Feminists rely chiefly on the contention that the traditional analysis of world politics is fundamentally gendered. Gender-sensitive analysis begins with the premise that societal institutions are made by humans and are therefore changeable by humans. Feminists systematically deconstruct the notions traditionally held by realists and taken for granted as how the world works. Gender-sensitive analysis takes many factors into consideration that the realist does not. As history dictates, the world, both in the domestic and international scenes, has been predominantly ruled by men. Women have historically been almost entirely excluded from policy-making positions throughout the world. Until recently there have been almost no women with significant power, relevant to the number of men in similar positions. In the limited instances of a woman gaining any high degree of power within a country, her success has typically been due to the marginalization of those characteristics traditionally gendered as feminine. Additionally consider the fact that, at least until recently, the overwhelming majority of written contributions to the fields of international relations theory and world politics have been from a male perspective. Then we can begin to see that the feminist assumption that the traditional analysis of world politics has been and still remains inherently gendered may not be an unrealistic conclusion. Consider the Hobbesian notion that, in a state of nature, human beings (man) acts entirely in an anarchic manner. This premise carries over into traditional international relations theory when the relationships he involves himself in are solely for the purpose of self-help and self-preservation (True, 234). Feminist theories begin with the assumption that "striving for attachment and community is as much a part of human nature as the desire for independence" (Tickner, 132). Through gendered analysis, i.e. without taking into con...
