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It is so easy, so enticing, I now realize, to skip gender questions. Just talk about any state’s military without wondering about marriage - or rape or homophobia. Just track recruitment into insurgent armed militias without investigating contested masculinities. Demonstrate your analytical sophistication by referring to multiple actors: “state elites,” “the media,” “factory workers,” “bankers,” “youth,” “refugees,” “party strategists,” “NATO officials,” “religious clerics,” “contractors,” “peace activists, “arms manufacturers,” “judges,” and “voters.” It is quite easy for any of us to presume – without checking – that each of these political actors is ungendered. That is, it is all too easy to build our explanations without wondering if and how each set of political actors is shaped by the workings (some blatant, others subtle) of masculinities and of femininities. It is also reassuring not to take seriously the lives and ideas of diverse women. This allows us to craft analytical conclusions without asking whether each set of actors has had the identical relations with diverse men as it does with diverse women – and how those relations might matter for one’s analytical conclusions.

Afterword to the chapter Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link, 2nd ed., p. 77-98. The afterword is written exclusively for this issue of Women, Gender & Research.

REPRINT Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link, 2nd ed., p. 77-98. Copyright © 2016 Used by permission of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. All rights reserved.