Description
Recently, feminist foreign policy (FFP) has emerged as an innovative way to make and think about foreign policy. First adopted by Sweden in 2014, FFP quickly travelled across the globe, with various states adopting (Canada, Spain, Mexico) or pledging to adopt an FFP (France, Luxembourg, Libya). While FFP is often related to centring gender equality, ‘feminist’ foreign policy in fact remains a contested term, and a definition of FFP is still evolving.
Nevertheless, FFP is seen as providing innovative ways to effectively address urgent global challenges that necessitate cooperation from different actors and organisations. For, FFP makes possible solidarity as it potentially transforms power hierarchies that underpin foreign policy (making) globally. However, emerging scholarship has also highlighted how FFP is co-opted and constrained by capitalist, neoliberal, colonial, and patriarchal structures underpinning foreign policymaking (Parashar and D’Costa 2017; Vucetic 2017; Duriesmith 2018; Macdonald and Ibrahim 2019; Thomson 2020; Cadesky 2020; Morton et al. 2020; Parisi 2020), thereby casting doubt on its transformative potential.
While research on FFP is still in its early stages, it has sought to centre new perspectives and non-hierarchical and collaborative approaches. In line with this, this roundtable provides an opportunity for a diverse range of early-career researchers and practitioners to openly discuss the future of FFP as a developing policy approach and growing field of study. Drawing on their own research on FFP in India, Germany, Sweden, Canada, and the UK, speakers will reflect on the following questions: What makes a foreign policy feminist? To what extent does FFP help us to address increasing global inequalities? How is feminism co-opted, constrained, contested in foreign policymaking? Which feminist knowledges are included/excluded in FFP? Is a feminist foreign policy indeed possible?
