Description
In recent years, a debate emerged about women in the nuclear weapons field. International organizations, states, advocacy groups and scholars have highlighted women’s underrepresentation and developed initiatives for their inclusion. This paper examines three narratives on women that shape the debate: women are missing, women are victims and women can bring change to the nuclear weapons field. The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, it reconstructs the emergence of each narrative. In a second step, the narratives are critically evaluated. The paper argues that each narrative has empirical and conceptual weaknesses. Together, they can also create an ideal- type conception of women and femininity that leaves intact the stereotype of women as advocates for peace and disarmament. This finding makes a twofold contribution to feminist perspectives on nuclear weapons. First, it exposes the gendered dimension of three narratives that shape the debate on women in the nuclear weapons field. It, secondly, emphasizes the importance of reorientating feminist scholarship in International Relations (IR) to study the roles that women have played in the nuclear weapons field. Such reorientation can produce narratives of women who have been complicit to nuclear harms. These narratives can challenge the ideal-type images of women that are currently created in the debate.
