Feminist – a word becomes a stigma
BORDER CROSSINGS Op-ed by Katja Gentinetta, published at PRAGMATICUS
Feminist foreign policy is glaringly misinterpreted as mere quota policy – and consequently abolished. Take Sweden, for example. This is possible because of the label ‘feminist’.
I first came across the term about ten years ago when I picked up a textbook on international relations. The topic was given a total of three pages in the 500-page book, and that was that. Nevertheless its representatives have shown perseverance, because today the term is on everyone’s lips: feminist foreign policy. In order not to appear quite so militant, however, one prefers to speak officially of the „FAP“, or even better of the „FFP“, the „feminist foreign policy“.
Is that a declaration of war? And with it, has wokeness definitively arrived in high politics? Or does the FAP simply represent legitimate concerns that have received too little attention so far?
Admittedly, I am less fond of the term than the concept.Although I don’t hesitate for a second to call myself a feminist. I find it difficult to put that label on a policy area. Consequently, we would then also have to speak of feminist education, energy, transport, health, etc. policies.
But that would be nothing more than an explication of the already existing practice of „gender mainstreaming“: the principle of examining every policy for its gender aspect. The same is possible in foreign policy without having to call it feminist.
I am less fond of the term feminist foreign policy than of the concept.
Perhaps the cause would be better served if it did not bear this designation. For one thing, not every successive male foreign minister would feel pressured to scrap the concept along with the project – as recently happened in Sweden. For another, because although the FFP advocates the rights of women and girls, it still sees itself as a „foreign policy for all“.
Foreign policy for all
Especially at a time when the Grand Old Lady of feminism, Alice Schwarzer, cannot bring herself to distance herself from one of the biggest and worst macho menof present times – Putin, we require a more precise critical use of the term. As German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock wonders, it can actually be a „triggering“ term and not only for old white men. For a long time now, feminism has (unfortunately!) not only been about equal rights for women, but also associated with all kinds of justified, but sometimes also needy, concerns and ideas of „activists“ who want to be understood as a minority with special rights.
However, apart from the term itself, I can subscribe to every word with which Baerbock explained her concept in September last year: it is about rights, representation and resources, and it is about human security. Every one of her considerations is convincing, every one of her examples makes sense. For instance, it took strategy and courage to deny the Taliban further humanitarian aid if they stopped allowing women to work in the health sector. The result: they agreed to allow women back in.
Another incident: Would it have occurred to an experienced architect to build high walls around every house without consulting the women inhabitants of a village that had been ravaged by Boko Haram and was to be rebuilt? Probably not.
Feminist, but religion-blind?
However, even a clear commitment to the FFP does not seem to protect frommisjudgements, even on matters that concern women. How, for example, can we interpret the the statement by the former German Foreign Minister that contended that violence against Iranian women has nothing to do with religion? Would it be possible to end the violence without sending the Mullah’s regime to the desert? Could one imagine an Islamic state in which women have equal rights? Both are unthinkable in view of the fact that Islam strictly rejects the separation of church and state.
Since Baerbock’s concept of the FFP is explicitly about asking uncomfortable questions and drilling down until a satisfactory answer is found, it would necessitate extending this persistent questioning to Islam – and not only in Iran and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, but particularly in Europe. It calls for the urgently needed realisation that a democracy committed to equal rights cannot accept an imported patriarchy, not even under the title of a „different culture“. After all that Baerbock has been able to achieve, I trust her to have this change of perspective .
Feminist symbolic politics
On the other hand, As a Swiss woman, I ask myself: if a feminist foreign policy was adopted by Bern, would that have prevented our ambassador from being photographed in a black chador at a Shiite place of pilgrimage? I hope so!
An FFP would have to examine diplomatic routines for their possible symbolic power and decide what is right and what is wrong in certain countries and adapt to specific situations. The official justification that this site is an academic institution dedicated to inter-religious dialogue highlights Swiss oblivion once more.
Germany is not alone in espousing the FFP. And it is not only Baerbock who has unequivocally advocated the military defense of Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian war. Kaja Kallas, Prime Minister of Estonia, also immediately made it clear that one must not show any weakness towards the Russian dictator. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, on the other hand, resolutely led her country into NATO.
Critics – probably not coincidentally male – simplistically read pacifism or a lack of ‘realpolitik’ into FFP and further reduce it to a mere policy of gendered quotas that lack quality and merit, or even to “hormones”. Their malice is more an indication of being offended than of objective analysis – possibly even of the fear that women can also do foreign policy, and do it well albeit a little differently.
The question remains whether women can do politics differently at all – indeed, whether they really should. But more on that next time.