Introduction to Security Studies: Feminist Contributions

Laura Sjoberg’s article works well as a survey entry into feminist security studies. It places classic questions raised by Cohn, Tickner, and others within a broader disciplinary map, showing how feminism changes security studies’ understanding of war, violence, states, bodies, and everyday life.

The article matters because it expands “security” beyond military capacity and state survival. Feminist security studies examines wartime sexual violence, militarized masculinity, violence in households and communities, economic vulnerability, refugee experiences, and the ways international institutions expose some bodies to danger. Security becomes not only a question of borders but also a question of whether bodies can live free from violence, poverty, and control.

For FemRes, this piece can serve as a core node for the topic. Readers can move from here toward nuclear strategy language, realist theory critique, anti-sexual violence, war trauma, and global governance, seeing why feminist security studies is necessary for a serious feminist resource archive.