This book has two aims, one empirical and the other theoretical. The empirical aspiration is to account for a development that has received insufficient attention within the field of international relations: the worldwide emergence of state behaviors that expressly target women. The theoretical ambition is to propose a rethinking of the operation of norms in international society. Norms do not simply homogenize states, as is conventionally argued – norms rank and set up relations of hierarchy among states as well. In short, to understand and explain the spread of certain state practices towards women, this book points to the importance of the status of women as a standard of rank in international society.

The spread of state institutions on women

The worldwide changes in the relation between women and the state are nothing short of revolutionary. A century ago, all polities that were organized as states rested on the exclusion of women from their formal institutions. With the exception of an occasional queen as head of state, women were shut out of the public roles of state representative, official or civil servant. In the emerging democracies of Europe, women became expressly prohibited from voting and in some cases even from joining political parties or attending political rallies. German political activist Clara Zetkin complained in 1895 that “prohibition after prohibition of women’s assemblies takes place, the expulsion of women from public meetings are [sic] a daily occurrence and penalties for women for violating the Law for the Formation of Associations inundate the courts.” Women had no place in the formal affairs of state in the nineteenth century.