Battle of the Sexes
Tickner wages war to elevate women
By Nicole St.Pierre
USC College professor Ann Tickner remembers when studying International Relations (IR) was a male affair. In 1960, she was one of three women graduate students in her IR class at Yale University.
“At Yale in those days, the expectation was that women students would marry, have kids and not pursue a career,” says the British-born professor, who came to the United States when her father accepted a position with the United Nations in New York City.
Contrary to this assumption, Tickner later became a professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. While teaching an introductory IR class in the 1970s, she noticed a conspicuous pattern—there were hardly any women scholars on the reading list.
“It was very striking how terribly disempowered the women who took these courses felt,” she remembers. “It was during the Cold War, when things were very much focused on nuclear strategy and national security. Women students would come into my office and tell me they didn’t feel confident about the course, often comparing themselves to young men in the class who were very outspoken on the subject of war and nuclear weapons.”
Those early events inspired Tickner’s bar-raising work of the last 15 years that has helped change the discipline of IR. Through books, articles and lectures, she has delivered timeless feminist critiques of how scholars look at issues of national security, global economic issues, war and peace.
Balance of Power
Today, this mother of three daughters and grandmother of five is called a “key feminist thinker” by Cambridge University Press and was featured in the book “Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations” by Routledge Press. Her pioneering book “Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security” was among the first to analyze gender’s place in international relations.
“Until recently, this has been a heavily white male-dominated field,” says Tickner, explaining the lopsided gender demographics of IR.
“As a result, certain perspectives permeate both its methodologies and its subject matters,” she adds, suggesting that the IR discipline replace its dominant warrior image with that of a less gender-biased one. “People inevitably miss out on a lot of what is happening in the world if we only view events through certain lenses.”
Following the devastation of Sept. 11, Tickner’s essay “Feminist Perspective on 9/11,” published in the International Studies Perspectives Journal, suggests that men’s association with war-fighting and national security serves to reinforce their legitimacy in world politics while it acts to create barriers for women, particularly in times of crisis. “Often in times of conflict, women are seen only as victims, but even women in Afghanistan under the Taliban were fighting against gender oppression, establishing clandestine schools and hospitals to bring education and health care to women,” she says.
Well regarded within IR circles, Tickner’s analytical voice has led her to be vice president of the International Studies Association and a frequent lecturer at universities and conferences throughout the world.
Unconventional Success
When asked if she is surprised at the unconventional path her career has taken, Tickner replies, “I wrote my thesis on Third World development, not an issue of central concern in my discipline. But I was always interested in peace research and issues of social justice—issues that have been at the margins of my field.”
At USC, Tickner is currently completing a three-year term as director of the Center for International Studies (CIS), a research facility dedicated to international affairs. Founded in 1986 under the auspices of the School of International Relations, the center has expanded its membership over the years. Participants now come from a range of disciplines, including political science, economics, geography, gender studies, cinema-television, communications, business, law, theater and history, as well as IR.
CIS organizes seminars and workshops on critical international issues. Following Sept. 11, CIS was at the forefront of the College’s political-violence initiative. Most recently, Tickner was instrumental in organizing four weeks of workshops to analyze the Iraqi war.
Heading East
This fall, Tickner will spend her sabbatical on the East Coast at Harvard University, where she will be a senior fellow with the Boston Consortium for Gender, Peace, Security and Human Rights, which is based in Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
“I’ve always wanted to write about what happens to women in times of conflict, their role as both actors and victims during the many wars many of us never even hear about, and what their role is in peace-keeping and peace-building,” she says. “There are so many stories to tell.”
|
