Gender, Law, and Security: Selected Student Research from the Project on Gender and the Global Community 2019-2020

Abstract

Who is the ‘self’ in self-determination? Feminist scholars and activists have long noted that, when self-determination means primarily non-interference in the internal affairs of a governing body, practices and traditions through which men dominate women can flourish. In order to fully realize the promise of the concept of self-determination, it is therefore best understood in both collective and individual forms. Women across the world have long sought to influence and shape the nature of their own lives, with a gendered understanding of power and how hierarchies of power are not only created and maintained, and perpetuate inequalities, but also how they can potentially be reorganized and remade. In this spirit, the research agenda and related activities of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University’s Project on Gender in the Global Community (GGC) uses gender as a primary lens for analysis and starting point for broader dialogues about sustainable development, state building, economic and political participation, negotiation and mediation, peace, and security.

The GGC Student Fellows Program, inaugurated during the 2017-18 academic year, has been an integral complement to this work. Building on student interest in the GGC project and modeled on the successful student fellows program organized as part of LISD’s Project on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations (PORDIR), a dedicated student cohort of Princeton students ranging from first-year undergraduates to PhD candidates and postdocs, were selected through a competitive application process. Over the course of the 2019-20 fellowship year, GGC fellows pursued independent, academically rigorous research, a sampling of which is presented in this publication. In December 2019, they presented their projects alongside peers from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs during a joint student research day. The papers in this volume include the written output of this independent work, which represents a variety of disciplines and methodologies, and reflect the range of work undertaken by GGC students throughout the year.