nation with a capital N

Jan Pettman wrote in her piece, Worlding Women- A Feminist International Politics, on the nature of the state, state formation, and international state relations as being deeply gendered. She reveals several layers of gendered-ness, including through the law, through the military, through discipline, through normativity- ultimately asking not "what citizenship does or should mean... or what citizenship means or might become for women," (23) but "what the citizen is a citizen of?" (23) In order to understand what is happening to and around women, we must understand the center of power, through a gendered analysis. She points to the dangers presented by globalization, including the growing imposition of powerful transnational capitalist interests. I am very interested in the inter-national aspect, where nations with a capital 'N' interact- not citizens. What does it mean for women that we let these nations do the talking for us? Is representation in the state enough?