The first-generation preoccupation with meta-theory obviously had
its limits given feminism’s normative claim to provide a radical alternative
to realism (Runyan and Peterson 1991). As Richard Price and
Christian Reus-Smit (1998: 263) argued ‘the third debate was inward
looking, concerned primarily with undermining the foundations of dominant
discourses in International Relations’. While feminist challenges to
International Relations opened the space for critical scholarship, they
begged the question of what a feminist perspective on world politics
would look like substantively, and how distinctive it would be (Zalewski
1995). Seventeen years after the first journal in the field devoted a
special issue to ‘women and international relations’ (Millennium 1988)
much has also been accomplished by feminist International Relations
scholars, short of transforming the often gender-blind study of international
relations. Most courses on International Relations theory worldwide
now consider gender issues or feminist perspectives due to the
publication of several exemplary texts and monographs by feminist
International Relations scholars (Tickner 1992, 2001; Sylvester 1994a;
Pettman 1996; Steans 1998; Peterson and Runyan 1999). Several key disciplinary journals have published whole issues on the subjects of
women, gender and feminism in international relations, and in 1999 the
International Feminist Journal of Politics was established to promote dialogue
among scholars of feminism, politics and International Relations.