ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines the promise of social mechanisms as a tool for feminist research in international relations (IR). Positivist methodologies sit uncomfortably with Constructivist ontologies, which, are at the basis of much thinking about gender and IR. The author argues that feminist Constructivist research findings often are of a general nature and that they take the form of social mechanisms. She shows that feminist Constructivists might consider explicitly taking on the task of identifying the way gender works through social mechanisms. Methodology has emerged as a key concern for feminist scholars of IR and a site of major contention. The notion of social mechanisms resonates well with an ontology that construes the world as in a constant process of gendering. It lends itself to answering how-questions and allows for such answers to be validated beyond particular cases, enabling a different form of generalization and providing a way to establish tendencies.
