Description
‘Everyone should understand feminist foreign policy!’ A ruling relation governing the practice of feminist foreign policy (FFP) in the German Foreign Office is that feminism and, specifically, FFP must be made accessible and palatable because they are not naturally so. This chapter interrogates this by asking for whom is feminist foreign policy inaccessible and why? What is at stake? And which strategies are used to make FFP more palatable and accessible? This chapter finds that FFP is seen as inaccessible to the wider German public due to their conservative political stance; diplomats because FFP potentially challenges key diplomatic relations; men because FFP is widely understood as a policy for women; and the so-called Global South because ‘it’ is seen as less progressive. At the same time, all these groups are positioned as important actors in the realm of FFP, either as recipients (Global South), implementers (diplomats), or decision-makers in the Foreign Office (male staff). Strategies for making FFP more accessible and palatable include reducing ‘the abstract’; using already established concepts such as diversity while avoiding contested terms like intersectionality; and privileging operationalising FFP over conceptualisation. As a result, more radical understandings of feminism and FFP are co-opted. Hence, FFP is not as transformative as it is made out to be
