Description
A growing number of states have adopted feminist platforms for their foreign policy conduct, a move that could be considered both innovative and progressive. While states’ FFPs share a number of features including support for global gender equality, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, the conduct of feminist leadership and diplomacy there are significant variations between them. This panel provides a set of critical reflections on the empirical contents as well as the feminist and ethical ambitions of states’ FFPs, including those of Germany, Sweden, the UK and the US. All four states could be considered supporters of global gender justice, though they vary in their ambitions. What is more they vary in their willingness to reflect on their location within privilege and wealth. Thus, it is central to unpack the gendered (and intersectional) power relations that undergird their FFPs as well as the securitised and militarised expressions of their foreign policies, many of which are inconsistent with feminist calls for demilitarisation and peaceful conflict resolution. A critical approach to the study of FFP also requires reflecting on the leadership style of states that seek to further feminist values and norms beyond borders, not the least the role of diplomats and female leaders in the everyday implementation of such global agendas, as well as their contributions to new knowledge production. All five papers are steeped in a critical feminist ambition and rest on a range of research methods
