generalization on the discursive performance and international practice on North-South cooperation was established. This has resulted in an elaboration on women of the North and South in opposite directions, in which there is an idea that one has to teach the other how to achieve gender equality. The argument of this study is that an FFP pursues the goal of building a shared relationship, in which cooperation is an interaction without hierarchies between the states involved; that is, there is a feminist solidarity in the construction of policies. In other words, it seeks to identify the differences around gender issues and the category of women, adding them to political perspectives and thus developing more universal international approaches. While this should be an objective pursued by a FFP, and while there has also been discussion of what happens in traditional cooperation practices and discourses, northern countries tend to homogenize differences between women.  This is done in line with neoliberal feminist perspectives, and does not include analyses of the patriarchal structure that promotes gender coloniality and generates subinclusive and superinclusive policies (Crenshaw, 2002). In the second part of the article, the Swedish context that contributed to the elaboration of a paradigmatic feminist policy is presented. The country’s women’s social movements have had the capacity to articulate with the state over the years, which has accessed the welfare state and encouraged governments to assume discourses and policies that provide gender equality. The basis of this action is the formulation of the Swedish welfare state, which has elaborated domestically movement towards gender equality, and included social feminist demands in the formulation of public policies. In 2014, this perspective was formally placed in international politics and, consequently, in the country’s agendas, such as international development cooperation. With regard to this context of progress, the Swedish 2017 document was analyzed, seeking to identify elements that would point to a reproduction of the traditional perspective of cooperation in the country’s rhetoric on the effectiveness of cooperation. This is where the actors of the North are the majority in the agreements, and where there is no discursive representation of the demands of the collectives of the South nor the processes of joint construction with the receiving countries. In the study, it was possible to verify, like Nylund (2017), that the feminist foreign policy of Sweden produces totally feminist discourses, but also post-colonial rhetoric. In the feminist sense, we highlight the articulation capacity of feminism between the Swedish state and the feminist movements of the country in order to recognize, as in Llistar (2009), that when a country has the capacity to absorb the demands of social collectives in its international agendas -in the case of cooperation- it can be said that it is a cooperation of solidarity with low selfish interests. On the other hand, when we argue that Sweden has postcolonial discourses, we mean that, although it points out in its FFP manual that it seeks to develop a horizontal and intersectional policy, with the inclusion of local participation, in its rhetoric about the practice of cooperation the country does not emphasize joint actions with receiving countries. A narrative was also observed that values the performance of the state itself as a donor and its traditional partners in the North, such as development banks and private actors. Nevertheless, it does not present the integration of the critical vision of the southern feminisms on this classic performance of international cooperation. In this way, it is argued that one side of feminist solidarity is missing. This means that, although there is recognition of the advance of Swedish feminisms in favoring the development of an FFP, the valorization and presentation of the performance of the southern actors is still lacking in the rhetoric in the results. So that, once again, they are not described as passive actors of cooperation, but that their different and critical perspectives contribute to the presentation of a more plural and universal discourse. Finally, this article concludes that the development of critical analyses from the global South contributes to FFP being articulated in pursuit of the goal of feminist solidarity. We do not propose this analysis as a way to deny the advances established by Swedish politics, but to integrate the other part of feminist solidarity: including the vision of the South in the formulation of the agenda.  

The following paper analyzes the transfer process of the international agenda on women's rights to the Chilean State during the years 1990 to 2019. The specific objectives of the research are to identify the relevant agendas from the position of those involved in this process. The analysis is based on a theoretical approach that incorporates the studies of diffusion and transfer of public policies, and which is detailed first. From a methodological point of view, process tracing was used to collect the information, which allows us to account for the motivations, perceptions and interests of those who make the decisions and create narratives regarding the transfer. For this purpose, a documentary review and semi-structured interviews were conducted with key figures from international organizations (UN Women, ECLAC Gender Affairs Division), political authorities of the mechanism for the advancement of women (former National Service for Women and Gender Equity and since 2015 Ministry of Women and Gender Equity), public officials belonging to the mechanism since the early 1990s (from the Department of International Relations and other units in charge of mainstreaming gender in the State), and members of the feminist movement (including interviews with Corporación Humanas and La Morada). The article introduces the topic by referring to the possibility of public policies and the state to transform or maintain gender relations, in so far as the activity carried out by the state is not neutral. In this sense, the feminist movement and women's organizations have played a fundamental role in demanding transformative action from the state, and in contributing to the development of the international agenda on gender issues. The article also briefly describes the development of the international agenda on women's rights since the last decades of the 20th century, including binding legal instruments at the universal and regional levels, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1979) and the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (1994).  Moreover, it examines the political commitments adopted by states at international conferences (United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, the World Conference on Women and the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, among others), which have specific follow-up mechanisms. Subsequently, the political context of the State of Chile and the role played by the feminist movement during the different governments are contextualized. The results of the research conducted are then presented, establishing which international agendas have been relevant during the period from the positions occupied by the different relevant actors identified.  This includes both those that are binding and those that generate political commitments from the States, mainly the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the CEDAW, the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women and the Montevideo Strategy for the Implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda; a difference is established between the content of certain agendas and the milestones for reporting to the follow-up mechanisms, which may have greater or lesser influence depending on the case.  For instance, reporting to the CEDAW Committee isonsidered a relevant milestone, but not the recommendations issued by that treaty body. Finally, we conclude by recognizing the main elements of the research results, including who intervenes and what roles the international agenda plays from the different positions occupied by the identified actors (high political authority, public officials, from international organizations and from the institutional feminist movement). In this sense, we conclude by determining that the role played by the international agenda has different functions for individuals depending on the position in which they find themselves: for senior political authorities, the international agenda does not mark a milestone that represents a before and after, but rather supports processes that are taking place at the national level; on the other hand, for public officials, the international agenda plays a more important role, in that it is capable of transmitting new ideas, through which public policy is developed; while for civil society, the international agenda is used to pressure States, and milestones that mark a before and after are recognized. The role of international conferences is recognized by all interviewees as a mediating and supportive role. In turn, the feminist movement identifies certain milestones as fundamental (IV World Conference on Women), but others are less relevant, such as the Consensuses emanating from the Regional Conferences on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean or the Declarations of the Legal and Social Commission on Women. With respect to Security Council Resolution 1325, it is noted that for the feminist movement this did not constitute a strong demand and that it was implemented due to the will and knowledge of the officials in charge. The relevance of the Belém do Pará Convention in the transmission of new knowledge is recognized by all, particularly for those who did not come from the feminist movement, as those who did had already incorporated the notions of violence from that treaty. In turn, with respect to the CEDAW,the presentation of reports by the state and civil society are all recognized as a milestone.  However, it is also recognized that there is a lack of adequate implementation of the concluding observations regarding the examination of the state by the Committee, and this ends up being used by those who have knowledge on the subject. Likewise, from a critical analysis, certain final reflections are presented which, rather than closing the research topic, leave the way open to continue expanding the transfer of public policies and the implementation of international recommendations. In particular, this includes the role that institutional feminism can play so that we can speak of intersectional and transformative public policies of gender relations and not of maintaining the status quo.  This remains the goal considering that since the beginning of the 90s public policies have sought to eliminate discrimination and structural violence, and yet this continues to persist.  

Review of: Tamale, S. (2020). Decolonization and Afro-feminism. Daraja Press, 411 pp.

The article aims to describe and analyse international relations debates, focusing on the contributions that feminisms make to the field as one of the dissident currents and reflectivist approaches -especially in its postcolonial/decolonial formulations. The methodology used is qualitative, and a specific bibliography is reviewed in order to examine the current discussions in the discipline, the confrontations within feminisms in IR, as well as their contributions. Moreover, we will look at the revision that Latin American and Caribbean decolonial feminism has instigated, considering the importance of intersectionality for expanding disciplinary boundaries. The text is articulated around the following questions: What debates run through the contemporary disciplinary field? What do the approaches of feminisms, within this framework, question and propose? What methodologies and notions do they introduce in IR studies? Which contributions are made by Latin American and Caribbean feminism? Thus, specific methodological and epistemological issues illuminated by feminisms in IR, such as the body politics,the micropolitics approach, and the focus on everyday practices,are given particular consideration. Solomon & Steele (2016) affirm that it “is only now — with increasing shifts to the micro — that academic IR has begun to (re)discover the lives and people of global politics, and to breathe life back into a field that grand theory mostly neglected”. Every life of any person around the world should be recognized; there is no international system or society without the actions and practices of ordinary people. In this regard, feminisms have been key introductions into the field of IR, along with poststructuralism and postcolonialism, which are regular research instruments in disciplines like anthropology or sociology. For instance, ethnographic studies or participant observation are techniques that support the turns and innovations mentioned above. This framework is fundamental to make gender differences visible from an intersectional perspective.  Postcolonial/decolonial feminism concentrates their studies on that difference, especially considering its links with other inequalities and concrete oppressions: e.g. in relation to race, ethnicity, religion, class, and nationality. In Latin America and the Caribbean, this perspective takes on an added relevance, and gives rise in this text to the problematization of its entanglement with human rights; the relationship between women, work and racialization; inequalities and violence; together with their links with global neoliberalism. In this respect, the article gives a comprehensive account of the main issues tackled by feminisms in the region, such as women’s positions during the colonization period, and the multiple forms of violence related to their role.  For instance, there is the importance of state responsibility in femicides, and the internal colonization and the neglect of diversity in national (plurinational) societies.  These are performed by academia and social movements, particularly so in Western (white) feminist perspectives. The text is divided into three sections.  Firstly, the framework of current IR debates is established, the differences between feminisms in IR and their classifications are described, and the theoretical contributions that these approaches have made to the discipline through methodological instruments such as micropolitics, corporeality and the practices of everyday life are elaborated. In the words of Enloe (2007, p.100) “Feminism is a multidimensional yet coherent worldview. Feminism is an achieved mosaic of understandings, yet it is still unfolding. […] feminism is a complex set of understandings about how power operates, how power is legitimized and how power is perpetuated”. Regardless of which perspective within feminism is being highlighted, some fundamental common issues will appear: neoliberalism and patriarchy are two of them, but also violence against women, gender identities and rights, exploitation, public and private spheres distinctions, etc. Then, the particularities of decolonial feminisms in Latin America and the Caribbean, along with their intersectional look at the field, are discussed: the question of subalternity, difference and neoliberalism, the concrete forms they acquire in the Global South and in the region. Moreover, the relevance of the link between neoliberalism and patriarchy is brought into consideration as a research topic shared by different feminist perspectives. In this respect, we name some authors form the region that propose feminist genealogic studies (Ciriza, 2015; Parra, 2021). As Marchand (2013, p.64) explains, the opportunities of a young middle-class woman with a university education are greater than those of a 65-year-old indigenous man with little formal education and a peasant life. While obviously not in a dominant position in society and the labour market, the young woman still has a privileged position with respect to the indigenous. These differences are invisible in the rational mainstream, and also in liberal -and some socialist or poststructuralist- feminisms. Some particular research is mentioned to show how the body politics, micropolitical approaches, and the practice turn are effectively used in IR studies, with innovative techniques oriented towards ethnographic studies and participated action. For instance, the examination of global women (and gender diversities), migration and mobility are illuminated by focusing in particular case: women from Guerrero in Texas (Muñoz y Mendoza, 2018). Also, the incidences of sexual violence in the conflict in Guatemala is brought to light through the voices of the Maya women survivors and thanks to the research of Fulchiron (2016). This research emphasises the use of the femininized body as a war instrument. In addition, this paper mentions the contribution that Latin American and Caribbean feminisms have made to the field of human rights, especially through the participation in international organizations such as OAS and UN. (Barrancos, 2021; Chiarotti Boero, 2021) Considering all the above mentioned, we state that critical and intersectional feminisms allow us to think IR as a diverse field, with true planetary scope, and capable of recovering the importance of the well-being and daily lives of people. Finally, the conclusions are presented with possible relevant lines for future research (ecofeminism and the Latin American approaches to it). Dissident contributions in IR, in general, call into question the mainstream, giving rise in recent years to alternative, peripheral and silenced voices through postcolonial studies (decoloniality) and the feminisms, amongst others.  These voices of difference generate discussion beyond hegemonic perspectives, producing key contributions for the continued interrogation of the discipline.  These voices, for instance from Latin America and the Caribbean, draw on their own worldviews, along with traditional and popular knowledge.  This assists in the promotion of new approaches and value situated, plural, intersectional and corporeized knowledges.

International Relations has been developed on a set of well-known narrative myths. On the one hand, there is the formal beginning of the discipline in 1919, its universal character, the organization of theoretical discussions around four great debates, and the recent end of great theories. On the other hand, there is the formation of the international system based on sovereign states, its anarchic condition, the difference between the international sphere and domestic politics, and the distancing of the social world characterized by situations of class, race, and gender. These components constitute the core of the standard Western narrative on which the discipline is based. Some critics of Western and Westphalian centrism in International Relations have emerged with increasing frequency in the literature, making themselves explicit in numerous evaluations drawn up within the framework of the supposed centenary of the discipline. However, due to the predominantly Anglo-Saxon character of the discipline, these debates have not equally spread over the Spanish-speaking academy. Recognizing this pending challenge, this article intends to organize some of the recent discussions on the subject and to incorporate some considerations about the main conditions of knowledge production in the International Relations field. To do this, it is based on the premise of the imposition of the dominant academic and intellectual Atlantic order (Arenal, 2004). To achieve the proposed objectives, tools of qualitative methodology are used. Specific and recent bibliography related to discussions in the discipline, dedicated to question the foundations of International Relations and their current challenges, is reviewed. Moreover, some relevant approaches to the main components of the standard Western narrative, the central core of the discipline's mainstream, are systematized. In turn, the recent theoretical contributions of Acharya (2012) and Rosenberg (2016) are introduced, which propose alternative categories to define "the international". From these elements, reflections are made on issues related to the geopolitics of knowledge and the production networks of the center and the peripheries. Thus, the article is divided into three sections. The first section problematizes the traditional history of International Relations. To begin with, it claims that its international explanatory vocation has not triggered a global disciplinary development, due, in part, to the great influence of the United States. Then, it questions its supposed starting points: the so-called Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, and the creation of the first university chair on the subject, after the end of the First World War, in 1919; likewise, its focus on the ideas of power, state, sovereignty, anarchy, order, the behavior of the great powers and the importance of the security agenda. These key exclusion criteria have ignored both realities and processes external to Europe, as well as previous and more complex theoretical approaches. For this reason, we point out some debates developed at least forty years earlier regarding imperialism, race, and trade. In addition, the asymmetric distribution of power, hierarchy, status quo, and other relevant situations of international inequality typical of the social world are exhibited. Finally, the traditional story built around the four great theoretical debates, successive, and with winners and losers, is analyzed. This narrative makes other theoretical proposals that were developed in parallel invisible, presents artificial dialogues, and proposes a misconception about the advancement of science. The second section of the article presents two theoretical proposals alternative to this narrative. To do this, it ascribes to the idea that International Relations is both a divisive disciplinary field (Holsti, 1985) and the result of a process of fragmentation and segmentation, which generated "camps" (Sylvester, 2007). On the one hand, Amitav Acharya's idea of "Global International Relations" is introduced, which aims to establish a critical dialogue with the dominant theories, instead of rejecting them. In this line, he proposes perspectives that he considers pluralistic, inclusive, and respectful of the diversity and the specificity of the regions. In particular, he wonders how ideas that arise in different geographic spaces and times can be both enduring and applicable to other contexts. Then, some criticisms of said proposal are presented synthetically. In addition, Justin Rosenberg's focus on “multiplicity” is examined. The author denounces the transfer of political theory to the field of international politics, with the characterization of the absence of a central power as differentiating. Consistently, he notes the lack of an exclusive discipline goal, a special province. To meet this challenge, he understands the international as a particular historical form of multiplicity, which involves the social world and reconnects International Relations with the broader field of social science. Finally, the third section argues that the disciplinary field of International Relations is a scientific field in dispute. With this, the analysis incorporates the dimension of the geopolitics of knowledge, which has central and peripheral networks. In this sense, we claim that we have to ask ourselves about the conditions of production of the central concepts, and the consequences that it has entailed for the development of the discipline. Linked to the topic, the article reflects on the concentration of theory production in the Anglo-Saxon world and a few places in Europe (Tickner and Wæver, 2019). Similarly, it is pointed out that Acharya and Rosenberg do not distance themselves from a positivist ontology, since they do not recognize the power relations intrinsic to the production, validation, and visibility of knowledge. The main motivation that guides this article is to contribute to decentralizing and expanding International Relations, by questioning some important components of the standard Western narrative and organizing different approaches linked to the process of disciplinary self-reflexivity. In addition, it focuses on the contributions and limits of some highly influential current theoretical perspectives. Finally, it incorporates the dimension of knowledge geopolitics and the existence of central and peripheral networks, crucial to a better understanding of the future of the discipline, and the role of the Spanish-speaking academy. To sum up, decentralizing International Relations calls for questioning ourselves about complex issues of theoretical, ontological, and epistemological dimensions. The article considers that, without the founding myths, the discipline becomes weaker, but, at the same time, more honest and real. Taking this challenge into account, it proposes to ask ourselves: how is the world understood? And furthermore, how can the identity of International Relations be built within the framework of its second centenary?

Gender violence has drawn academic and political attention due to its pervasiveness in practically every society in the world. Although gender violence sparked debates within the international feminist movement back in the 1970s, it took decades for political leaders and international organisations to come to terms with its meaning.  It has since become crystallised in a variety of resolutions and recommendations of the United Nations, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979) and its subsequent protocols and recommendations, and the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (1993). Nevertheless, much of the debate in the political arena has equated gender violence with violence against women and girls, eschewing a much broader and necessary understanding of social gender hierarchies and their relationship with violence. Feminists across various fields have highlighted the importance of such an understanding since for them gender-based violence cannot be fully addressed without questioning the gender order that structures societies in disadvantageous ways for women, girls, LGBTQI+ and other feminised subjects. Therefore, the bulk of feminist literature on this issue has resorted to gender analytic tools to scrutinise the meanings of different acts of violence that target the aforementioned gendered subjects. Most analyses focus on single-case studies, which help to draw a more complete picture of the gender structures that lead to violence, but with the already expected drawback of not being able to extrapolate the results from one case to another. Nonetheless, this single-case approach has allowed feminists across various disciplines to accumulate precious knowledge about the causes and consequences of gender-based violence under different contexts and circumstances. It is not surprising, thus, that feminists have attempted to theorise gender violence at different levels (individual, collective, and global), aiming simultaneously to link social gender hierarchies to the acts of violence and the overarching context under which they take place. In International Relations, feminist scholarship devoted to the study of war and conflict has been particularly aware of the relevance of gender-based violence, especially in contexts of social breakdown due to conflict. Several studies have focused on sexual violence as a disruptive and extreme act of violence that acquires prominence as a war strategy, while many methodological approaches – such as interviews with victims and perpetrators, causal analysis, comparative analysis – have been mobilised to map it, and understand its meanings and implications. Other types of violence have also drawn feminists’ attention, such as intimate partner violence and domestic violence, sexual slavery, female genital mutilation/cutting, and battering, to name a few, and some theorists advocate that they are all connected as part of society’s gender hierarchies. Nonetheless, articulating a fully-fledged theory of gender violence that accounts for this multifaceted phenomenon has been challenging. Some attempts focus on the persistent gender inequalities of society, the intersections between gender and ethnicity, the social breakdown during domestic and international conflict, and the military structures operating during wartime and peacetime. In this paper, we draw on recent literature that underscores the political dimension of gender violence. Instead of analysing acts of violence in isolation, we argue that they constitute a political act that is at once gendered and gendering. Gender-based violence, therefore, must be seen as the resulting interconnection of society’s gender hierarchies that aim to control and subordinate women and feminised subjects. As a political act, gender violence delivers messages to individual victims and their communities. Deciphering these messages, hence, is paramount to making sense of gender violence in different contexts, whilst unravelling the interconnections between different acts of violence. While patriarchy is an underlying factor, its manifestations in the form of gender-based violence conveys various messages that cannot be reduced to one single cause. Therefore, we mobilise a typology of these messages that incorporates simultaneously two axes: wartime-peacetime v. symbolic-physical violence. The first axis captures the circumstances under which gender-based violence takes place, departing from the assumption that the meanings of violence in wartime are different from those in peacetime. The second axis focuses on the nature of violence, whether physical or symbolic. The psychological and social dimensions of violence are equally relevant and are captured by the symbolic axis. The combination of these axes allows for the categorisation of acts of violence and the deciphering of their messages. We resort to an extensive review of the literature on gender-based violence to build this typology, as well as on the writings of Rita Laura Segato and Verónica Gago, who have highlighted the importance of interpreting the gendered messages of violent acts. We identify four types of messages: dehumanisation and annihilation, silencing shame and dishonour, body and sexuality control, and subalternity and agency denial. We then apply the typology to briefly assess the situation of gender violence in Africa. We review data and studies on the topic, attempting to “read” the aforementioned messages conveyed by gender-based violence. We observe that our typological approach can be easily incorporated to the analysis of gender violence, attesting its potential as a conceptual-cum-theoretical framework. Evidently, further research will be needed to fully grasp the analytical prospects of this typology. As per this pioneering study, we contend that if we are to take seriously the interconnectedness of acts of violence, examining the intricate relations of different forms of gender violence is paramount to reconstructing the connections between the acts themselves. Mapping their meanings and how they transcend from particular to collective is, hence, an essential part of strategising against gender violence, more broadly, and violence against women, more specifically. This has important consequences for policy making, for the messages entailed in gender-based violence reveal the underlying structures of society that must be transformed in order to combat the problem. Feminists have been calling for such a gender-based approach for a long time, and in the particular case of gender violence, our typology provides a conceptual framework to advance knowledge on this topic. In so doing, it may open avenues for political intervention aimed at deeper social and political transformations, and the ultimate eradication of gender violence.