“Becoming a feminist didn’t mean I always knew the answer; becoming a feminist for me meant that I had very pointed questions to ask that I had spent years not asking. And, when you have better questions to ask, your thinking gets better.”

Cynthia Enloe was born in New York City in 1938 and grew up in a New York suburb. She completed her undergraduate education at the “Connecticut College for Women” in 1960, and, in 1963, she obtained an M.A. and a PhD in 1967 in Political Science at the “University of California”, Berkeley. While at Berkeley, she was supervised by Aaron Wildavsky, an American political scientist, and she became the first woman ever to be a Head TA. A few years after becoming a professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, she served as Chair of the Department of Political Science and Director of Women’s Studies. During the first years of her career, she focused on studying Ethnic and Racial politics. She completed her dissertation in Malaysia on a Fulbright Scholarship from 1965 until 1966, an experience that changed her attentiveness to gender issues. Ten years after receiving her PhD, Cynthia Enloe wrote six books on “Ethical tension and its role in politics”. However, she had yet to look at any of these subjects from a feminist point of view, something she admits being “embarrassed of”.

Cynthia Enloe started to develop her feminist thoughts during her teaching at Clark University, in the middle of the U.S.-Vietnam war. She began to wonder how history would be different if the entire war had been told through the eyes of Vietnamese women. Later on, her thought-provoking work on gender, delved into the interplay of gendered politics in both national and international arenas, with a particular focus on women's labour in globalised factories and how women´s emotional and physical labour has been used to support many governments' war waging policies. Henceforward, Cynthia Enloe’s literary efforts have primarily stressed how feminist and gendered politics have shaped the national and international scenario. In her works, she underlined the discriminatory and cruel treatment of women in globalised factories and the abuses and exploitation suffered by women in their labour. She also criticised the US militarisation in international relations, specifically the roles that women play in conflicts. Consequently, she tried to claim the importance of women in security and defence. She argued that the U.S. military model trains men to be defenders and saviours of women and then produces an environment in which women are the victims of physical violence.
After graduating from Clark University, she became a professor in the “Department of International Development, Community and Environmental” and is still a frequent and energetic lecturer, serving on the editorial board for scholarly journals such as “Signs and the International Feminist Journal of Politics”. In her works, it is clear the influence of other feminists who adopted an ethnographic approach: an example could be Seung-Kyung Kim’s work (1997) on South Korea women factory workers during the pro-democracy campaign, and Anne Allison’s (1994) work on observing corporate businessman interactions with hostesses in a Tokyo drinking club.

When asked how she defines feminism for herself, Enloe stated that "feminism is the pursuit of deep, deep justice for women in ways that change the behaviours of both women and men and really change our notions of what justice looks like”.

Feminist scholarship has shown conclusively that militarism and nationalism are (re)engineered by the (re)establishment of gendered structures. Because of this, feminism is often seen as antithetical to these political projects. However, this is not always the case and does not necessarily have to be the case. On the contrary, militarised nationalism can be a fertile ground for feminist organisation and mobilisation. Not only can militarised nationalism mobilise women’s participation, but it can also provide a space for feminist organisations and advocacy that goes beyond, challenges, and ultimately reshapes militarised nationalist projects in ways that advance women’s rights and equality. There is a conflictual relationship between feminism, militarism, and nationalism, and this contributes to increasing feminist
debates about women’s mobilisation in the context of armed conflicts and national struggles.

In Banana, Beaches and Bases, as said before, she argues that the international political and economic system relies on women’s labour as feminised workers and respectable and loyal wives, as civilising influences, as sex objects, and as obedient daughters. World leaders refuse to recognise this dependency and deny the importance of women’s experiences in war and marriage, in trade, in prostitution, in factory work, in household chores, and in the formation of political decisions.

The Curious Feminist represents a critique of the patriarchal structures that privilege the masculine and exclude the voices of critical feminists. Feminist curiosity offers ways to respond to her famous question, “Where are the Women?”. However, this focus on the female gender does not fully answer the central gender question, “Why are certain masculine identities privileged over other masculine identities and all female identities?”. The Curious Feminist, which is not really an expansion of her prior work, reflects on Enloe’s personal/political curiosity about the invisible women in IR and explores ways to fill up their silence. The chapter All the men are in the militia, all the women are victims however, focuses on a single man: a Serb soldier who was sentenced to execution by the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the rape and murder of women. Responding to criticism that she marginalises men, in this chapter, she examines how masculinity is systematically constructed through official institutions and inter-state relationships. However, she still argues that “the construction of masculine behaviour in every culture cannot be achieved without the construction of femininity that is both supportive and complimentary”. Her cross-referencing analysis of global gender inequality in everyday political practices is accessible, personal/political and an innovative way of developing feminist questions and interests in intellectual property.

As explained in “The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War”, militarism, according to Cynthia Enloe, is “a cultural phenomenon which has a profound effect on civil society and is gendered”. Militarisation, in turn, fashions what is permissible masculinity. It also fashions femininity, because the latter must preserve and advance the former. According to Enloe, militarism affects these social constructions both during periods of war and periods of seeming peace: these are what we call “post-war” or, in some cases, “pre-war” (signifying the importance of military action in our historical understanding). Demilitarisation, as in the post-Cold-War context, shapes manhood and femininity; however, it should not be taken as a sign that women will be given greater autonomy or privileges. Enloe goes on to describe how the spread of masculine and feminine ideas to colonised countries is facilitated by specific military training.

Do you think that religion or cultural heritage could affect the rise of feminism in a different international scenario? If so, do you think this aspect could change in the future? 

Enloe at first expressed her idea that feminism's international scenario is changing. She underlined how, in most conservative governments, parties claim the importance of “traditional values”, which, according to her, are the opposite of “feminist values”. Nationalist and conservative parties indeed often feature an emphasis on the “traditional family”, where women have a subordinate role compared to men. In view of what was said above, Enloe warned that feminism is in danger, especially where authoritarian regimes create alliances with religious authorities and beliefs. This is the case of Putin’s regime and his identification with the Russian Orthodox Church.

What is the most valuable lesson you learned from being a feminist in IR?

Enloe did not start to reply to this question from what she has already learned; she rather focused on what she didn’t understand before having feminist thoughts. She presented a comparison between our generation, which is already asking feminist-specific questions, and her situation at our age. She referenced her educational background: she attended an all-women college, and many of her professors at the time were probably the first women to get a PhD degree. Even if they were women professors, they did not teach about women. She wrote her whole dissertation in Malaysia and interviewed only men – without even noticing it. People who don’t ask “feminist” questions while studying politics – she argued - underestimate how power works, and the extent to which political actors (i.e. parties, movements…) manipulate ideas about women and their role vis-à-vis men. She referred to “intimate power” as opposed to “trade power” to convey this take.

Do you think that the role of women in the politics of militarisation has changed further since you first started reflecting on it?

Enloe decided to answer my question by dividing the answer itself into four main “changes” that happened in the politics of militarisation during the last twenty years: a change in military recruitment, a change in the reactions of women who are sexually harassed/assaulted, a change in international law (gender and sexual violence are prosecuted by the International Criminal Court, thanks to feminist lawyers’ mobilisation), and a change in the UN system (UNSCR 1325).

The military recruitment of young women is expanding because governments aim to have armies that look “modernised”. Does it entail a less masculinised military field? On the one hand, the number of high-ranked female officers is increasing; on the other, most of the time, they are still relegated to nursing or administrative activities. They do not hold the key positions for strategy-making.

Furthermore, indeed, militaries’ violence against women is now sanctioned…but how? Military senior officers are not always willing to punish male soldiers on sexual grounds; victims frequently either stay silent or quit. However, women of our generation can name sexual harassment/assaults; they know it when they see it.