Part II Approaches, Ch.24 Feminist Approaches to International Law

Subject(s):

Responsibility of international organizations — Customary international law — General principles of international law — Relationship of international law & host state law — Sources of international law

This chapter describes encounters between feminism and international law in four parts. It begins by outlining the diversity of feminist visions for (and against) international law to highlight the dynamism of the field, the contestation between its various political and legal commitments, and the different ways that the feminist subject of law is conceived. Secondly, the chapter examines the range of critical analyses that feminists have developed in the wake of a particular 1991 American Journal of International Law (AJIL) article. The chapter then explores the trajectories of feminist reform projects in international law. Lastly, this chapter highlights the paradoxes of feminist engagement with international law, arguing that the practices of critique and reform, and their productive tensions, are essential to resisting the law’s colonization of feminist politics and keeping feminist imaginaries of a better world alive.