ABSTRACT
At the end of the 1990s Cynthia Enloe declared that this was a time to reflect on the many successes and achievements of feminist international relations (IR). In a little over a decade feminists had produced work on a wide range of themes, from the gendered nature of war and conflict to the reconceptualization of community and political space in IR.1 Undoubtedly, feminists have been successful in carving out a space or creating a discourse on gender within IR over the past 20 years. However, while the achievements of feminist IR have been notable, since the late 1980s feminist scholars have encountered a particular antagonism towards the project of ‘gendering’ IR. Indeed, Enloe’s comments on the health of feminist IR were in response to probing questions on whether ‘you think this work is really doing anything on a significant scale to transform the way people think?’ and whether the exchanges that did take place between specialists in gender and those of a traditional political science/IR persuasion, were not dialogues ‘of the deaf?’2
