What is gender analysis and how does it change the way we think about American foreign relations? The term “gender” has multiple meanings and intellectual usages. Gender generally refers to the socially constructed nature of sex roles. The concept of gender challenges biologically essentialist understandings of maleness and femaleness, asserting instead that normative notions of masculinity and femininity are socially defined ideas projected onto biological differences. In addition, the interpretation of gender as a form of performativity argues that there are no stable categories of sex differences. Instead, gender is enacted through repeated and oftentimes unconscious patterns of behaviors or gender scripts that create a fiction of a cohesive and pre-existing identity of manhood or womanhood. Furthermore, scholars of gender note that physiological differences do not necessarily divide neatly into two sexes, as some individuals are intersexed. Similarly, some societies recognize more than two genders, and some individuals are transgendered, that is, they identify with a gender that is not normatively associated with their physical sex. Finally, scholars of gender and sexuality have conceptually delineated these categories. Individuals who transgress gender norms are frequently perceived as transgressing sexual norms in their desires, behaviors, and identifications. However, gender and sexuality do not necessarily align in expected ways with one another.

Scholars have utilized the concepts of gender (and sexuality) for various purposes. Feminist scholars have foregrounded gender in order to challenge naturalized and hierarchical differences between men and women. In some of these studies, gender is interchangeable with the category of woman. That is, some works on gender primarily focus on women. However, other studies have used gender to analyze masculinity as a social construction and to examine how masculinity and femininity are relationally defined. In addition, some scholars argue that gender hierarchies exemplify and justify broader forms of social inequality. As Joan Scott explained, “gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power.” This chapter explicates how these conceptions of gender (and sexuality) can be useful methodological approaches to analyzing US foreign relations. Scholars have broadened and enriched the field of US foreign relations history by focusing on women, masculinity, and on gender as a signifier of power.

WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?

The study of American foreign relations is closely connected to the fields of diplomatic and military history, as well as to political science and international relations.