Last month several women rose to the top echelons of international politics. Kamala Harris emerged as the lead presidential candidate of the U.S. Democratic Party, Ursula von der Leyen was elected to serve a second term as president of the European Commission, Kaja Kallas was appointed foreign policy chief of the European Union (EU), and Rachel Reeves became Britain’s first female chancellor.
And yet feminists, while generally pleased, were not particularly jubilant. Every success counts, they say, particularly if Harris becomes the U.S. president and acquires the most influential political office in the world. But there’s little reason to think that the arrival of a few women in top positions will change how international affairs are conducted in a male-dominated world.
According to the United Nations (U.N.), at the current rate it will take nearly a century and a half to achieve gender equality in the highest positions of power and almost four more decades to achieve gender parity in national legislative bodies. There are simply not enough women in top jobs to give the concerted, collected push needed to implement a feminist foreign policy and usher in the radically different global order that feminist intellectuals desire.
“Often the narrative is that all we need is a woman leader and everything will change, but we know this isn’t true,” said Miriam Mona Mukalazi, a fellow at European University Institute’s Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and a scholar in feminist foreign policy. “They are still in the same system; they can only disrupt it a little; and it also depends on how far they are willing to go [to jeopardize their career in pursuit of a better world].”
Scholars said that whenever women are rulers—from queens to prime ministers—they are expected to act like men and display “strength,” a euphemism for their ability to sanction bloody wars and maintain state borders at all costs.
“Something about foreign and security policy is linked to men and masculinity in a way that female leaders have had to justify whether they were warriors or not,” Ann Towns, professor of political science at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, told Foreign Policy over the phone. “It’s a significant feature, centered around conflict resolution by violence rather than collaboration and peace.”
A feminist foreign policy, however, prioritizes human security over state security and calls for a radical rethink of the current system. It focuses on eliminating the root causes of conflict, demilitarization, a multilateral approach, and diplomatic interventions.
In conversations with Foreign Policy, many scholars suggested that a step-by-step approach is the only way to move forward and representation of women in top ranks, while a necessary condition, is only a start. They said the idea is to achieve gender parity across the board in public life and push for policy change at home and abroad. Once the current power imbalance has been sufficiently corrected, the practice of international affairs can be fundamentally reworked. Policymakers could even discuss the cons of the nation-state concept.
A decade ago, it seemed some feminist ideas were taking a hold. Sweden was the first to adopt a feminist foreign-policy (FFP) framework in 2014; Canada followed in 2017; France two years later; and then Mexico, Spain, Luxembourg, Germany, and Chile. But all these policies were a work in progress factoring in political realities of the day and did not reflect the goals of FFP as a whole.
Experts said the adopted frameworks lacked vision and ambition. Furthermore, their implementation was made harder by various factors. While it has always been a daunting task to make progress in patriarchal societies and power structures, experts said, an ascendant far-right ideology and political parties further impeded progress. For instance, Sweden’s feminist foreign policy was reversed when a government supported by a far-right party came to power. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine further strengthened the argument of state security at the expense of pacifist movements that contribute to FFP ideas.
Sweden was the torchbearer. Towns said she witnessed “increased gender mainstreaming” in all government departments and a feminist approach to diplomacy and bilateral trade. “They had to start thinking about foreign trade—what does a FFP look like in trade?” she said. Sweden’s efforts also led to the passing of a resolution in the U.N. Security Council that included sexual and gender-based violence as grounds for sanctions.
On the other hand, Sweden exported arms worth billions of dollars to Saudi Arabia between 2015 and 2021 despite reports that it had ended a deal with Saudi Arabia over the country’s suppression of human rights, according to non-governmental organization Svenska Freds.
According to a 2017 report by CONCORD, a group of 19 civil society organizations, Sweden continued to sell arms to non-democratic countries, including Saudi Arabia in 2016 and 2017 when it was carrying out airstrikes against Yemen.
Towns said she thought the defense industry was too big a beast to take on, even for the government. “That would be challenging both huge companies and their large profits and proponents of national security all at once,” she said. “I think they thought of starting with easier stuff,” such as more representation for women.
Canada emerged as one of the biggest international donors toward female welfare and reproductive health, with an emphasis on gender equality projects between 2021 and 2022. But failings have been exposed: Canada did not show how it chose donation recipients and whether it improved outcomes for women and girls.
In 2023, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Svenja Schulze launched the German version of a feminist foreign policy amid much fanfare. They included FFP guidelines for everything from conflict resolution and aid delivery to green policies and directed 85 percent of aid to projects with a gender equality dimension.
“We couldn’t use the ‘F word,’” said Mukalazi, of feminism, until the FFP guidelines were launched. “The conservatives wanted us to call it gender-positive policy, and even the liberals were opposed to the German translation feministische Außenpolitik.”
But the German FFP came in for its fair share of criticism, too. First, it was adopted by two ministries, not the whole government. Second, the chancellor’s position on the policy was unclear, leaving doubt among experts “whether the agenda [would] be implemented at the highest level.”
Barbara Mittelhammer, a Berlin-based analyst of FFP, said Germany’s feminist foreign policy has succeeded in a limited context. “There is a lot of value in more gender programs and instruments and more representation,” she said, “but it’s not a feminist foreign policy in the sense of having a different political priority.”
Feminist scholars contend that German foreign policy has gone in the opposite direction owing to the Russian threat looming over the European continent. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s 2022 Zeitenwende (“turning point”) speech called for an unprecedented investment in Germany’s defense sector, and the country is considering relaunching conscription.
While there is no debate among feminist scholars over ending weapons sales to authoritarian nations, the conversation gets trickier when it turns to territorial integrity or a smaller state being threatened by a bigger, authoritarian nation.
“Its difficult to understand what a feminist foreign policy contributes to understanding the biggest security threat we are facing,’’ said Kristi Raik, deputy director at the International Centre for Defence and Security, an Estonian think tank. Kallas, the new EU foreign policy chief and former Estonian prime minister, is expected to push for feminist policies in her new position while her country faces imminent threat from Russia.
Political guidelines from Von der Leyen’s campaign mention the word “equality” seven times, while “defense” is used on 30 different occasions. Von der Leyen’s focus will also be on defense in the wake of Russian aggression. The guidelines noted that combined EU spending on defense increased by 20 percent from 1999 to 2021; in that same period, Russia’s defense spending increased by almost 300 percent and China’s by almost 600 percent. Von der Leyen wrote that European spending is “too disjointed, disparate and not European enough.”
Harris’s challenges, if she becomes president, would be even more severe. Women and girls not just in the United States but across the world would expect her to improve their lives in a more substantial way than handouts through aid organizations. While experts believe she wouldn’t drastically change U.S. policy, Harris has adopted a feminist tone on several issues including the Israel-Hamas war and women’s rights in Iran. Israel has “a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters,” she said. “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”
Harris voiced support for women in Iran during mass protests in 2022 over women’s rights in the country. But Iranians in exile and women’s rights activists expect more. They say she should use her influence to encourage the U.N. to criminalise gender apartheid.
Taghi Rahmani, the husband of imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, said his wife and other activists have called for gender discrimination to be made a criminal offense at an international level. “Ms. Harris can contribute to this issue,” he wrote to Foreign Policy via encrypted communication from Paris.
“I believe that in the broader context of [U.S.] foreign policy and the composition of the Congress, it is unlikely that a Harris administration would apply the feminist label to their foreign policy,” Fonteini Papagioti, deputy director, policy and advocacy, at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), wrote. “However, I do believe a Harris administration is an opportunity to advance gender equality globally and at home—particularly with regards to sexual and reproductive health and rights.”
Activists say a feminist foreign policy only makes sense if feminist principles are applied at home on domestic policy first. Harris’s first challenge, then, will be to protect women’s rights regarding their own bodies at home in the United States.
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