How a ‘feminist’ foreign policy would change the world

THe Biden administration has a woman, Vice President Kamala Harris, in its second-highest position, and 61 percent of White House appointees are women.

Now, it has declared its intention to “protect and empower women around the world.”

Gender equity and a gender agenda are two ingredients of a “feminist foreign policy”—an international agenda that aims to dismantle the male-dominated systems of foreign aid, trade, defense, immigration and diplomacy that sideline women and other minority groups worldwide. A feminist foreign policy re-envisions a country’s national interests, moving them away from military security and global dominance to position equality as the basis of a healthy, peaceful world.

This is in keeping with Hillary Clinton’s groundbreaking 1995 statement at the United Nations, “Women’s rights are human rights.”

The world could change in some positive ways if more countries, especially a power like the United States, made a concerted effort to improve women’s rights abroad, our scholarship on gender and security suggests. Research shows that countries with more gender equality are less likely than other countries to experience civil war. Gender equality is also linked with good governance: Countries that exploit women are far more unstable.

Women aren’t yet any country’s top foreign policy priority. But ever more countries are starting to at least write them into the agenda.

In 2017, Canada launched a “feminist international assistance policy” aimed at supporting women, children and adolescent health worldwide. Putting money behind its promises, it pledged Canadian $1.4 billion annually by 2023 to both governments and international organizations to strengthen access to nutrition, health services and education among women in the developing world.

In January 2020, Mexico became the first country in Latin America to adopt a feminist foreign policy. Its strategy seeks to advance gender equality internationally; combat gender violence worldwide; and confront inequalities in all social and environmental justice program areas.

Neither Canada nor Mexico has achieved its lofty new goals.

Critics say Canada’s lack of focus on men and boys leaves the traditions and customs supporting gender inequality not fully addressed. And in Mexico, which has among the world’s highest rates of gender violence—men murder 11 women there every day—it’s hard to see how a government that cannot protect women at home can credibly promote feminism abroad.

But both countries are at least taking women’s needs explicitly into account.

The US, too, has taken steps toward a more feminist foreign policy.

In summer of 2020, the departments of Defense, State and Homeland Security, along with the US Agency for International Development, each published a plan putting women’s empowerment in their agendas, promoting women’s participation in decision-making in conflict zones, advance women’s rights and ensure their access to humanitarian assistance.

While these are the components of a feminist foreign policy, the plans are still operating in silos. A truly feminist foreign policy would be coherent across aid, trade, defense, diplomacy and immigration—and consistently prioritize equality for women.

One of Biden’s early moves in office, in January, was to rescind the “global gag rule,” a Republican policy prohibiting health providers in foreign countries that receive any US aid from providing abortion-related services—even if they use their own money. Studies show the funding restriction reduces women’s access to all kinds of health care, exposing them to disease and forcing women to seek unsafe abortions.

Reallocating financial resources in ways that level the playing field for women is another critical aspect of a feminist foreign policy. But again, it needs to be a policy that’s consistent and across the board, not a one-off decision.