Will the U.S. Adopt a Feminist Foreign Policy?

The International Center for Research on Women defines feminist foreign policy as “the policy of a state that defines its interactions with other states and movements in a manner that prioritizes gender equality and enshrines the human rights of women and other marginalized groups, allocates significant resources to achieve that vision and seeks, through its implementation, to disrupt racist, patriarchal and male-dominated power structures across all levers of influence, such as aid, trade, defense, diplomacy, and that this is informed by the voices of feminist groups, activists, and movements at home and abroad.” Lyric Thompson, Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy at the International Center for Research on Women, and leader of the Coalition for a Feminist Foreign Policy in the United States, sits down to talk to us about the significance of feminist foreign policy, and how it can be achieved.

Why is it importance to have feminist foreign policy? In a world where power is allocated and withheld at will, often diverted to the wealthiest nations (like the U.S.), women and other marginalized groups (including racial and ethnic groups, sexual and gender identity groups, religious groups, etc.) are left behind. Feminism is intersectional; it encompasses issues of racial justice, climate change relief, and other human rights. Policy created with these issue area considerations in mind will be more comprehensive, effective, and compassionate.

Sexual and reproductive health and rights and bodily autonomy are core principle of feminist foreign policy. Feminist foreign policy calls for the revocation of the expanded global gag rule, restoration of funding to UNFPA, advancing of LGBTQ+ rights, addressing of gender-based violence, and removal of the Hyde Amendment. The incoming Biden administration has the ability to support feminist foreign policy by not only accomplishing the above-mentioned tasks, but also launching Feminist Foreign Policy discussions at the Generation Equality Forum, rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, supporting the Commission on the Status of Women, and securing feminist offices and taskforces at U.S. federal agencies that will advance this policy.

Links from this episode

International Center for Research on Women on Facebook
International Center for Research on Women on Twitter
Defining Feminist Foreign Policy by the International Center for Research on Women
International Center for Research on Women’s transition memo for the Biden administration
More information on Coalition for A Feminist Foreign Policy in the United States
What Would a Feminist Foreign Policy Mean for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights?

Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to RePROs Fight Back, a podcast where we explore all things reproductive health, rights and justice. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and I'll be helping you stay informed around issues like birth control, abortion, sex education and LGBTQ issues and much, much more-- giving you the tools you need to take action and fight back. Okay, let's dive in.

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Jennie: Welcome to this week's episode of RePROs Fight Back. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my preferred pronouns are she/her. I hope everybody's doing great. I'm doing good this week. I am really excited because can you believe that Saturday is our third anniversary of doing the podcast? I cannot believe we've been doing this for three years. That just seems unbelievable to me. It feels like we just started doing this and it's been three years already. So for that, I just want to say I'm so grateful for all of you. Thank you. Thank you for listening or reading the transcripts or however you experience our podcast. I am so grateful for each and every one of you and for your support. So to celebrate, we decided that we wanted to give something back. So we're going to celebrate our birthday by giving away a bunch of rePROS swag. We'll share pictures on social media. You'll be able to see what all is in it, but we have a really cute canvas bag and a coffee mug and a bunch of fun stickers, pens, pop sockets, just a bunch of fun rePROS related things. We want to make sure that you get that. So we're going to choose 25 winners and it's really easy to enter. So on social media, if you reach out to us on any of the various platforms, either directly or with a hashtag #happybirthdayrepros and tell us why you love the podcast or, or something you would like us to cover in an episode or anything, just reach out to us and tell us why you love the podcast. And we will enter you to win a bunch of rePROS swag, and we'll send it out to you. So I hope that you all will enter and I'm excited to send out a bunch of swag to 25 lucky winners. So on top of saying thank you to all of you. I also want to make sure to say thank you to Meg, our amazing editor. She does a great job, making sure I sound good every week. And to Rachel, who does all of our social media and the website, and helps keeps me sane. So, we wouldn't be able to do the podcast without them, or the support from Population Institute who sponsors the podcast. We couldn't do it without everybody. So I want to give a big thank you to all of them and to all of you. We really appreciate your support and we wouldn't be doing this without all of you.

Jennie: So let's see, I guess this is going to be our last episode that comes out before the holidays. So I hope everybody has a wonderful holiday. I am staying in D.C. I don't have any big plans, probably do something small, maybe ordering in from somewhere, maybe bake something fun. Christmas was always a really big holiday for my family. So it's really weird to not be in Wisconsin, celebrating with them. I think I mentioned then last episode or one recently anyway, that my mom's family is very big. Christmas Eve was a mandatory holiday. Everybody had to be there. We would rent a hall once we got a little older cause nobody had room for all of us. We would rent a hall and everybody would get together and have Christmas Eve together. And then, in my smaller family, me and my parents would do Christmas day. We would have brunch and generally deliver meals on wheels and then have a lovely dinner. And it's going to be weird to not be home, doing all of those things this year. It's especially hard to think of the family, not getting together on the day since my grandma passed away this year. So it's really weird to think that that's not going to happen and we're not all going to get together, but it's absolutely the right thing. And I am from in my decision and I feel like it was clearly the right one to not try travel this year, the same for the family, not getting together. It's too much of a risk for everybody, especially as things are not doing well in Wisconsin. So I just hope everybody stays safe and has a wonderful holiday. So let's see. Other than that, you know, I'll probably do some baking. I think I'm going to be off the week between Christmas and new year. So I'm really excited to just having some downtime. I don't know that I'm going to do anything too much. Um, probably do some reading, I think mentioned this here before, but I'm a big reader. So I'll probably read some books over the break, do some knitting, do some baking, maybe do one last recipe that intimidates me before the end of the year to get through my new year's resolution of doing more things than intimidate me. And that's probably my plan for now. It sounds relaxing and kind of fun and cozy. It sounds cozy. So I think that's what is going to be happening in my world. We'll have one more episode before the end of the year. We usually do year-end review episode as our very last one. But do we want to look back on everything that happened in 2020 this year? I don't know that sound too fun. Sounds pretty dark. So I think this year, instead of doing the usual look back, we're going to do a look ahead. What are our wishes for this new Biden-Harris administration? What are we hoping we can see happen? I think that'll be really fun way to end the year. So I think that's what we're going to do. But before that we have today's episode and today's episode is a lot of fun. We get to talk to Lyric Thompson with the International Center for Research on Women to talk about feminist foreign policy. What is it? What does it mean? And what are we hoping we can see from the Biden administration with feminist foreign policy? And with that, I will take you to my interview with Lyric. I hope you enjoy it. Hi Lyric. Thank you so much for being here today.

Lyric: Thanks so much for having me.

Jennie: Before we get started. Do you want to take a quick second and introduce yourself, including your pronouns?

Lyric: Sure. I'm LyricThompson. I'm the Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy at the International Center for Research on Women and probably most germane to this conversation, I am a leader of a Coalition Advocating for a Feminist Foreign Policy in the United States and my pronouns are she/her/hers.

Jennie: I'm really excited today to have a conversation about feminist foreign policy one, because you've worked so hard on it and have been an amazing leader on this. But two, I think it's something that people are still learning about. So I think it's a really exciting time to talk about it. So you just want to talk a little bit first about what is a feminist foreign policy?

Lyric: Absolutely. Well, I don't think anybody's more excited about this conversation than me. So do feel free to pause me if I go on too far with my enthusiasm about the greatest thing since sliced bread here. So what is a feminist foreign policy? Well, I'd say that that's very much evolving. We know what it has been in other countries who have so boldly declared that women's rights are human rights and should be germane to all elements of foreign policy or in some countries, just some elements of foreign policy, which we'll talk about. And that happened first in 2014, when Sweden launched the world's first feminist foreign policy. And for them, that meant three things. One, that there would be more women's representation in their government. They did have a feminist government and they did have feminist domestic policies as well. It's important to point out and that's, I think, particularly important from a credibility perspective, which we'll get to too. They said that this means exactly what I said at the top-- women's rights are human rights. And so that the genre of women's rights would be something that they prioritize in their diplomacy and multilateral spaces and bilateral strategic dialogues, et cetera. And then finally that there would be more resources invested in achieving gender equality and defending women's human rights. So rights, resources, representation, that's the handy Swedish pneumonic device. And the rest, the world was kind of like, “well, that's Sweden.” And then nothing really happened for a long time. And the response to wouldn't it be a good idea if everyone had a feminist foreign policy was always “no, that's just Sweden's thing”. Well, in 2017, Canada dipped a toe in the water. It didn't quite go full feminist. They just said our international assistance is going to be feminist now. So whereas the Swedish approach is across all of their foreign policy, defense trade diplomacy, obviously development, this was just development. But Canada did some cool things that Sweden hadn't done, particularly with slightly more intersectional in their approach, calling out more of an emphasis on LGBTQ rights, pulling out more of an emphasis on intersecting areas, such as climate change. And so while they weren't ready to take that across the board, it was still additive in terms of the substance, they've done some really cool stuff on different approaches to funding. So parking official development assistance outside of government and letting feminist funds manage the money. Increasing, obviously as Sweden has led the world in increasing the number of development dollars that are being spent to achieve gender equality, and then Canada is also doing some interesting things with feminist evaluation practices. So added in lots of ways, but narrower in scope. And then there's been a flurry of activity in the last year or so where Luxembourg, France, Mexico, Spain, and others have announced feminist foreign policies that do different things.

Lyric: So what we've been thinking with about-- I think more than 70 organizations now-- is what would that look like for the United States? And what we have landed on is a definition that I will actually read you because it's important that we understand the various pieces that we're trying to emphasize here. So for us feminist foreign policy is the “policy of a state that defines its interactions with other states and movements in a manner that prioritizes gender equality and in enshrines the human rights of women and other marginalized groups, allocates significant resources to achieve that vision, and seeks, through its implementation, to disrupt racist, patriarchal, and male dominated power structures across all leavers of influence, such as a trade, defense, diplomacy. And that this is informed by the voices of feminist groups, activists, and movements at home and abroad.” So we're doing a few things with that definition. It's admittedly long, but there's a lot of importance. We wanted to say, it's not just about women. It's about disrupting patriarchy, about disrupting racist and colonial undertones and traditions in foreign policy, particularly for the United States as a global military superpower. It's about all of those leavers of foreign policy and the piece that it needs to be coherent across domestic and foreign and co-created and informed by feminist activists and movements. It isn't just state to state. It's about bringing those constituencies that have traditionally been left out of foreign policy.

Jennie: I love that there's so many parts to it that are all really important and support each other, right? You can't take parts out and have it be as strong as the whole.

Lyric: Exactly. It's not piecemealed, it's comprehensive, but that also makes it a very tall ask. So good luck to us.

Jennie: Why do we need a feminist foreign policy?

Lyric: Well, I think inherent in that definition and in the longer paper that we would be happy to share with listeners that are interested in reading it, this is an approach that's designed to correct for foreign policy. Haven't been done very differently than this vision in the past. And I think whether it's from Me Too movement to BLM, to climate crisis demonstrations on Fridays, we've arrived at a moment of reckoning on how all of these issues intersect and how power being only wielded among a small minority of people in wealthy nations like ours, hasn't arrived at a world that we want to live in, that is just and inclusive and sustainable. So this is an attempt to recast the traditional posture of foreign policy advancing national interest in a way that constitutes global goods as in the national interest. So for us, that's people, peace, planet, equality across all streams of demographic considerations. So again, not just gender equality, but also looking at race and ethnicity, disability, religion, all of these sorts of streams of identity in which power has been allocated or withheld, and also looking very intentionally at climate change and environmental integrity as a goal of our foreign policy, as well as peace and security.

Jennie: Yeah. And again, I think it goes back to that it being holistic because there's so much where you've seen bits trying to advance gender equality or trying to advance climate change, but there hasn't necessarily been a conversation about how they relate or how we need to advance them together. And I think this is a great opportunity to have that conversation.

Lyric: Absolutely; one can't ignore the context into which we're coming into this campaign, which is to say that the previous administration has, I think, campaigned on and governed actively against a number of these issues. Just fundamentally disagrees about what the priorities should be of our foreign policy from this perspective. But this vision is about so much more. It's not just fix what was broken. It's completely re-imagining the kinds of values and approaches that we would take. And I think that is why we've seen a number of groups that haven't traditionally worked in this space signing on, which has been one of the most important pieces of this work to me is being able to work with the trade people that we hadn't worked with before being able to work with the nuclear people, the immigration people, all sorts of groups, and just sort of more mainstream foreign policy groups that are also searching for a vision that is compelling, inclusive, equitable, and progressive in a way that so many different constituencies are hungering for it right now.

Jennie: So this is a podcast about sexual reproductive health and rights. So it would be really wrong if I didn't ask how does SRHR fit into all of this?

Lyric: So that's a core principle for us. I've lost track of how many consultations we've done in the last few years of pulling this together. We started with global consultations with feminists from around the world, including those in and outside of the governments that have feminist foreign policies. What is your country doing? How's it going? What would you keep? What would you lose? What would you add? As well as feminists on the receiving end of those policies, particularly living in the global South, as well as the sort of last chapter of this work was then working with the Washington foreign policy constituencies and hearing what they had to say about it. So time and again, things that came out of those consultations where your foreign policy isn't feminist, if it doesn't change anything, let's just [celebrate] International Women's Day and you show up at the UN and you say, “we now have a feminist foreign policy.” Great. Nothing changed. What needs to change is that in using the word feminist, you were signaling a level of ambition. That means that you're not going to shy away from issues that have been the most under attack and have an urgent need for champions, and chief among those are sexual and reproductive health and rights and justice. And so that was a core principle of not only advancing the SRHR agenda proactively in multilateral spaces, in bilateral relations, in the policies and personnel of our foreign policy apparatus, but also the principle of bodily autonomy was core to our definition as a precondition and a goal of a feminist foreign policy. That means everything from yes, absolutely, the next administration should revoke the dramatically expanded and harmful global gag rule on day one, and restore funding to UNFPA, and at a minimum correct implementation of the Helms amendment, but ideally work with Congress to get rid of it. Those are all specific policy recommendations that are part of the agenda, but it's so much more it's everything from having diplomats and a foreign policy apparatus that looks more like America, which is to say having more LGBTQ and gender nonconforming people administering it, that those constituencies are heard from in the development of our foreign policy decisions and our foreign assistance programs. And those constituencies are able to design and co-create on the basis of how they articulate their needs, what help they would like from the United States. And it also means really doing a whole review of the fact that we still don't have a meaningful accountability process for sexual violence of women in our military, for instance, and gender non-conforming people. I mean, this is something that urgently and has for a long time, been an open secret that that needs to be addressed. There haven’t been any internal facing efforts, even in the previous administration's national action plan on women, peace and security. There was zero appetite to look internally, even though women in the armed forces are more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than they are to die in combat. There's of course, the most recent experiences that we have seen with regard to our immigration policy and the exploitation and abuse of migrant women is incredible. I mean, pick a leaver. There are so many urgent issues to address in terms of fixing what's broken, but then a real, I think, blue sky opportunity to think about what would it look like for the United States to be ahead of the pack in championing these issues. And that's where the fun part comes in is being more forward-looking and looking for active opportunities for the United States to lead in these areas.

Jennie: I have to say that's one of the things that's so fun about it because we've spent the last four years playing a lot of defense and trying to put out all of the things that were on fire. So it was really nice to sit and think about, okay, if we got our wish list, what would we create to make a more just and equitable world? And I think this was a really great opportunity to do that.

Lyric: Absolutely. I mean, there's immediate opportunities-- actually 2020 was supposed to be the year the world observed the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and platform for action and the 1995 Beijing Women's Conference that was curated very carefully to be a champion's only space known as the Generation Equality Forum, which was supposed to be in 2020, as I mentioned, but was delayed by coronavirus. So that's actually an opportunity because it aligns with a moment for the United States to go to that stage. And there is, what's known as an action coalition on bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights. I think maybe justice, I don't know, I need to get my language right on that, but it would be amazing to have the United States join that action coalition with other champion nations and say, “here are the following commitments that we're willing to make in both our domestic and foreign policy to enshrine these rights and to lead.” That's something that I'm hoping for.

Jennie: Yeah. And I think that's a really great transition to the next thing I was thinking about is, okay, so we have a new administration coming in and this gives us a great opportunity. So what can this new administration do?

Lyric: Launch a feminist foreign policy at the Generation Equality Forum, obviously, but so many other things. So we have like everyone else in Washington, a transition memo that outlines a series of actions for day 100 days, year one. And in that cadence, we both embrace and reference what other movements are pushing for. So I'm sure you've had guests on from the blueprint project, their day one asset we're absolutely reinforcing is of course reversing the global gag rule. We also have all the pieces that I mentioned earlier about Helms, UNFPA, and others. So there's space for that on day one also space for rejoining the Paris agreement, which the incoming administration has indicated that they will do within the first hundred day window. We do see major opportunities for them to signal their support and leadership in this area. The first of which is the Commission on the Status of Women, which happens in March every year and the theme this year or next year is women's political leadership. And so I could imagine a U.S. delegation led by Madame Vice-President, that announces key components of what they intend to do on this. For us, it's building an architecture that is prepared to lead on this, a feminist policy council at the White House, every single implementing agency of our foreign policy apparatus of which there are several, the State Department has the Global Women's Issues ambassador who's a direct report to the secretary. Every agency should have that secretary direct report. That's responsible for this portfolio, as well as an inter-agency convening process that would design and roll out this feminist foreign policy. There are high budgetary expectations for this, which is to say at a minimum, joining other leading nations in the amount that they're spending on foreign assistance or recommending actually though that all of our foreign policy spending have a gender analysis, as well as 20% of it be to advance gender equality and equity along the issues we outlined in the paper. So anyway, I could go on for days about what the next administration could do at each of these agencies, but that gives you a good flavor of what we're hoping for with, I would imagine the real buildup being to the forum and ideally an announcement of a feminist foreign policy.

Jennie: Yeah. I find it really exciting to think CSW coming so early in the new administration, because it gives the administration an opportunity to one, really reengage at the UN where the U.S. has been a real detriment around so many feminist issues, but particularly around SRHR. And it gives them a real, I hope, opportunity to stand up and forcefully put forward their own agenda that is supportive of sexual reproductive health and rights.

Lyric: Amen.

Jennie: But if they miss that one, there's one right after.

Lyric: They've got lots of opportunities and we're happy. We're happy to work with them.

Jennie: So we always like to end focusing on what actions our listeners or people who are reading the transcripts of the podcast, what can they do? What actions can they take to support a feminist foreign policy?

Lyric: Several. So currently there is the paper which we will share in the notes that if they like the paper and the vision that we're calling for, for a feminist foreign policy, they can endorse that vision. And basically, our goal is to get as many organizations and individuals onboard, because this is such a new, as you said at the top, this is such a new concept and an evolving area. It's important to just socialize it, to talk about it more, to share the paper, to write about it, because most people haven't heard of feminist U.S. foreign policy. And then once we have heard of feminist foreign policy, there's the idea of making sure that it's our right spaced progressive and comprehensive vision of feminist foreign policy that is definitional because the risk I think is that it just becomes talking points that someone can, like I said, just go on International Women's Day and say, “we have a feminist foreign policy because there's more women now,” and that's not what we're talking about here. So I think being part of this collective effort to define a very progressive and comprehensive vision and intersectional vision of feminist foreign policy is increasingly an exceedingly important. We have also introduced legislation about this. If people are doing, if people do are interested in either calling their member of Congress or doing actual lobbying, when that actually used to take place in person or online. Now we are looking to reintroduce that next session. So probably given that it's December, not a good idea right now because we're pretty much done, but next session in the 117th Congress, we will definitely reintroduce the resolution calling for our vision of a feminist foreign policy, our definition, our principles that was introduced on the House side last September, and we're looking for a Senate companion next year. And then there will be smaller legislative pieces as well that people can get involved with if they want to join the coalition. And then finally, I sort of implied this, but I think any talking and writing and tweeting about feminist foreign policy is really helpful at this point, just because it is such a new and novel concept. So we have toolkits, we have shareables, we have all sorts of fun stuff to try to help people spread the word that feminist foreign policy is a logical and compelling ask for the next administration.

Jennie: And we will definitely make sure to include all those tool kits in our show notes so people can easily get to them and share them.

Lyric: Awesome. Thank you so much for that and for the work that you do to spread the good word.

Jennie: Ah, thanks, Lyric. Thank you so much for being here. It was fun to talk to you about feminist foreign policy.

Lyric: It's my favorite subject. Thanks so much.

Jennie: Thanks for listening everyone. And we'll see you on our next episode of RePROS Fight Back. For more information, including show notes from this episode and previous episodes, please visit our website at reprosfightback.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at RePROS Fight Back, or on Instagram at reprosfb. If you like our show, please help others find it by sharing it with your friends and subscribing, rating and reviewing us on iTunes. Thanks for listening.

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