The Gendered Political Economy of Insecurity

As documented in this volume, feminists have produced incisive accounts of how gender operates pervasively to shape and often ‘normalize’ inequalities, conflicts, social violence, and even wars. ¹ Those working in ‘Security Studies’ tend to focus on embodied forms of violence and the ideational premises, institutional practices, and political dynamics that shape questions of security as these are foregrounded in International Relations (IR) research. While many acknowledge the role of economic factors, few take political economy as their starting point. ² In contrast, my chapter here offers a schematic overview of ways in which today’s global political economy (GPE) is pervasively gendered and how this gendering produces and differentially ‘distributes’ insecurities. In particular, I emphasize how the differential valorization – conceptually and materially – of qualities associated with masculinity and femininity affects the unequal distribution of authority, privilege, resources, and insecurities. I begin by reviewing key features of neoliberal globalization and reflecting on definitions of in/security. As a preface to the substantive discussion, I note several starting points that help situate subsequent argumentation, and also clarify how I deploy gender in this chapter. I then introduce my analytical framing of GPE and use that framing to survey how neoliberal globalization produces a wide array of insecurities.