Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium argues that the power of gender works to help keep gender, race, class, sexual, and national divisions in place despite increasing attention to gender issues in the study and practice of world politics. Accessible and student-friendly for both undergraduate and graduate courses, authors Anne Sisson Runyan and V. Spike Peterson analyze gendered divisions of power and resources that contribute to the worldwide crises of representation, violence, and sustainability. They emphasize how hard-won attention to gender equality in world affairs can be co-opted when gender is used to justify or mystify unjust forms of global governance, international security, and global political economy.In the new and updated fourth edition, Runyan and Peterson examine the challenges of forging transnational solidarities to de-gender world politics, scholarship, and practice through renewed politics for greater representation and redistribution. Yet they see promise in coalitional struggles to re-radicalize feminist world political demands to change the downward conditions of women, men, children, and the planet. Updated to include framing questions at the opening of each chapter, discussion questions and exercises at the end of each chapter, and updated data on gender statistics and policymaking. Chapters One and Two have also been revised to provide more support to readers with less of a background in gender politics. Case studies and web resources are now also provided.

When we look at world politics through a different set of lenses—ones that reveal how the power of gender blinds us to the presence of women in international affairs—we begin to see what lies below the surface of the interstate power exchanges called international relations. Some women wield traditional international power as heads of state. There are also women in positions of less visible state and nonstate power, many of whom seek a more equal and just global order. And there are billions of women who bear, feed, clothe, and care for the world—whether as mothers, farmers, textile workers, electronics assemblers—yet have no formal political power.Global Gender Issues connects the inequalities between women and men with the “world politics” of power, security, economy, and ecology. Through history, visual imagery, theoretical analysis, and other narrative techniques, V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan alert us to gendered differences of power, violence, labor, and resources. In doing so, they suggest linkages between and among so-called women's issues and such world political matters as wars of secession, arms proliferation, global economic recession, and environmental degradation. At the same time, the authors hold out for us a clearly articulated, undogmatic hope for redefining and reorganizing gender relations and international relations as we begin to embrace difference, demand equality, and develop new standards of power and progress.

Women and Gender in Chinese Martial Arts Films of the New Millennium, by Ya-chen Chen, is an excavation of underexposed gender issues focusing mainly on contradictory and troubled feminism in the film narratives. In the cinematic world of martial arts films, one can easily find representations of women of Ancient China released from the constraints of patriarchal social order to revel in a dreamlike space of their own. They can develop themselves, protect themselves, and even defeat or conquer men. This world not only frees women from the convention of foot-binding, but it also "unbinds" them in terms of education, critical thinking, talent, ambition, opportunities to socialize with different men, and the freedom or right to both choose their spouse and decide their own fate. Chen calls this phenomenon "Chinese cinematic martial arts feminism." The liberation is never sustaining or complete, however; Chen reveals the presence of a glass ceiling marking the maximal exercise of feminism and women's rights which the patriarchal order is willing to accept. As such, these films are not to be seen as celebrations of feminist liberation, but as enunciations of the patriarchal authority that suffuses "Chinese cinematic martial arts feminism." The film narratives under examination include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (directed by Ang Lee); Hero (Zhang Yimou); House of the Flying Daggers (Zhang Yimou); Seven Swords (Tsui Hark); The Promise (Chen Kaige); The Banquet (Feng Xiaogang); and Curst of the Golden Flower (Zhang Yimou). Chen also touches upon the plots of two of the earliest award-winning Chinese martial arts films, A Touch of Zen and Legend of the Mountain, both directed by King Hu.

Accessible and student-friendly, Global Gender Politics analyzes the gendered divisions of power, labor, and resources that contribute to the global crises of representation, violence, and sustainability. The author emphasizes how hard-won attention to gender and other related inequalities in world affairs is simultaneously being jeopardized by new and old authoritarianisms and depoliticized through reducing gender to a binary and a problem-solving tool in global governance. The author examines gendered insecurities produced by the pursuit of international security and gendered injustices in the global political economy and sees promise in transnational struggles for global justice. In this new re-titled edition of a foundational contribution to the field of feminist International Relations, Anne Sisson Runyan continues to examine the challenges of placing inequalities andresisting injustices at the center of global politics scholarship and practice through intersectional and transnational feminist lenses. This more streamlined approach includes more illustrations and discussions have been updated to refl ect current issues. To provide more support to instructors and readers, Global Gender Politics is accompanied by an e-resource, which includes web resources, suggested topics for discussion, and suggested research activities also found in the book.

What would international relations look like if our theories and analyses began with individuals, families, and communities instead of executives, nation-states, and militaries? After all, it is people who make up cities, states, and corporations, and it is their beliefs and behaviors that explain why some parts of the world seem so peaceful while others appear so violent, why some societies are so rich while others are so poor. Now in a fully updated and revised edition, this unique text on contemporary global politics begins with people, treating them as "social individuals" with free will and human agency even as they are limited and disciplined by rules and rulers. Offering a fresh approach to global politics, this dynamic author team trades perspectives with each other and with such eminent social theorists as Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt to develop their resonant theme. Using practical examples as well as theory, the authors show students how they can take charge of their lives and the politics that affect them, even in the context of a vast global economy and impersonal international forces that sometimes seem out of control. Filled with idealism, yet firmly grounded in current realities, Global Politics as if People Mattered is a fresh take on the proper place and potential of individuals in world politics—front and center, actively engaged in a way of life that is as politically personal as it is politically powerful. This distinctive text, a perfect reading for lower-division politics courses, helps students to carve out their own political space in the contemporary global order.

The Millennium Declaration was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000 and explicit targets were set to eradicate key problems in human development by 2015. This collection focuses specifically on the goals relating to gender issues that are problematic for women. The most relevant and contentious is that of promoting gender equality and empowering women. The book provides an overview of this and investigates literature that considers how gender is central to achieving the other goals. The contributors distinctively consider gender in the context of human security (or insecurity); the reduction and elimination of conflict would seem to be central to achieving targets. One of the major themes of this collection is whether gender insecurity has been exacerbated in an increasingly insecure world. The book considers not only military and civilian conflict in the contemporary era but also security in the broader sense of human development, such as environmental, reproductive and economic security.

Based on research by leading medical anthropologists from around the world, this book examines such issues as local practices detrimental to safe pregnancy and birth; conflicting reproductive goals between women and men; and miscommunications between pregnant women and their genetic counselors.