In spite of feminist efforts to theorize the relationships between gender domestic and international politics, International Relations' conventional individual, the state and levels of analysis mystifies them by treating th international system as distinct analytic units. This theoretical schema has become'the most influential way of classifying explanations of war and indeed of organising our understanding of inter-state 1987: 67). Toward the end of a relational, gender-sensitive theory of world politics feminist scholars deconstruct each level ot analysis nickner 1992; Sylvester 1994a eterson Gender undermines the divisions between the individual, state and international system by showing how each level is preconditioned by an image of nal man that excludes women and femininity.