Description
Along with National Action Plans, feminist or gender-sensitive foreign policies are a potentially valuable mechanism for states to implement the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. It is also in the design and implementation of such policies that the contradictions between feminist principles and states’ interests relating to, for instance, economic growth through trade expansion become apparent. As such, the foreign policy arena can offer significant, evidence-based insights into the scope for states’ engagement with the WPS agenda.
Against this background, the proposed paper seeks to examine whether, and how, feminist foreign policies have contended with the growing importance of corporate actors in international security. It proceeds in three parts. First, the paper reviews the WPS policy and scholarly literature that has considered the significance of corporate interests in contemporary international security. Second, it evaluates the ways in which feminist foreign policy – in principle – can incorporate the opportunities, and address the challenges posed, by corporate actors in realizing the WPS agenda. Third and finally, the paper assesses existing feminist foreign policies vis-à-vis their attention to corporate actors.
