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