The Future of Foreign Policy should be Feminist

have you ever seen

one of those pictures that are usually

taken after heads of state or

foreign ministers have met like g20

where 19 countries and the european

union

come together to discuss questions of

financial stability

i noticed that you usually see a bunch

of

rather white old men in suits in those

pictures

and angela merkel the german chancellor

to be fair she is not the only

in those picture women in those pictures

today

year after year more women are becoming

more visible

in international relations but

when i first noticed that surplus of men

in foreign policy i asked myself

where are the women why are men so

disproportionately overrepresented

in foreign policy i started to look out

for women in particular

and i noticed germany for example

never had a woman at the top of the

federal foreign office

the secretary general of the united

nations has never been

a woman and out of 193 member states

of the un only 19 of them have as of

february 2021 a woman as head of state

or government and again

i asked myself where are the women

we make up approximately 50 percent of

the population

yet we don’t seem to exist in foreign

policy

i began to read a lot and one of the

books that i found

incredibly remarkable has been bananas

speeches and bases

by cynthia enlou enlo shows how

women and their participation and

foreign policy have been made invisible

over centuries diplomacy

relies on trust and confidence between

diplomats

diplomats that have mostly been male for

very long time

where do you usually build trust well

you can invite people to your home and

create an atmosphere

where people can mutually establish

confidence

you organize a dinner or a party

open your house to other diplomats

but who is organizing the whole thing

diplomats and their governments have

during the last century

relied heavily on the diplomats lives to

perform this task

it was expected from those diplomatic

wives

that they would serve the country by

organizing these social events

by doing volunteering work and by

accompanying

their husbands to other social events

it was expected from them that they

would give up their careers

and serve their country but other than

the husbands

they were not being paid for their

services for laying the foundation for

smooth diplomatic relations

luckily this has changed more and more

women

are becoming diplomats and it is no

longer expected from spouses

to serve unpaid but

as a takeaway the story of those

diplomatic wives

shows us a stereotypical depiction of

the

public sphere as a male space and a

private sphere

as a female one it shows us how

marriages were being used to advance the

career of male diplomats and to advance

diplomatic relations

and it shows us in endless words and

here i quote

that the personal is international and

the international

is personal end of quote

another another example terrorism

if you think about a terrorist

who do you think of i to be honest

think of a man media and politics have

taught me to think that a

terrorist is typically male and adherent

of an extremist ideology they

furthermore

made me think that women are normally

victims of terrorism

and not the perpetrators this is

quite interesting i think so what

happens if a woman

actually commits a terrorist attack and

does contradict the picture

of the woman as victim karen gentry and

laura surbach have identified three

narratives

that can frequently be found in the

media

women terrorists are either depicted as

mothers

monsters or

all of the three narratives preclude

that the violence of women is neither a

rational nor an independent choice

and this tells us a lot while terrorist

attacks committed by men

are explained by their ideology or their

social and economic status

gender seems to play a much bigger role

in explaining and justifying

terrorist attacks committed by women

women are not supposed to be violent

they are rather seen as peaceful

emotional or innocent

yet the first person never to be sued in

court because of terrorist activities

was vera zazodes a woman in 1878

suicide attacks committed by women are

more level than other suicide attacks

meaning that more people die

women have been active in different

terrorist groups

in different roles yet

terrorism is still associated with being

a male space

women are being victimized by both

parties of nowadays war against

terrorism

by states from the global north who want

to save women

from what they call patriarchal

societies and by fundamentalist

religious groups

who want to save women from what they

call the oppressing lifestyle of western

states

women’s rights and the liberation of

women have been used as a justification

for the war against terrorism by the us

administration

yet the revolutionary association of the

women

of afghanistan spoke out against the

bombings of us forces

as well as against terrorist attacks

committed by

taliban but they have not been heard by

either of the parties

even when women actively advocate for

their political priorities

they are being denied agency and are not

being heard

they are being denied the capacity to

make their own choices

and to act independently

all in all those examples of diplomacy

and international terrorism show how

diplomatic practices

and attitudes towards questions about

international security

are gendered gendered in a way that they

don’t depict a neutral standpoint

but today perpetuate stereotypical

gender constructions foreign policy is

built on unequal power relations

and it marginalizes the lives and

experiences of many people

it systemically denies agency of all

those who do not represent

hegemonic masculinity or

as antigna puts it and here i quote

in the west the image of a foreign

policy maker

has been strongly associated with elite

white

males and representation of hegemonic

masculinity

end of quote and this is a problem

because both the universal declaration

for human rights

and the european convention for human

rights grant all persons

the same human rights without

distinction of any kind

such as sex race religion or language

they both prohibit discrimination based

on any of those attributes

so how do we combine them this

patriarchal foreign policy which

fosters inequalities with those human

rights provisions

we just can’t and this is why we need a

completely

new approach to foreign policy

this new approach could be feminist

foreign policy first of all

what is feminism

this question is difficult to answer

because there is

not just d1 definition of feminism

there is rather a variety of many

feminisms

when i speak about feminism i mean

believe that

all genders should have equal access to

political

economic social and personal rights

feminism acknowledges that gender is a

social construction

and that different kinds of

discrimination such as

sexism and racism can intersect and

exacerbate

each other back to

foreign policy the roots of

feminist foreign policy can already be

traced back to the 1915

international congress of women where

more than 1 000 women

came together to demand the end of world

war one

they concluded the meeting by founding

the women’s international league for

peace and freedom

an organization that has ever since

advocated for feminist

and sustainable peace for a gender equal

world with equal power relations

with the subsequent emerging of feminist

international relations theory a

different understanding

of conflict and militarism was this

shaped

because those scholars began to analyze

not only power relations in between

states

but also in between individuals

they began to analyze who is affected by

conflict

and who decides about matters of peace

and security

and they noticed that international

relations

as well as foreign policy were gendered

finally in 2014 margaret weilstrom

then foreign minister of sweden

announced the adoption

of a feminist foreign policy for sweden

since then a number of countries such as

canada mexico and just recently spain

adopted or planned to adopt feminist

foreign policies

so is feminist foreign policy

all about adding women to foreign policy

then

no it is definitely not

christina lunz co-founder and

co-director of the

center for feminist foreign policy put

it that way

and here i quote feminist foreign policy

is not about adding women to the table

it is about

smashing the whole table and building a

completely

new one end of quote a table

i may add where everyone can participate

regardless of

gender raised age or any other attribute

feminist foreign policy questions the

status quo

it questions unequal power relations and

it questions

hierarchical global systems

whereas traditional foreign policy

focuses on the security of

states and is based on patriarchy

militarism imperialism colonization and

racism

feminist foreign policy puts the

individual on the center stage

human security is at the core of

feminist foreign policy

let me explain this even if a country is

not in conflict with another country

thus there is a

high level of state security people can

still feel

insecure because they are excluded from

political processes

face racism or lacked economic means

feminist foreign policy on the other

side prioritizes

human security human security implies

the security of the individual

the safety from threats like oppression

disease crime

hunger or poverty feminist foreign

policy

acknowledges that injustices such as

gender inequality exist worldwide

and that those inequalities contribute

to human

insecurity it is precisely those

inequalities

that feminist foreign policy seeks to

overcome

and to eradicate patterns that exclude

or oppress

people to do so feminist foreign policy

analyzes power structures it asks

who has power and who uses it how is

power maintained

and for what feminist foreign policy

analyzes

who gets to speak in foreign policy

whose voice is being heard and whose is

not

or is even being silenced whose

experiences

are considered relevant and whose are

not

feminist foreign policy prioritizes

cooperation over domination and

exclusion

because it acknowledges that human

rights are universal

and that everybody has the right to live

in dignity

peace and justice

so how does feminist foreign policy

look in practice then you may remember i

mentioned sweden at the beginning sweden

adopted the worldwide

first feminist foreign policy in 2014

the central problem for sweden is

systemic gender inequality worldwide

and because of that all actions of

sweden in internal

as well as external affairs

are based on the premise to change those

global imbalances

to achieve gender equality worldwide

sweden’s feminist foreign policy is

based on the four hours

rights representation resources

and reality besides

sweden acknowledges the importance of

intersectionalities

the fact that different kinds of

discrimination such as

classism and racism can intersect and

exacerbate each other

however sweden’s feminist foreign policy

falls short of a mandatory monitoring or

evaluation mechanism

and sweden still exports arms to

a country such as saudi arabia where

human rights

and especially the human rights of women

are being denied so

to sum it up the feminist foreign policy

of sweden

is a start but there’s still room

for improvement before i finish

one last word i am

a white european woman who grew up in

germany and

who is studying at university all in all

i am quite privileged the story

i was telling you tonight reflects my

background and my standpoint

so no matter if you did like or

did not like what i was talking about i

want you

all to go out and educate yourselves

afterwards

to get to know other stories and voices

as well

i want you to observe how foreign policy

is shaped

who gets to speak and whose voice is

being heard

whose experiences and interests are

considered relevant

and whose are not because

the story of gender international

relations

and unequal power relations can never

fully

and in all its aspects be told within

18 minutes