Feminist Perspectives

Feminist analysis of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) interrogates the forms of knowledge and the structural bias of legal tools. This chapter examines the ways in which the commitment to scientific research and peaceful purposes within the ATS embeds gender into the status quo of legal regulation. The chapter examines the possibility of feminist legal theories as a mechanism to shift dialogue beyond “women in Antarctica” and away from gendered representations and frames of encounter. The chapter argues that, understood from a feminist perspective, the capacity for geopolitical change raises questions regarding whose knowledge is valued, and investigates how that knowledge manifests in the ATS. In undertaking a plural feminist analysis, the chapter examines and considers legal pluralism for the Antarctic, where Indigenous and postcolonial legal agendas might direct Antarctic futures beyond extractivism and toward living peacefully with the nonhuman.