“Feminist foreign policy” appears to be the flavour of the month. While we are still trying to understand what that means, we have Margot Wallström to thank for popularising the term. On being appointed as Sweden’s foreign minister in October 2014, Wallström said that under her leadership Sweden would become the only country in the world to conduct a “feminist foreign policy”.
The fact that the “F” word was voted as one of the top 10 words to be banned by Time Magazine readers in 2014 certainly suggests that it has currency and provokes debate, not least of all in the realm of international affairs. Though Wallström is the first to coin her foreign policy “feminist” she follows Hillary Rodham Clinton as US Secretary of State 2009-13, and William Hague as UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs 2010-14, in embracing a gender perspective on international security, development and aid.
Hague made “tackling rape in warzones” the lynchpin of his Foreign Secretary tenure. Hague considered the suppression of women’s rights to be “the single greatest continuing injustice in the world... the greatest single source of untapped potential available to humanity, and the vital missing aspect of conflict resolution world.” Clinton made empowering women in developing countries one of the six key principles of U.S. international development policy.
