This article was written by Rachel Clement, Policy Advocate for the International Center for Research on Women and one of the entrants in Apolitical’s women in government writing competition.
Feminism, at its core, is an agenda to promote equity.
This is something we should all be able to get behind, firstly because equality should be a goal in and of itself, but also because it is a necessary component for achieving other policy objectives. The same is true for foreign policy: a foreign policy that embraces a feminist approach is more effective, advancing national interests while doing the most good for the most people.
Globally, inequality based on gender is persistent and pernicious: 1 in 3 women globally experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetimes, 130 million girls are out of school and women’s workforce participation and pay is such that countries lose 14% of their wealth as a result of gender inequality.
Gender equality is an essential component for security and stability: violence against women is often used as a metric for gauging whether a country is prone to civil war, likely to comply with international norms and treaties, and/or likely to become involved in wars with other nations. Conversely, when women are a part of peacemaking processes, those peace deals are more likely to last 15 years or more.
What is feminist foreign policy?
Three countries — Sweden, Canada and France — already have foreign policies that they define as feminist, and the United Kingdom’s Shadow Foreign Secretary has proposed a feminist aid policy.
From civil society’s perspective, a feminist foreign policy is one that prioritises gender equality and centres the human rights of women and other traditionally marginalised groups in its aid, trade, defence and diplomacy. Such a policy would allocate significant resources to achieving gender equality, be informed by feminist groups, movements, and activists, and would be transparent in goals, objectives, activities, accountability mechanisms and evaluation.
Until countries grapple with the fundamental hypocrisy of “empowering” a population through foreign aid while simultaneously providing arms or economic incentives to governments and other actors who seek to disempower them, we will not see a reduction in conflict, poverty, and inequality globally.
The oldest feminist foreign policy comes from Sweden, which has near gender parity in parliamentary representation, high gender equality metrics domestically (with some notable room for improvement) and spends more than any other country on overseas development assistance, at least in proportion to the size of their economy.
Launched in 2014, their framework of rights, resources and representation and covers aid, trade and diplomacy. Notably absent is defence: despite a "feminist" foreign policy, Sweden continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, a country notorious for suppressing dissent and jailing feminist activists. Also absent is a mechanism for monitoring implementation of the policy. The government has produced several documents highlighting illustrative achievements, but lacks a framework to transparently monitor goals, objectives, and progress.
For too long, male-dominated aid, trade, diplomacy and defence policies have hampered countries’ abilities to fully advance their own interests and to do the most good for the most people
Canada’s Feminist International Assistance policy only targets development and humanitarian assistance — and thus doesn’t meet the definition of a foreign policy that includes of aid, trade, defence and diplomacy — but it does have policy indicators against which to evaluate their efforts. France recently rebranded an existing foreign assistance policy on gender as feminist, and has done a great deal to ensure that gender is at the forefront of the G7.
Their feminist approach only applies to aid and diplomacy, but they do have metrics to evaluate their efforts. Still, there have been critiques that France has failed to include civil society in the G7, which should be a critical component of talking the talk and walking the walk in a feminist approach.
The U.K. Labour Party’s proposal is half policy vision and half political manoeuvring, making ample space to disparage efforts of the current government, but it does outline proposals for major reforms to aid practices and increased spending on foreign assistance.
Feminist in name and action
While these policies might call themselves feminist, none of them quite measure up against what they could be — and need to be — in order to truly tackle patriarchal norms that lead to increased interpersonal violence, civil unrest, inter-state conflict and poverty.
Other countries, like the United States, do not even attempt to attach their gender equality initiatives to a "feminist" foreign policy. Following the so-called “pink wave” of women elected to congress in 2018 and global movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp, it would be easy to imagine that gender issues and women’s leadership are more at the forefront of U.S. policy leadership than ever before.
The United States has promulgated a number of issue-specific strategies and policies such as President George W. Bush’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), President Obama’s White House Council on Women and Girls (which President Trump later dismantled), the U.S. Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls or President Trump’s Women, Peace and Security Strategy and Women's Global Development and Prosperity initiative. Each are attempts to better address and measure progress on specific gendered issues or to elevate gender within the administration, mainly through foreign assistance, but lack a cohesive approach, much less one that would include trade or defence and harmonise aid and diplomacy across sector-specific issues.
For too long, male-dominated aid, trade, diplomacy and defence policies have hampered countries’ abilities to fully advance their own interests and to do the most good for the most people. Women and girls have borne the physical, economic and social consequences of these policies. For all of these reasons and more, to make foreign policies more effective, they should be explicitly feminist in both name and action. — Rachel Clement
(Picture credit: Unsplash)
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