Description
In 2018, France officially vowed to promote gender equality as its primary international strategy in diplomacy. This move towards a French version of Feminist Foreign Policy was in line with other ‘good citizen’ states like Sweden and Canada who declared a similar agenda in 2014 and 2017 respectively. Yet France has not been immune to the regressive anti-gender movements that have swathed the world in the last decade. Indeed, efforts to counter the “gender ideology” have gained grounds in France with the help of campaigns like “Manif pour Tous”. This chapter questions French feminist diplomacy in light of the rise and success of anti-gender developments in France. I examine the performativity of French feminist foreign policy and show that, following the work of Judith Butler and John Austin, to say that France adopts a feminist diplomacy also does things. I argue that French feminist diplomacy allows to do three things. First, it elevates France as a gender-equal society, despite massive opposition to the questioning of the ‘natural’ order of sex and gender and the ascent of anti-genderism. Second, this agenda allows to externalize gender equality to countries of the Global South (especially in ‘Francophone Africa’). Finally, drawing on Farris’ concept of “femonationalism”, the chapter demonstrates that France’s mobilization of feminist ideas serves Islamophobic and imperialist international agendas.
