This collection of 11 essays, spanning 1988 to 2011, offers a window into the intellectual trajectory of J. Ann Tickner, one of the foremost feminist scholars in international relations. Tickner enriches our understanding of this trajectory through introductory and concluding chapters, which touch on her personal journey, and brief introductions to the three sections of the book.

The five chapters in Part I, “Seeing Women and Gender in the Discipline of International Relations” (p. 1), critique the masculinist bias in IR, redefine core concepts to include women’s experiences, and use a gender lens to explore fields such as security studies and international political economy. Part II, “Methodological Engagements” (p. 71), includes three articles recounting feminist efforts to engage IR scholars in conversations on methodological issues and the difficulties encountered because of “[e]pistemological divisions about the construction of knowledge” (p. 72). The three essays in Part III, “Exploring Some Contemporary Themes and New Directions” (p. 127), address new issues in feminist IR: reflections on 9/11, perspectives on religious violence, and feminist and postcolonial readings of IR foundational stories. The conclusion reviews recent work of other feminist IR scholars, assessing the place of their work in the IR discipline, debating the value of quantitative methodologies for feminist research, and discussing future directions at a 2010 conference bringing together senior and junior feminist IR scholars.

Tickner’s work stresses the need for methodological pluralism in IR that encompasses both positivist and interpretive approaches. The author argues that we need to rewrite IR’s foundational stories to be more inclusive and reflexive. This is a valuable collection by an important IR scholar.

Tickner’s writing illustrates the contributions of feminist IR theory to the discipline and remains fresh across the decades. Her early work reveals the gendered nature of core concepts in IR and offers feminist reformulations in areas such as security studies and international political economy to make the lives of ordinary women (and men) visible in IR. The author then turns her attention to the project of “methodological engagements or attempted conversations” (p. 71) between feminist and mainstream IR. Tickner uses the term “methodology” to mean “a theory and analysis of how research does or should proceed” (p. 94). She spells out “[f]our methodological guidelines [that] inform feminist research perspectives: a deep concern with the research questions that get asked and why; the goal of designing research that is useful to women (and also to men) and is both less biased and more universal than conventional research; the centrality questions of reflexivity and the subjectivity of the researcher; and a commitment to knowledge as emancipation” (p. 96).

This project is a work in progress, at best. Most IR feminists adopt post-positivist perspectives and use a wide variety of qualitative methods. Many mainstream IR theorists only accept positivist research as scientific. In her conclusion, Tickner acknowledges her skepticism that positivist and postpositivist approaches in IR can be reconciled, a position complicated by the emergence of self-identified IR feminists who conduct quantitative positivist research.

In her recent writing, Tickner discusses the implications of marginality for IR feminists. Should they continue to locate themselves within IR or seek homes that are more hospitable? While she has “chosen to stay at home in IR” (p. 185), she acknowledges that others may make a different choice. The 2013 article by Daniel Maliniak, Ryan Powers, and Barbara F. Walters, “The Gender Citation Gap in International Relations” (International Organization 67 [October]: 889–922), underscores the depth of this problem.

Inclusivity is an important goal for Tickner. She writes: “Mindful of its roots in social activism, feminism must stay committed to effecting social change that can benefit those marginalized by global politics, both women and men” (p. 185). Her work, and that of many other feminist IR scholars, is much more inclusive than mainstream IR. Nevertheless, as Tickner would acknowledge, challenges remain for feminist IR in addressing marginalization. She notes the “increasing attention to the issue of the intersectionality of race, class, and gender” (pp. xvii–xviii). More feminist IR research along these lines would be welcome. As Tickner suggests, retelling IR’s foundational stories from the perspectives of colonized and indigenous peoples could contribute to “transcend[ing] the structures of domination that all of us still carry within ourselves from the past” (p. 172). She raises questions of knowledge and power that need further exploration. Gender, race, class, nationality, and sexual orientation affect who gets research grants, university positions, visibility, and publications, and in turn what is studied, from what vantage points, and for what purposes.

A 2004 essay included in this book, “The Gendered Frontiers of Globalization,” discusses the negative economic effects of globalization on women and efforts to mitigate these effects, from electronic communications to women organizing at local, national, and transnational levels. This area of feminist IR research has become more inclusive.

Feminists from the Global South have written important books on resistance to neoliberalism, such as The Remaking of Social Contracts: Feminists in a Fierce New World, edited by Gita Sen and Marino Durano (2014). Scholars such as Ana-Laura Rodríguez Gustá and Nancy Madera have documented the important ongoing work of women’s movements in Latin America: “Women’s movements reject extractivism (such as open-cut mining and fracking), denounce the exploitation of natural resources (forest, land, water), and fight against new forms of economic colonialism, which, for the most part, imply authoritarian practices and forced displacement of vulnerable groups” (“Feminist Movements and the Gender Economic Agenda in Latin America,” IDS Bulletin Special Issue: Beijing+20: Where Now for Gender Equality? 46 [July 2015]: 41–46).

Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay cautions about the ways feminist knowledge production has been used by states for social-control purposes. She points out that the institutionalization of gender within development organizations (and we could add disciplines) is not necessarily emancipatory, for “gender inequality is dissociated from structural inequalities,” and she recommends that feminist researchers form “alliances with broader social movements for democracy and change, thus thinking beyond gender but at the same time inserting gender into the concerns of those movements” (“Mainstreaming Gender or Reconstituting the Mainstream? Gender Knowledge in Development,” Journal of International Development Special Issue: Rethinking Gender Mainstreaming 26 [April 2014]: 356–67). Tickner would welcome these developments.