Feminist Foreign Policy – What it is about and where it comes from

By Angela Bösen

Feminist foreign policy was not a term before the Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström introduced it in 2014. Since then, numerous countries have followed this approach – Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands. Some states may call it feminist foreign policy and others push gender policies without the specific label. As such, Rwanda pursues gender equality on a large-scale and shows off in numbers of political participation with a women’s share of two thirds in the parliament. In the US, Hillary Clinton has framed many initial ideas as State Secretary since 2009, calling out women’s issues as central to foreign policy. Sweden, the pioneer of feminist foreign policy, withdrew from it with the new government in late 2022. Despite that, one can say that the feminist zeitgeist has entered the official political arena.

To clarify right away: There is not one definition of feminist foreign policy. Societies vary depending on their unique culture and global context. As such, the agenda of feminist foreign policy has to adapt to its country of origin and to countries of implementation. Yet, the concept of feminist policy opens up a broad space for rethinking, renewing and transforming prevalent political understandings, traditions and institutions. That’s what makes it so fascinating.

The Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy – explicitly founded to dedicate to the matter from the civil society perspective – phrases it generally as the following problem/solution approach:

The problem: The foreign policy status quo is rooted in patriarchal values and perpetuates systemic violence through capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism. These systems negatively impact different people in different ways based on their gender, race, ethnicity, class, socioeconomic status, sexuality, and more.

The solution: Feminist foreign policy is a means to rebalance the power inequalities which perpetuate this oppression. It does so by providing a political framework which is informed by the everyday experiences and needs of people who feel the consequences of policy decisions. In short, nothing about them without them.
States can and should set up for themselves the exact definition of the concept. The above-mentioned impact, for example, on systemic violence through colonialism applies to states with a colonial past or colonial responsibility. Yet, there are existing overall frameworks that ought to be translated into national legislation. One of those which is considered a milestone in the feminist movement, remains Security Resolution 1325 on Women Peace and Security (UNSCR 1325) in 2000. The UNSCR 1325 is specifically important, as it further develops into the whole WPS agenda. It leads to national action plans from the nation states to implement those rights. Mainly, the UN conducted a global study in 2015 of over 40 peace processes post-Cold War with its finding that the contribution of women is significant and leads to longer lasting and more sustainable peace. One prominent finding is that “[w]omen’s participation increases the probability of a peace agreement lasting at least two years by 20 percent, and by 35 percent the probability of a peace agreement lasting 15 years.” However, only nine percent of negotiators involved in peace processes between 1992 and 2011 were women (here to full study report).

What does it mean in practice?

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock recently launched the guidelines for a German Feminist Foreign Policy and gave various examples of the daily work in her speech on 1 March 2023. A simple, yet crucial question remains: Where does the state money go? For example, 100 million Euro of humanitarian assistance went to Yemen after an earthquake. Baerbock stresses that, as evidently the needs of an eighteen-year-old teenager compared to an eight-month-old infant might seem, it is not intended to use the funding as targeted. She further states: “And since, as we all know, half of every society is made up of women, we will also take into consideration the fact that women need certain hygiene products. In refugee camps, for example, that has until now been far from a given – even if some might think it’s a no-brainer.”

Decisions can also be very conflictual, even a dilemma, such as the case of providing humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. Baerbock describes that in late December 2022, when the Taliban aimed to ban women from working in humanitarian assistance, she asked at the United Nations whether to keep on paying. Once again, it shows the importance of taking the cultural context and real living conditions into account. She describes the resulting decision-making process: “[W]hen we then thought through what this would mean, it was really no longer a question of whether we would be abandoning 26 million people. Because if women can no longer work in humanitarian assistance, in the health sector, in the provision of food and water, then women in Afghanistan will not be reached, because women are not permitted to accept food from men they do not know.”

The dimension of money is undoubtedly a powerful and crucial one. With a feminist foreign policy, states are more likely to commit to gender-budgeting, a term to phrase this targeted and inclusive funding. As such, the German Federal foreign office implements gender budgeting for the first time according to OECD criteria.

Besides the monetary aspect, the consequent commitment to gender parity is a key aspect. Bringing women on delegation trips is crucial not only for credibility but also to encourage the other side and to create a new normality. Overall, the implementation of feminist foreign policy in the German case is framed according to the prior Swedish concept of three R’s: Rights, representation and resources. These three R’s help to use the concept more like a practical tool in political reality, as former Swedish minister Wallström stresses.

Where does the idea come from?

The roots of feminist foreign policy date back to 1915, when the International Congress of Women conference was held in The Hague. Initiated by suffragists (so-called advocates for political suffrage, especially for women), this congress has existed since 1878 and later developed into the today-known organisation Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, short WILPF. In the midst of large-scale war enthusiasm, the resolution from 1915 raised demands that were almost unthinkable during that time. Most of them have been established after two World Wars or are still relevant, inter alia, permanent institutions to maintain peace on an international level, like an international Court of Justice, the need for democratic parliaments and democratic control over foreign politics, and international arms control.

After 1915, the actions of women to participate in political decision-making continued but were often largely counteracted. Not only were the opponents male, female resistance also built up in the form of the female-led National Association Opposed to Women Suffrage, for example. Notably, the resistance found popularity among wealthier parts of society and stakeholders, such as plantation owners in the Southern USA, fearing that the achievement of more women’s rights might encourage other political minorities to claim rights (Lunz 2022, p. 84).

Tracing back the history of the women’s movement, the multilateral platform of the United Nations is a springboard for the progression of women’s rights and gender justice. Many events led up to the UNSCR 1325 in 2000. There were four World Conferences on Women from 1975 on to steadily establish frameworks. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995 is one milestone. It was unanimously adopted by 189 countries and acknowledges gender as a key aspect. Since then, the counter-movement has built around the notion of “gender/feminist ideology” and increased enormously .

Up to today, the rise of feminist foreign policies since 2014 can be regarded as national responses to the given multilateral framework.

Which theories are foundational?

The idea that patriarchy and the gender dichotomy have interlinkages with nation states, international relations and statecraft, is not new. Aligned with the timeline of the women’s movement, scholars of so-called feminist international relations (short: Feminist IR) deconstruct patriarchal power structures, hierarchies, masculinized institutions etc. The most prevalent school of thought in international relations remains realism, and it is largely marked by white male theorists. Despite given facts, as proven by the global study of the UN mentioned earlier, gender tends to be treated as a marginal aspect of the scientific discipline instead of receiving the acknowledgement of its all-encompassing nature. From that underestimation stem misconceptions such as economics being a gender-neutral field, or that feminism is the antagonist of realpolitik. Scholar Paul Kirby frames it this way: “Feminism offers a horizon of liberation; realism is more taken with cyclical and tragic views of history. Most practitioners of statecraft have been male, the high politics of war and peace largely remains the domain of men, and statecraft is a quintessentially masculine performance.” Whether feminism and realism are excluding or complementing each other, remains up to discussion. For now, feminist foreign policy is a reality.

Foreign politics in particular are influenced by the realist school of thought. Prevalent name of realist theory and diplomacy Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) appointed the public sphere and therefore, all diplomatic acting to men, whereas the private sphere and domestics were destined for women (Cassidy 2017, p. 3). From there on, the idea that diplomacy is an explicitly male discipline persisted up until the 20th century. As such, in 1969, the very first (Western) German ambassador, Ellinor von Puttkamer, was openly certified by her superior as having a “quite manly mind.”

The institution of Foreign Service is not used to the female diplomat, one could say. Rather on the contrary, women have embodied over the last century the role of diplomatic spouse, a role that does not often include less daily work than that of the diplomat himself, but without monetary compensation like salaries, pensions, etc (Enloe 2014, pp. 174-210). The most prominent example we know is the “First Lady” at the side of male heads of state.

Low numbers of women in Senior Service stem from no less factors than that established environment to the male role as diplomat, missing role models and support for family planning. Nowadays’ women ambassadors tend to be mistaken as the spouse, secretary or assistant.

Feminist foreign policy raises awareness and opens up the space to even uncover subtle obstacles, also known as a glass ceiling. It tackles the external foreign policy agenda as well as the internal structures of the Foreign Service as an institution and workplace. One of the main goals remains to bring all necessary voices to the table for decision-making: Nothing about them without them.

For readers interested in further feminist research, there is a strong encouragement among academia to widen the scope of perspectives from the Global South. The authors Ansorg, Haastrup and Wright mention a blind spot where countries from the Global North focus solely on the foreign policy in the Global South.

Literature references and recommendations

Achilleos-Sarll, C., Thomson, J., Haastrup, T., Färber, K., Cohn, C., & Kirby, P. (2022). The Past, Present, and Future(s) of Feminist Foreign Policy. International Studies Review, 25(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac068
Adichie, C. N. (2014). We Should All be Feminists.
Ansorg, N., Haastrup, T., Wright, K. A. M. (2021). Foreign Policy and Diplomacy. Feminist Interventions. In Väyrynen, T., Parashar, S., & Féron, É. (Eds). Routledge Handbook of Feminist Peace Research. (1^st ed., pp. 202-211). Routledge. https://doi-org.ezproxy.its.uu.se/10.4324/9780429024160
Cassidy, J. A. (2017). Gender and Diplomacy. Taylor & Francis. https://doi-org.ezproxy.its.uu.se/10.4324/9781315270777
Dean, R. D. (2001). Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy. University of Massachusetts Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vk4zg
Enloe, C. (2014). Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Univ of California Press.
Lunz, K. (2022). Die Zukunft der Außenpolitik ist feministisch: Wie globale Krisen gelöst werden müssen | Weltpolitik im 21. Jahrhundert: Frieden & Gesundheit, Menschenrechte & Klimagerechtigkeit für alle überall. (English translation to be published in September 2023)
McCarthy, H. (2014). Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat. A&C Black.
Tickner, J. A. (1992). Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. Columbia University Press.
Sowa, T. (2023), “In my view: Are feminist foreign policies translating to real action?”, in Development Co-operation Report 2023: Debating the Aid System, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/337d6469-en.