“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”.
Cynthia Enloe wasn’t always aware of her feminist self, even though now she can be considered “the founder of feminist international relations” for arguing and demonstrating that only through making women’s experiences visible we can understand politics in general and international relations in particular.
In this section, we’d like to analyse more in-depth, thanks to whom and how Cynthia Enloe arrived at some of her specific, important, eye-opening understandings of the Feminist point of view in IR.
She attended a suburban high school in Long Island, NY. Her mother and father consistently voted Republican. Her relationship with her mother influenced Professor Enloe a lot. She and her mother never talked about politics. Her mother met and dealt with the world in such a different way than her father did: “I’m in many ways my father’s daughter except for the fact that I’m also my mother’s daughter, and that is, for me, a saving grace”.
Cynthia Enloe's internship at the Department of Agriculture in Washington introduced her to a fellow intern from Indonesia, a fishery specialist. He mentored her, revealing gaps in her knowledge, particularly regarding Indonesian history. Meeting him, led Enloe to pursue a double major in Political Science and Asian studies at Berkeley, recognising the need to broaden her understanding of the world. Professor Enloe always loved politics - “I think that was being my father’s daughter in a way”. Studying politics was something that felt natural to her. Double-majoring at Berkeley greatly impacted her when she became a feminist because politics cannot be understood by just looking at the narrow field of what other people imagine to be politics.
During her period at Berkeley, there was the rise of the Feminist Free Movement, but she was not attracted to that side of politics yet. During her dissertation in Malaysia, she even more internalised the broader concept of politics. Without any feminist consciousness, though, there were two things she had already understood: it’s impossible to understand political life unless taking the study of history, art, literature, and culture seriously more broadly. That’s the foundation for when Professor Enloe became a feminist. Feminists have argued that you cannot understand political life if you have a narrow understanding of where politics take place. It’s necessary to consider women to understand war, militarism, and societies, not only men.
Professor Enloe’s efforts to understand her mother made her a feminist. In the late 1970s and 1980s, her feminist friends encouraged her to take her mother’s life seriously. Enloe’s mother was a white, middle-aged woman living a suburban life during a time when talking and discussing feminism and women’s rights was still unimaginable. She first researched her family history and found lots of her mother’s diaries. Enloe realised how much “life is political: kitchens, theatres, closets and even secretaries’ desks can be arenas for international politics”. Women, in the darkest times - such as wars, for her
mother it was WW2 - are the people who need to be listened to, to understand IR.
As she discovered more and more about her mother, Professor Enloe started to write her final draft of Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives. This book gives a feminist analysis of the military's use and abuse of women in Vietnam, the Falklands, the USA, and Britain. The book is about women’s lives in and around militaries. Militaries, as she before realised, were just a tiny part of the arena of militarism. Hence, it’s possible to see how much she started analysing her history before applying it to the broader analysis.
One question that dominates Professor Enloe’s view and conception of Feminism is “Where are the Women?”, firstly found in Bananas, Beaches and Bases. By looking at places where women are absent, Professor Enloe exposes the political workings of masculinity and femininity, examines how cultures and systems become patriarchal, probes into the global phenomenon of the militarisation of women, and demands that women’s lives and women’s impact on international politics and the global economy be taken seriously. She suggests going and looking in the most masculinised, militarised places to find women to understand IR as a whole.
She would, today, describe herself as doing “feminist comparative politics with an explicit, even intense, curiosity about when and how international dynamics shape the internal gendered politics of societies”.
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.
Cynthia Enloe highlights the feminisation of the nurse role in her piece Wounds, militarised nursing, feminist curiosity and unending war. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the military setting. She uses Agatha Miller (better known as Agatha Christie) as an example: she offered her time to train as a nurse and worked in a hospital in the Southern English city of Torquay. Agatha Miller had to learn to live with her place in the hierarchy of the British hospital system during World War I. The top rungs of the ladder were occupied by doctors, followed by middle-class nurses known as Nursing sisters, and the lower rungs by women employed as kitchen or ward attendants.
For two reasons, nurses are always viewed as the least important actors during a war: first, they have historically and currently carried out their medical duties under the supervision of men; and second, the tasks of medicating, bandaging, and consoling patients are heavily feminised and devalued. The argument is that gender essentialisation and feminisation/masculinisation are two opposing political ideas that have significantly impacted the politics of war-waging, but they differ in significant ways.
Gender essentialisation is the concept that specific jobs can only be performed "naturally" (and hence successfully) by members of a particular biological sex, such as driving tanks, bartending, negotiating cease-fires, and running financial ministries. Essentialists contend that this gender gap is unavoidable and unchangeable. Feminising something also refers to taking particular steps to guarantee that women perform only specific roles, usually low-paying or unpaid, and usually with little control over crucial decision-making. Masculinisation is typically intertwined with the processes of ethnicisation, racialisation, and class prejudice.
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.
A Life of Learning by Cynthia Enloe. The Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture. American Council of Learned Societies. Department of International Development, Community and Environment. Clark University, 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRpGG6gsF4w.
Calman J.L. (1994) The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War. Political Science Quarterly 109(4).
Cynthia Enloe 04.02.2015 Keynote Address Critical Intersections Conference (“How to Take Militarised Masculinities Seriously Without Losing Your Feminist Curiosity”, Center for the Study of Gender and Conflict, School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQCbpGexPsU.
Enloe C. (1983) Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives. London/Boston, Pluto Press/South End Press.
Enloe C. (2004) ‘Gender’ is not enough: the need for a feminist consciousness. International Affairs 80(1): 95-97.
Enloe C. (2014) Bananas, Beaches and Bases. Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (2nd ed.). University of California Press.
Enloe C. (2019). Wounds: Militarized nursing, feminist curiosity, and unending war. International Relations, 33(3), 393-412.
Enloe C. and R.I.S. (2001) Interview with Professor Cynthia Enloe. Review of International Studies 27(4).
Enloe C. and R.I.S. (2004) The Curious Feminist. University of California Press. Gallery ER. City, University of London, 2021:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1NwZIfQW_Q.
Olivius E. (2019). Militarised nationalism as a platform for feminist mobilisation? The case of the exiled Burmese women's movement. Women's Studies International Forum 76.
Owens O. (2021) Where are the Women? Centering gender in issues of war and peace. Inkstick Media, https://inkstickmedia.com/where-are-the-women/.
Women's Wars Aren't Men's Wars - Dr. Cynthia Enloe (Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights' Speakers Series), 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZmfEMP0qDk