Newsletters
Feminist foreign policy emerged in the early 21st century as an ambitious attempt to reimagine international relations through the lens of gender equality.
This approach, first formally adopted by Sweden in 2014 under Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, promised to revolutionize diplomacy by centering women's experiences, promoting gender equality, and challenging traditional power structures in international affairs.
The theory posits that incorporating feminist perspectives into foreign policy would lead to more peaceful conflict resolution, increased focus on human security rather than military security, and ultimately create a more equitable world order.
The fundamental premise of feminist foreign policy rests on several interconnected assumptions. First, it argues that the current international system is inherently patriarchal and that this patriarchal structure perpetuates violence, inequality, and militarism.
Second, it suggests that women's increased participation in foreign policy decision-making would naturally lead to more peaceful outcomes, based on the belief that women are inherently more collaborative, empathetic, and peace-oriented than men.
Third, it promotes the idea that addressing gender inequality globally should be a central foreign policy objective, not merely a peripheral concern.
The most problematic assumption underlying feminist foreign policy is the essentialist notion that women are naturally more peaceful than men and that female-led governments would therefore be less likely to engage in warfare. This romanticized view ignores both historical evidence and contemporary realities.
In the modern era, this pattern continues unabated. Margaret Thatcher's decisive military action in the Falkland Islands, Golda Meir's hardline stance during the Yom Kippur War, and Indira Gandhi's role in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 all challenge the simplistic narrative that women leaders naturally pursue peace over war.
More recently, female defense ministers and foreign policy leaders across the world have supported military interventions, arms sales, and aggressive foreign policies that mirror or exceed those of their male counterparts.
The assumption that biological sex determines foreign policy preferences not only lacks empirical support but also paradoxically reinforces gender stereotypes that feminism ostensibly seeks to dismantle.
Perhaps no figure better exemplifies the contradiction between feminist foreign policy rhetoric and militaristic practice than Hillary Clinton.
Throughout her political career, Clinton consistently positioned herself as a champion of women's rights, famously declaring that "women's rights are human rights" at the 1995 Beijing Conference.
As Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, she made gender equality a supposed cornerstone of American diplomacy, establishing the first Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues and repeatedly emphasizing the importance of women's empowerment in achieving global security.
However, Clinton's actual foreign policy record tells a starkly different story. She was one of the strongest advocates for the 2011 military intervention in Libya. The intervention resulted in thousands of civilian casualties and transformed Libya into a failed state plagued by civil war, human trafficking, and terrorism.
The chaos that ensued particularly devastated Libyan women, who lost many of the rights and protections they had enjoyed under the previous regime, including state-supported childcare, maternity leave, and equal pay legislation.
Clinton's hawkish positions extended well beyond Libya. She advocated for drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and pushed for more aggressive action against Syria's Assad regime.
Her approach to Iran was notably bellicose, threatening military action and supporting crippling sanctions that primarily hurt ordinary Iranian civilians, particularly women and children who struggled to access medicine and basic necessities.
Germany's current Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, represents the new generation of politicians explicitly committed to feminist foreign policy.
Upon taking office in 2021, Baerbock announced that Germany would pursue a feminist foreign policy, claiming it would prioritize women's rights, gender equality, and the protection of marginalized groups globally.
She has spoken eloquently about the need to amplify women's voices in international affairs and has criticized countries with poor gender equality records. However, her actual policy decisions reveal a troubling pattern of selective feminism that appears more concerned with geopolitical alignment than genuine feminist principles.
The Afghanistan crisis provided an early test of Baerbock's feminist foreign policy commitments. Following the Taliban's return to power in August 2021, Afghan women faced a catastrophic rollback of their rights.
They were banned from attending university, prohibited from most forms of employment, and effectively erased from public life. Despite Germany's stated feminist foreign policy and Baerbock's vocal concern for women's rights, Germany's response to the plight of Afghan women has been remarkably limited.
While expressing verbal condemnation, Germany has not implemented any substantial special visa program for Afghan women's rights activists or female students.
The few evacuation efforts that occurred were limited and chaotic, leaving thousands of vulnerable women behind. Baerbock's government has essentially abandoned Afghan women to their fate while continuing to speak abstractly about the importance of women's rights on the international stage.
Even more revealing is Baerbock's stance on the Gaza conflict. Despite the devastating impact of Israeli military operations on Palestinian women and children, Baerbock has maintained unwavering support for Israel's actions, consistently framing them as legitimate self-defense.
The bombing campaigns in Gaza have disproportionately affected women, who not only face direct physical danger but also bear the burden of caring for families in impossible conditions without access to clean water, electricity, or medical care.
Yet Baerbock's feminist foreign policy appears to have no room for Palestinian women. She has not called for humanitarian corridors specifically to protect women and children, has not demanded investigations into attacks on maternity wards and schools, and has not used Germany's considerable influence to push for ceasefires that would allow women to access essential services.
One of the most problematic aspects of feminist foreign policy as currently practiced is the use of development aid as a tool for imposing Western conceptions of gender equality on recipient nations. Countries implementing feminist foreign policy frequently attach gender-related conditions to their aid programs, requiring recipient nations to implement specific reforms related to women's rights to receive or maintain funding.
While this might seem like a straightforward way to promote gender equality, the reality is far more complex and often counterproductive.
These conditionalities typically reflect Western feminist priorities and values, ignoring local contexts, cultural dynamics, and indigenous women's movements that might have different approaches to achieving gender equality.
When African countries, for instance, fail to implement reforms according to Western timelines or specifications, aid is reduced or withdrawn entirely. This punitive approach fails to recognize that sustainable social change requires time, local ownership, and cultural sensitivity.
The consequences of withdrawn aid disproportionately affect the very women these policies claim to protect. When healthcare funding is cut because a country hasn't met gender reform targets, it's women who lose access to maternal health services. When education aid is suspended, it's girls who are forced to drop out of school.
The aid conditionality model also reveals the neocolonial undertones of much feminist foreign policy. As a result of this approach, local populations may come to view women's rights as a foreign imposition tied to economic coercion rather than as legitimate domestic priorities.
The selective application of feminist foreign policy principles reveals its true function in contemporary international relations: as an instrument for advancing traditional geopolitical interests while claiming moral superiority.
This instrumentalization becomes evident when examining how feminist foreign policy is applied differently depending on the strategic importance of the country in question. Saudi Arabia's severe restrictions on women's rights receive muted criticism because of oil interests and arms sales, while smaller nations with less strategic value face harsh condemnation and potential sanctions for far lesser violations.
The practice of feminist foreign policy by nations like Sweden, Canada, Germany, and others has failed to live up to its theoretical promises. Rather than transforming international relations, it has simply provided a progressive-sounding justification for conventional foreign policy decisions.
The assumption that women leaders are inherently more peaceful has been thoroughly disproven by figures like Hillary Clinton and Annalena Baerbock, who have supported military interventions and weapons exports while maintaining feminist rhetoric.
The selective application of feminist principles, where women's rights matter only when geopolitically convenient, reveals the hollow nature of these commitments.
2 min read
