Abstract
Feminist foreign policy is an inclusive, rights-based and ethical policy framework that is, in its core, a foreign policy approach towards a peaceful, prospering and gender just international community. As such, it offers tools and avenues of action for diplomats, policymakers, researchers and activists alike. This chapter outlines the various theoretical foundations the concept combines and highlights the necessity of a thorough intersectional and post-colonial perspective, furthermore showing that feminist foreign policy is not, by any measure, a policy approach/practice for women and girls only. Moving from the theoretical to the practical dimension, the chapter briefly discusses examples of policy implementation by governments under the label of feminist foreign policy as well as examples of feminist and gender-sensitive foreign policy approaches not labelled ‘feminist’. We conclude that, when implemented through an intersectional-feminist lens, feminist foreign policy offers both an analytical and practical toolbox for diplomats.
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Notes
- 1.
Terms such as ‘global North’/‘West’ or ‘global South’ are often used in discussions around peace, security and foreign policy, which is why we use them in this chapter. Nevertheless, we would like to highlight that these terminologies are inaccurate and problematic, as they implicitly reproduce ideas of ‘developing’ versus ‘developed’ or ‘First World’ versus. ‘Third World’ and thus the idea of advanced and primitive countries, inherent logic of violent post-colonial (discursive) practices. See Lazarus (2004) for a more in-depth discussion.
- 2.
As of November 2021.
- 3.
In fact, the diplomatic crisis that ensued in 2015 after the then foreign minister Wallström blocked the exports of arms to Saudi Arabia which shows the complicated practical dimensions that a thorough feminist foreign policy, if implemented coherently, can pose.
- 4.
See the parallel event of the Kubernein Initiative at the NGO CSW65 2021 ‘Why a Feminist Foreign Policy?—Perspectives from Emerging Powers’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qniKp8KtWY&t=3422s; or the Stimson Center’s event (2021) on ‘Grom Gender to Geopolitics: Towards a Feminist Foreign Policy in South Asia’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZGlbeqyMis
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Fröhlich, M., Scheyer, V. (2023). Feminist Foreign Policy and Diplomacy. In: Onditi, F., McLarren, K., Ben-Nun, G., Stivachtis, Y.A., Okoth, P. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Diplomatic Thought and Practice in the Digital Age. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28214-0_4
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