Scotland will be the first country in the UK to adopt a feminist approach to international relations. But will this remain a symbolic move, or will it have transformative effects on foreign policy?
Scotland will become the first country in the United Kingdom to adopt a feminist approach in international relations. However, this will remain merely a symbolic move, or will it have transformative effects in foreign policy?
Christina McKelvie, Minister for International Development, stated during a forum on women’s leadership held in Iceland that despite Scotland having a limited scope of foreign policy within the agreement with London, efforts should still be made for feminist foreign policy.
Speaking to Euronews, McKelvie said, “We want a feminist policy that questions colonialism, that’s actively anti-racist, that targets patriarchy and in some ways the capitalist, imperialist, male-dominated power structures.”
“One of the things we want to prioritise is peace and how peace can protect the rights of women and marginalised groups,” she added.
Scotland will be the first country in the United Kingdom to adopt a feminist approach in international relations.
Several other European countries have also embraced similar policies in the last decade, but the long-term implementation of these policies has been variable, leading to mixed results. This has prompted many to question whether adopting such policies has only symbolic significance or if it truly holds transformative potential.
So, can a feminist foreign policy change the rules of the game?
This approach, born as a way to challenge the status quo in international politics, is viewed by some as a reframing of conventional foreign policy discourse, while others approach it with a degree of skepticism.
Given its lack of a concrete definition, each state can interpret what exactly constitutes ‘feminist foreign policy’ in its own way.
The term first gained traction in Sweden during Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its violation of Swedish territorial waters.
As the feminist movement gained momentum, since Sweden took the initial step, other countries, including Canada, Mexico, France, Luxembourg, Spain, Libya, Germany, the Netherlands, and Chile, have also declared their adoption of feminist foreign policy.
“There’s been a lot of development work on what works and what doesn’t and how other countries have approached this. We’ve learned a lot from countries like Spain about how to implement this policy,” says McKelvie.
Scotland is still debating the total amount of money it will allocate to the policy, but the minister has already said she plans to “spend every penny in the budget.”
“It’s hard to put a price tag on what we want to do,” McKelvie added.
The ‘cautionary’ tale of Sweden
In 2014, when Sweden’s then-Foreign Minister Margot Wallström announced that her country would be the first in the world to adopt a feminist foreign policy, the proposal was met with considerable enthusiasm.
The goal was to prioritize gender equality in Sweden’s relations with other countries. Although Sweden recently officially set aside this policy, foreign ministers within and outside the European Union took note at the time and charted their own roadmaps for a more feminist foreign policy.
Sweden, a trailblazer for feminist foreign policy, also became the first country to retract it. After eight years in effect, a conservative government came to power in last year’s elections, putting an end to feminist diplomacy. Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström, a conservative, argued that it had become an ‘counterproductive label.’
“Their reasoning was that such a label of feminist foreign policy obscures the policy behind it, and that they were still somehow focused on prioritising gender equality, but they felt that the feminist label was just an empty label,” Jennifer Bergman from the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, told Euronews.
Human Rights Watch and similar organizations criticized the country’s move, and there were many internal conflicts in terms of performance.
The diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia erupted after former Foreign Minister Wallström strongly criticized the oppression in the Middle East theocracy. This came to a head when she described the 1,000 lashes punishment given to human rights activist Raif Badawi as a “medieval punishment” in a speech to the Swedish parliament.
In response, Saudi Arabia strongly reacted by blocking Wallström from delivering a speech on women’s rights to Arab leaders and temporarily cutting off relations with Sweden.
The crisis didn’t end there. In retaliation, Sweden halted arms sales to Saudi Arabia and canceled a multi-billion-dollar deal that was set to be implemented in the future.
Balancing feminist ambitions with national interests?
While the official reason for abandoning feminist foreign policy was not explicitly cited in this case, Sweden’s arms industry had previously made sales exceeding 1.2 billion euros to Arab countries.
“Even though Sweden has a long tradition in politics of promoting gender equality, the parties on the left that have implemented these policies have been more in favour of using the feminist label, whereas the parties on the right tend to be more against it,” says analyst Jennifer Bergman.
According to Inés Arco Escriche, a researcher at the Barcelona Center for International Affairs, another challenge faced by Swedish feminist politics was finding a balance between national interests and the goals of feminist diplomacy.
In 2016, Sweden tightened its asylum and border control policies, making family reunification nearly impossible. While the Foreign Ministry claimed in its action plan that feminist diplomacy aimed to protect and empower women in other countries, including refugees and immigrants, the tightening of immigration policies led to thousands of women living in refugee camps or war-torn countries.
Source: Euronews / Laura LLach