Feminist Perspectives on Power: Gender and Hierarchy

When you hear the word “power” in the study of politics, what comes to mind? Usually it is armies, weapons, economic muscle, and the ability of one state to bend another to its will. This is the standard definition that dominates textbooks on International Relations. Feminist scholars look at this familiar picture and ask a sharp question: who decided that this is what power means? Their answer reshapes how we understand authority, hierarchy, and gender in global politics. This post explains how feminists define power, why they reject the conventional view, and what they propose instead.

The conventional definition of power
Why feminists call this view “masculine”
Tickner’s feminist reformulation
Power as domination versus power as enablement
“Power over” versus “power to” and “power with”
Why this reframing is political, not just academic
Gender as a social construction
How male experience became “universal”
The public and private divide
The personal is political
Why this matters for understanding world politics

The conventional definition of power

Mainstream theories of International Relations, especially realism, treat power as the central currency of politics. Power here means control, force, and influence over others. A state is considered powerful if it can dominate rivals, win wars, and shape outcomes in its favour. This is what feminist theorists call “power over” – the capacity of one actor to make another do something they would not otherwise do.

Hans Morgenthau, one of the founding figures of realism, built his entire framework around this idea. He imagined international politics as an arena where rational states constantly compete for power in a world without any higher authority. Feminist scholars argue this definition is not neutral or universal at all. They claim it carries a hidden gender bias.

Why feminists call this view “masculine”

Feminists point out that the qualities used to define power – domination, autonomy, competition, aggression, and detachment – are precisely the traits that societies have long associated with masculinity. The opposite traits – cooperation, dependence, emotion, and care – are coded as feminine and treated as weaknesses or irrelevant to “serious” politics.

The result is a definition of power that quietly assumes a male perspective while presenting itself as objective. As one feminist analysis puts it, the discipline of International Relations was built from a masculinised and androcentric perspective, reinterpreting core concepts through a patriarchal lens. When male experience is treated as the standard human experience, women’s contributions and concerns simply disappear from view.

Tickner’s feminist reformulation

The most influential challenge to the conventional view comes from J. Ann Tickner, who is credited with founding the feminist sub-field within International Relations. In her landmark 1988 essay, she took Morgenthau’s six principles of political realism and exposed the masculine assumptions buried inside them.

Tickner argued that Morgenthau’s “political man” – a self-interested creature competing for power in a hostile world – is not a description of all humans. It is an abstraction modelled on a particular ideal of masculinity. She observed that his principles are gendered from the very beginning, built on distinctly masculine language about a rational man imposing order on a chaotic world.

Power as domination versus power as enablement

Tickner’s key move was to redefine power itself. She criticised Morgenthau’s view of power as control of “man over man”, arguing that it reflects a narrowly masculine orientation. Against this, she offered a broader definition of power as mutual enablement – the capacity to act together rather than the capacity to dominate.

This shift matters enormously. If power is only about domination, then cooperation, negotiation, and collective action look secondary. But Tickner insisted that cooperation, just as much as conflict, is a genuine feature of the international system. Her reformulation calls for a relational understanding of power that takes into account social relations and identity, not just military and economic might.

“Power over” versus “power to” and “power with”

Feminist political theory has developed a richer vocabulary of power than the single notion of domination. Scholars typically distinguish between three forms.

Power over: This is the traditional concept – the ability to control, command, or coerce others. It assumes a hierarchy where one party dominates and another submits.

Power to: This refers to the capacity or ability to accomplish something – to act, to create, to bring about change. It treats power as a positive capability rather than a relationship of control.

Power with: This is collective power that emerges when people act together. The political theorist Mary Parker Follett drew a distinction between power-over and power-with, describing the latter as a collective ability rooted in relationships of reciprocity.

Building on this, feminist scholar Nancy Hartsock described the understanding of power as “energy and competence rather than dominance” as the distinctively feminist theory of power. Interestingly, she traced this idea to Hannah Arendt, who rejected the command-obedience model and defined power as the human ability to act in concert, not merely to act alone. For Arendt, power was fundamentally about community and collective empowerment.

Why this reframing is political, not just academic

Redefining power as empowerment is not merely a matter of preference. Feminists argue that the conception of power as power-over, domination, or control is implicitly masculinist. By insisting that power can also mean collective capacity and mutual enablement, they make space for forms of political agency – grassroots movements, civil society, community organising – that the traditional definition overlooks entirely.

Underlying all of this is a crucial claim: gender is not natural, it is constructed. Feminist theorists focus less on biological sex and more on gender as an analytical category. They define gender as a set of socially and culturally constructed characteristics that vary across time and place.

This is the foundation of the feminist critique of power. If the association of masculinity with dominance and femininity with subordination were biological facts, they could not be changed. But because these associations are social constructions, they can be questioned, challenged, and transformed. The hierarchy that places “masculine” power above “feminine” cooperation is a human creation, not a law of nature.

How male experience became “universal”

A recurring problem feminists identify is that male experience is routinely presented as universal human experience. Political thought has long coded the public realm as masculine and the private realm as feminine, and claims about universal human nature were usually quite particular – meant for men alone. When theorists describe the “rational actor” or “human nature” in politics, they tend to describe a male subject and then generalise from him to everyone.

This sleight of hand has real consequences. It makes women’s perspectives invisible while pretending to be objective. It also means that concepts like security, citizenship, and the national interest get defined in ways that assume a male standard and ignore the experiences of half the population.

The public and private divide

One of feminism’s most important contributions is its attack on the separation between the public sphere and the private sphere. Conventional politics treats the public world of states, governments, and markets as the proper arena for power and politics. The private world of the home, family, and care work is treated as personal, apolitical, and beneath analysis.

Feminists argue this division is itself a structure of power. Men have historically dominated the public sphere while women were relegated to the private sphere, and this dichotomy has helped entrench the patriarchal system. By marginalising the private realm, the political process keeps women’s concerns – domestic labour, reproductive rights, unequal pay, domestic violence – off the agenda.

The personal is political

This insight is captured in the famous second-wave feminist slogan, “the personal is political,” associated with Carol Hanisch. The phrase argues that supposedly private matters reflect and reinforce broader relations of power. The separation of the private from the political masks the interdependence between the two spheres and serves to legitimise gender inequality.

Once you accept that power operates inside the home as well as inside parliaments, the entire map of politics expands. Decisions about who does unpaid household work, who controls family resources, and whose career takes priority become questions of power. This is why feminists insist that you cannot understand power in the public sphere without examining the private sphere too.

Why this matters for understanding world politics

The feminist redefinition of power is not just a theoretical exercise. It changes what we can see and explain. The narrow conventional view struggled to explain how a small non-state actor could strike a global superpower and reshape world politics, because traditional theory assumed power lay only in centralised military and economic might. Feminist perspectives suggest power also emerges from within states and from the margins.

By revealing how power is gendered, feminism exposes who is included in global politics and who is left out. It shows that even when women gain influence in public life, they often carry their disempowered status with them, and that patriarchal hierarchies confine women within domestic and state boundaries. The point of the feminist project, ultimately, is not just to add women to the existing picture but to rethink the concept of power so that the hierarchies built into it become visible – and therefore open to change.

What do you think? If power is redefined as the ability to act together rather than the ability to dominate, would our judgements about which countries are “powerful” change? And do you think breaking down the divide between public and private life strengthens democracy, or does it risk politicising areas of life that should remain personal?

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References

PDF 📄

Table of Contents

The conventional definition of power 🔗

Why feminists call this view “masculine” 🔗

Tickner’s feminist reformulation 🔗

Power as domination versus power as enablement 🔗

“Power over” versus “power to” and “power with” 🔗

Why this reframing is political, not just academic 🔗

Gender as a social construction 🔗

How male experience became “universal” 🔗

The public and private divide 🔗

The personal is political 🔗

Why this matters for understanding world politics 🔗