This article is written by Betilde Muñoz-Pogossian, Director, Organisation of American States (OAS).

  • The problem: Advancing women’s equality and inclusion is a process led by national actors but they can certainly use the support of the international community.
  • Why it matters: Mainstreaming gender and diversity in development assistance is important because international cooperation can be a catalyst for achieving the objectives of equality and access to rights for women. It can give an extra push to national efforts towards this goal.
  • The solution: Promoting and replicating a feminist foreign policy framework and strategies that prioritise the defence of women’s rights and the gender equality and diversity agenda in global, national and regional spaces. This must include promoting women’s inclusion and representation activities, providing public and visible support to women activists and ensuring an intersectional approach when designing cooperation projects, among other solutions.

A feminist foreign policy is a framework adopted by some countries, such as Canada, Chile, Mexico, Sweden and Spain. It is based on the premise that a country’s participation in the international scene can never be gender neutral. In other words, the main objectives of this approach include the promotion of affirmative action in all areas and agencies linked to foreign policy to achieve the participation of women in decision-making processes, the generation of new standards and norms on gender and diversity and investing in actions that seek this goal. In essence, it is a vision of foreign policy that is committed to defending human rights and promoting gender equality across global, national and regional spaces. It aims to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in advancing gender equality, with a particular focus on increasing the representation of women in institutions and decision-making processes.

How can we ensure that the conditions that have contributed positively to the inclusion and representation of women are institutionalised and sustained over time?

Learning from countries leading the way

The Center for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP) has consolidated important resources for understanding and monitoring the implementation of feminist foreign policy in the few countries that have adopted it. According to the CFFP, this approach to international relations makes it possible to identify hierarchical systems of power that exclude women. Therefore, it has a transformative aspiration: trying to influence gendered structures and institutions as well as affect practices, ethical frameworks and dynamics between actors that perpetuate gender inequalities. Questioning patriarchal structures and gender prejudices is fundamental to this approach as well as the prioritisation given to promoting equality, fighting discrimination and gender violence, as well as the lack of inclusion and representation of women in political action and discourse. What are some of the strategies that have been and could be implemented in the context of a feminist foreign policy? Here are four:

  1. Promote women's inclusion and representation activities, and provide public and visible support to women activists. International cooperation can play a key role in promoting national reforms for the inclusion and representation of women. For example, by supporting activities to discuss and/or negotiate gender quotas and parity measures. It can also play a role in showcasing the work of women in activism. For example, by rewarding or publicly recognising women who manage to enter and succeed in these spaces. An example of this type of action is the International Women of Courage Award awarded by the United States Department of State to women activists in the world.
  2. Institutionalise gender analysis and strategies for gender equality in international cooperation plans by country. This implies assessing conditions for the implementation of development projects in any area with a gender lens, i.e. ensuring that the particular realities of men and women are considered and that the proposed solutions are adapted to those realities. An example of this is the Gender Tool Box implemented by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) which, in the context of its feminist foreign policy, has prioritised a gender analysis before interventions, including the development of a set of principles when planning and outlining a gender analysis.
  3. Be aware of the intersectional identities of women and take them into account when designing cooperation projects that contribute to their inclusion and representation. International cooperation has to incorporate an intersectional approach in its actions in order to analyse, point out and question the exclusion of women who suffer intersectional discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, age and ability among other factors. An example of an action using this approach is the “Indigenous Fund” of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECID, for its Spanish acronym), which has been promoting through various projects inclusive, democratic and cultural public policies with equity, specifically focusing on indigenous women in their interventions.
  4. Continue to make evident gender biases in the media, and promote training programmes for journalists, media owners and influencers on a rights and gender equity approach in media coverage. The media's coverage of women can generate discrimination and perpetuate biases. In this framework, the media are essential to building and strengthening the women’s agenda, and international cooperation can influence their coverage of women's leadership in the public sphere in a way that is equitable in terms of time given to women, and in terms of the substance of that coverage. International actors can also contribute by financing and institutionalising media monitoring systems in civil society organisations or academia which can be an important tool to make gender biases visible in the media's coverage of female leaders. Finally, in order to influence the structural conditions of this inequitable coverage for men and women, international actors can also invest in training to highlight and counter gender biases in the media for journalists, media owners and other influencers. An example of this is the one implemented in 2017 by the National Electoral Institute of Mexico together with civil society organisations, in which journalists were trained to avoid personal questions, stereotypes and double standards in the coverage of male and female candidates in order to generate a more equitable coverage in time and substance.

Considering the achievements so far and the recent backlash that seeks to slow down progress on women’s inclusion and representation — even aiming to reverse it — it is key to ask: 'What can be done to institutionalize the progress made so far?' How can we ensure that the conditions that have contributed positively to the inclusion and representation of women are institutionalised and sustained over time? International cooperation can contribute to this end. It is timely to revalue the contributions of international cooperation, especially regarding women’s inclusion and representation and all human diversity. Gender equality objectives are achieved collectively, with each actor contributing to the end goal, under the leadership of local actors. However, the multilateral space can support this by using the commitments linked to human rights treaties as a guide, investing in the implementation of activities and projects, and, finally, through soft diplomacy — today enshrined in a feminist foreign policy. All this will make it possible to sustain the achievements in this area and to advance towards new ones, while protecting the contributions the multilateral space can make.

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