SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Feminist approaches to international law commence with a series of structural bias accounts of the international order but have increasingly narrowed to focus on women’s issues and/or specific sub-disciplines of international law, such as collective security and international criminal law. However, no feminist study of the law of the sea currently exists. This chapter adopts for the first time feminist approaches to international law and feminism post-humanism to tests the relevance of feminist analyses on law of the sea, taking contemporary critical accounts of the global order, the rise of expertise and the role of techniques of governance as useful starting points for a critical feminist inquiry. The chapter highlights four key sights where such conversations might be productive: participation at sea, vulnerabilities at sea, security at sea and in discussions of global governance regimes. Configuring gender as a means of analysis into the law of sea requires sustained and thoughtful encounters between feminists, law makers and experts. Through the provision of a feminist, post-humanist, analysis of the law of the sea this research contributes to understandings of the contemporary global order and to the changing dynamics of global governance on gender issues.