In July of 2022, women took to the streets of Sri Lanka in protest of the burden disproportionately placed on them by decisions made by their government leadership. Due to the corruption and economic crisis caused, many women were left to carry an even larger share of the domestic work which sparked protests all across the nation. These advocates were able to force President Rajapaksa to leave the country and have established consistent efforts to secure the country’s future of including more women in their political culture and protecting themselves from tyrants through legal measures.
The current prime minister, Dr. Amarasuriya, stated that feminist movements have demonstrated the possibility for important changes, but only by challenging the status quo and demanding “systemic transformation.” Such movements illustrate a growing trend of feminist attitudes in our modern world, especially in politics and foreign affairs. Women not only deserve a proper seat at the table – society needs to reinvent the table altogether.
Incorporating this feminist perspective on international politics is crucial for the elevation of women and to solve many transnational issues because when women are supported as leaders, they can better understand and address the issues that affect them the most.
What is Feminist Foreign Policy?
As Cynthia Enloe, a world-renowned political theorist and feminist writer states, “the international is personal” and “the personal is international.” Given that international politics is inherently connected to all the tiny bits of daily life, there is much to transform about the current processes that govern our world and relations in order to pay sufficient attention to the gendered dynamics of diplomacy among other systems. Feminists want to challenge traditional divisions between masculinity and femininity, the private and public spheres, theories and practice, and the intimate everyday and the international to ultimately transform patriarchal violence power structures into structures which are uplifting and representative of one and all.
Feminist foreign policy prioritizes human security over national security and seeks to address the real and immediate problems affecting everyone, but especially what women and people of color face daily. It does not rely on pink-washing or civilizing missions as justification for its actions or claim to get this work done but truly only further a narrow patriarchal agenda.
As such, the intentions and impact of feminist international relations and their transnational view is invaluable and exceedingly different from where the world is today. By adopting a feminist lens, one can ensure that gender, race, class and other markers are no longer invisible and are at the forefront of what humanity truly needs to work on collectively. Sweden, France, Canada, Luxembourg have first adopted this approach, along with twelve other governments in Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia, while other countries have begun implementing feminist-inspired policies as well, but evidently much more needs to be done.
The Invisibilization of Women in a Global Context
A flaw of modern society is the lack of recognition by a global patriarchal system of women and minorities’ needs, which drastically affects the analysis of the “success” of certain programs and countries. For example, even if international law can circumvent a state’s sovereignty in some situations, it still cannot intervene in the internal affairs of the state which can include gender-based violence due to the principle of non-intervention.
This invisibilization of women at the international stage is not just a choice made on a case-by-case basis, but one that was set up as such an obvious assumption that it can be difficult to think outside of this patriarchal box. At the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank conceived at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, this new system aimed to fix exchange rates, address loans and provide monetary assistance to recovering countries after the war. While their goals have shifted to the development and reducing poverty, specifically in the Third World, many more critiques have emerged. One of these critiques is that developing countries, especially for low-income countries, must complete “prior actions” set by the World Bank, in order to receive loans/grants for development projects. This can restrict these countries’ choices in what they wish to do because they must oblige to the World Bank in order to get necessary funding.
Another critique is the massive underrepresentation of the Global South in its structure which ensures the US, Europe, and Japan have the largest influence over decisions. Essentially, the IMF, World Bank, Peace Corps, etc. were all constructs that, at their core, continued the West’s civilizing mission into the underdeveloped and developing countries.
This goal of expanding the influence of the West economically and politically throughout the rest of the world did not take into account women and their daily lives, and from the beginning it was evident that women were excluded from these monumental decisions because only two female delegates were present at the initial Bretton Woods Conference. As time went on, efforts to “hyper-visualize” gender and inclusion of women in global politics was merely a facade – these structural plans to include women by simply giving them a “seat at the table” were just not enough.
From Feminist Theory to Feminist Practice
It should no longer be assumed that individuals working at the highest levels of global politics can accurately pinpoint and effectively resolve specific problems in all regions of the world. Even if women are present at global level conferences, it does not necessarily equate to the lives of half the world being properly represented, through no fault of those women. The unique day to day worries and needs of a woman from Bangladesh is different from a woman from Canada, and so forth. The context in which they live is bound by different norms and cannot be remedied without specific attention to each region and household, but how can this be accurately taken into account when women are still disproportionately a mere token presence? Feminist-informed perspectives of global roles and global processes can help us find insight on how exactly women are woven into the fabric of society and what transformative changes are required to eliminate the patriarchal status quo that has been “ingeniously adaptable” thus far. What this entails is constant questioning of the system and complex analysis of what is being assumed, ignored, or underrepresented.
Featured Image Source: ODI Global