International Relations in the Czech Republic: Where Have All the Women Gone?

Abstract

In this article, we strive to explore what are some of the causes of the
scarcity of women researchers in Czech international relations in
comparison to the representation of women students in the field. To
answer this question, we analysed a set of semi-structured interviews with
international relations students and accessible syllabi using the conceptual
framework of Sandra Harding's gendered universe, which differentiates
between the operations of gender on the individual, structural and
symbolic level. We identified some gendered barriers that might be
blocking women researchers' access to the field. On this basis we suggest
that the lack of women researchers in the field parallels the situation in
other social sciences and humanities disciplines, but the situation in
international relations is further exacerbated by the local circumstances of
the foundation of the discipline, which shaped it as a predominantly
masculine field with a specific gender-blind version of doing research and
academic careers.