Gender Justice — Feminism, Sex & Gender

Gender justice movements address the systemic inequalities that disadvantage women and marginalised genders, rooted in the power imbalances of structural hierarchies and cultural norms. Movements such as #MeToo mark its urgency.

• Central distinction — sex is biological; gender is socially created, carrying values, norms and expectations. Internalisation and social conditioning produce women as a gender.
• Feminism seeks gender justice — equality, not superiority; nobody should be disadvantaged by their sex.
• Impacts of injustice — discrimination at home and work; disproportionate suffering in war alongside exclusion from peace tables; cultural constraints on health care; the valuing of boys over girls (foeticide, infanticide).

Areas of Systemic Inequality

Gender in the Global Economy

• Christine Lagarde (IMF) — India’s GDP would be 27% higher with workforce gender parity; Turkey +22%; Japan +5%; the US +9%.
• Reserve army of labour — women recruited into the workforce when production must rise and shed into domestic life in downturns; the sexual division of labour serves capitalism.
• Feminisation of work (Asian electronics, Mexican assembly plants); feminisation of migration (developed-world families rely on migrant women for care); feminisation of poverty (poverty biased against women and female-headed households).
• Cynthia Enloe — a gendered lens reveals patriarchal hierarchies inside global institutions and markets.

“Gender inequality is not just an affliction of women; it harms society at large.”

Amartya Sen

Feminist Approach to IR & Gendering Security

• Cynthia Enloe (Bananas, Beaches and Bases, 2000) — asks “where are the women?” in nationalism, military bases, domestic work and diplomacy; the international system rests on assumptions that overlook women.
• J. Ann Tickner (Gender in International Relations, 1992) — critiques realism and liberalism as male-centric; reformulating Hans Morgenthau, argues human nature is both masculine and feminine, national interest is multidimensional, and power can be “constructive empowerment” not domination.
• Institutional response — the UN Decade for Women, gender mainstreaming, and UNSC Resolution 1325 on women in peace and security.

Gendering security

• Joan Tronto — the ethics of care: caregiving, largely by women, is essential to a functioning society; Nancy Fraser — justice as redistribution and recognition; Martha Nussbaum — the capabilities approach: gender equality lets women reach their potential.
• Feminist foreign policy (first adopted by Sweden) treats women as agents of change, not merely victims.

Feminist critique of contemporary global issues

• Gendered dimensions of poverty, education gaps and health disparities; violence against women (domestic violence, harassment, trafficking) — the COVID-19 pandemic worsened intimate-partner violence, its public-health dimension studied by Logie and Turan.
• Globalisation — exploitation in supply chains (the Bangladesh garment-factory fire) and dependence on migrant third-world women; the digital divide (women “12% less likely than men to use the internet”). Chandra Talpade Mohanty — intersectional, bottom-up solidarity against the homogenised “Third World woman.” Institutional responses — UNSCR 1325, UN Women, HeForShe; the “personal is international.”

Gender Justice in the Global Agenda · Initiatives · Religion · Red Lipstick

Gender justice in the global political agenda

• Wendy Harcourt — little work links gender inequality and state fragility; promote women’s citizenship through legal reform. Nadine Puechguirbal — the ceasing of hostilities is not always peace for women. Susanne Schmeidl — build gender into conflict early-warning. Erik Melander — greater gender equality (women in parliament, education ratios) is associated with lower intrastate armed conflict.

Global initiatives & UN efforts

Swami Vivekananda — the progress of society is tied to the condition of women.

Religion & gender equality

• Religion shapes cultural norms; women’s status is tied to interpretations by predominantly male authorities. Holm (1994) — the severest restrictions apply during menstruation and pregnancy; roles remain differentiated and unbalanced.

Red Lipstick Movement

• Reads red lipstick as an act of agency contesting gendered policing. Lineage — suffragettes (portrayed as “shrieking sisters”) and US suffragists adopted it as emancipation (the May 1912 New York rally); in WWII — despised by Adolf Hitler — it became resilient femininity (“Fighting Red!,” Rosie the Riveter).
• Contemporary form — the 2021 Portuguese campaign, when André Ventura insulted candidate Marisa Matias over her red lipstick, sparked #VermelhoEmBelem: painting lips red and choosing to “fight fascism with style.” Janet Afary & Roger Friedland — lipstick as “female agency… anti-authoritarianism and liberal politics.”

Assessment: gender justice is both a political and ethical imperative — Nancy Fraser on redistribution and recognition, moving from exclusionary structures to inclusive frameworks where dignity is accessible to all.