Rahmat Gul/AP Photo
Women attend an event to mark International Women’s Day in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 7, 2021.
What is a feminist foreign policy? The term has been bouncing around panel discussions and op-eds in Washington lately, and policy experts say that it’s an opportunity for the Biden administration to actualize some of its key goals at home and abroad. Today, on International Women’s Day, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) is introducing legislation that would support a feminist foreign policy in theory and practice. It’s a chance for a new approach to national security that goes far beyond gender balance in leadership. If passed, it would readjust American priorities.
In 2014, Sweden was the first to adopt a feminist foreign policy. It was designed to weigh policy implications for women and men equally, ensuring that political decisions consider the potential impacts on the entire population. It isn’t only designed to protect women, but also to elevate them politically, bringing them into the fold of political decision-making. Since Sweden adopted the policy, other countries have followed suit, including both of the United States’ immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
Heather Hurlburt, the director of New Models of Policy Change at New America, says that one example of when a feminist foreign policy would have been particularly beneficial was in Afghanistan. When Americans arrived in the country, they wanted to focus on women’s representation in politics. “And local women said ‘no,’” Hurlburt said. “‘Please help us lower maternal mortality and remove taboos against women having medical assistance at childbirth first.’” Empowering and listening to local women is a key part of the strategy.
It isn’t only designed to protect women, but also to elevate them politically, bringing them into the fold of political decision-making.
Studies have shown that when women are involved in peace negotiations, the agreements last 64 percent more of the time than those negotiations with men only. And in the last year, female leaders have emerged as political impresarios by heading up some of the most successful and holistic campaigns in response to COVID-19. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s actions on the pandemic led to a landslide re-election victory in October, while Christine Lagarde, the first female president of the European Central Bank, realigned the financial authority’s primary mission to include fighting climate change. These successes suggest that bringing women into the political decision-making process results in better outcomes.
“I’ve never gotten into it as someone who’s all about gender,” said Elmira Bayrasli, co-founder of Foreign Policy Interrupted, an initiative that elevates women and nonbinary experts. “I don’t want to have women at the table for the sake of having women at the table. I’m a feminist, and I advocate for a feminist foreign policy, but my position on this is about getting to better solutions.”
But the name of the policy approach itself, with the historically divisive “f-word” that was lampooned by the likes of Phyllis Schlafly in the 1970s, and now by right-wing media machine PragerU in a 16-part video series, may stand in its way. “The idea that the U.S. might have a feminist foreign policy somehow sounds radical,” Tarah Demant, the director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Identity Program for Amnesty International, told me. “But it’s the most un-radical thing we could possibly do. What is radical about having fewer people suffer on this planet?”
Under the Biden administration, women have been nominated to top spots, beginning with his campaign’s pledge to choose a female vice president. From there, President Biden has gone further than previous administrations by establishing a Gender Policy Council that’s designed to work with all sectors of the government. He broke Bill Clinton’s record of nine women in Cabinet-level positions by nominating 12. He’s hired the first woman to be deputy defense secretary and the first as Treasury secretary.
But a feminist foreign-policy strategy means that women’s issues are systematically folded into every aspect of a country’s international relations, not just as one-offs that might be dissolved with an administration change. “A feminist foreign policy is the connective tissue by which the U.S. needs to approach foreign-policy work,” said Demant.
Studies have found that countries with the greatest gender equality gaps are also the most likely to resort to political violence and be involved in inter- and intrastate conflict. By stemming gender inequality, countries are addressing security issues at their root, remediating the power imbalances that pervade so many societies globally. To many progressive experts, a feminist foreign policy is another way of saying a human rights foreign policy. (Think Hillary Clinton’s famous 1995 exhortation: “Women’s rights are human rights.”)
“The real question is why would you be opposed?” asked Demant. “A feminist foreign policy is good for everyone. It’s good for the United States. It’s good for Saudi Arabia. It’s only bad for people who concentrate and use government power to violate rights.”
Studies have found that countries with the greatest gender equality gaps are also the most likely to resort to political violence and be involved in inter- and intrastate conflict.
This time, without the flailing final moments of the Trump administration as a backdrop, the political climate might be more receptive to the resolution. During Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s first major speech at the State Department on Thursday, he signaled a new beginning. Indeed, his remarks hit on a lot of what feminist foreign-policy advocates are asking for. “We’re not simply picking up where we left off, as if the past four years didn’t happen,” he said. “We’re looking at the world with fresh eyes.”
To progressive pundits, a gender lens is the “fresh eyes” Blinken should focus on. “Feminist foreign policy shouldn’t be considered a niche, Nordic thing,” said Bayrasli of Foreign Policy Interrupted. “Climate change, growing extremism, the global health crisis—all of these issues have really shown that we need to get out of this nation-state prism where we rely on our military and our defense forces to protect the homeland.”
The true test, however, will be in the Biden administration’s actions in the world, not just its appointments and marquee remarks. Two weeks ago, the president launched airstrikes in Syria, his first power project overseas since being in office. On Reddit and Twitter, users resurfaced a popular meme that displays the difference between how Democrats and Republicans drop bombs. In short, they’re identical. The only difference is the Democrats’ F-15 is plastered with progressive stickers (a “Yes She Can” logo, a “Black Lives Matter” sticker, and a rainbow banner next to the plane’s cockpit).
A feminist foreign policy could change that. “If your drone strikes kill militant leaders but turn families against you, thus promoting the emergence of a following generation of younger, even more radical leaders, the policy’s not working,” said Hurlburt of New America. “A feminist foreign policy means those observations, instead of being shunted aside as irrelevant, are important to policymaking.”
