At the end of October, several members of the Advisory Council of the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP), a German-based organization ‘dedicated to feminist human rights’ and advancing Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP), announced their departure from the organization. The joint statement from two Council members, Kavita Nandini Ramdas and Sanam Naraghi Anderlini explained the motivations for the departure as:

Our decision has been taken for a number of reasons, including efforts to silence us on Gaza and the mistreatment of members of the Advisory Council, which we believe fundamentally contradicts feminist values.

The statement also notes that following their resignation, the entire Advisory Council was disbanded. Thousands of ‘likes’ poured in on LinkedIn (where the statement was shared), with more than one user echoing the sentiments of the Council. I have never personally worked with the CFFP, and am not particularly apprised of the work of the organization, but as a gender and human rights professional, this disintegration of a major Feminist Foreign Policy organization brings forth a question that’s been brewing for some time: what really is “Feminist Foreign Policy”?

Today, FFP has become somewhat of a buzzword – it was a framework launched by Sweden in 2014 (and scrapped by the since-elected right-wing government) that has ‘no shared definition,’ but ‘should aspire to transforming the practice of foreign policy to the greater benefit of women and girls everywhere, impacting a country’s diplomacy, defense and security cooperation, aid, trade, climate security, and even immigration policies.’ Several countries have adopted and embraced FFP since 2014, including Canada, Germany, Mexico, and Colombia. But how effective is FFP at reaching gender equality? After all, feminism is an inherently collective movement, so with no shared definition, how can FFP ever be a framework for mobilization? In collective action, no shared definition largely means no functional definition, and the framework very easily fades into nothingness and ‘buzzwordification,’ which we see playing out today. Indeed, in most official documents on FFP, and even on documents from large and elite-funded FFP organizations, there are little allusions to anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism, and instead merely vague notions of uplifting women, and ‘transformation’ and ‘reform’ to reach these illusive aims. This watering down allows for its subscribing nations to be lauded as ‘progressive’ despite being a generally hollow framework with little accountability structures. 

I argue that a definitional shift is necessary: FFP appears to have gained traction amongst governments for its palatability. ‘Feminism,’ in a general sense (particularly under the capitalist definitions we often see on TV screens and corporate responsibility campaigns), is no longer taboo, and governments are lauded for using the term, regardless of how it’s defined – if it’s defined at all. Capitalist and colonial governments and their supporting organizations, even when settler colonial genocide is being enacted, are continuing to define themselves as feminists, without understanding the two as contradictory. In essence, an undefined FFP makes too much room for a favouring of imperialist self-described “feminist” frameworks, that are feminist in name only. The palatability of FFP appears to have been seen as a strategic objective by some organizers, who applaud governments like Canada and Germany for adopting the one-note term, arguing that the word itself is a sign of progress. However, for those interested in fundamental, meaningful shifts in unjust world orders, palatability, and simple rhetorical shifts should not be favoured over explicit calls for change. The category of women should not be used at the expense of the categories of class, race, and colonizer/colonized. Anti-capitalism is fundamentally revolutionary, whereas capitalist feminism is not, but Feminist Foreign Policy operates at a crossroad: it has the capacity to be defined as feminist in the truest sense – anti-imperialist feminism – but is being marred by the same institutions that watered down feminism and claimed it could be compatible with things like occupation and wage theft.

While large organizations and states have certainly enacted and been criticized for refusing to condemn genocide, there are Feminist Foreign Policy research groups, NGOs, and thinktanks that have criticized several FFP-identifying governments for their lack of clarity and made proposals for anti-colonial and capitalism-critical FFPs, but no government or multilateral forum seems to have mirrored, or even mentioned, these criticisms. Irina Militaru, for example, writes for The War Prevention Initiative, that ‘Feminist Foreign Policy is necessarily anti-capitalist,’ but little high-level responses can be seen. Digging through major thinktank publications on FFP, and even UN Women forums, there is no mention of imperialism, capitalism, or even structural change. There seems to be a high-level acceptance of an FFP that is reformist, rather than revolutionary, despite many of these institutions simultaneously affirming that sexism is indeed institutional.

But the survivalist underpinning of this shallowness should not be ignored. I have no doubt that many large institutions host researchers and organizers that are anti-imperialist and share the exact same concerns that I do, but funding realities prevent these views from being shared at an organizational level. I’ve seen countless tweets about Gaza from users with ‘personal views only, not that of my organization,’ in their bios. The FFP countries listed earlier, particularly those in the Global North – Germany, Canada, and previously Sweden – also happen to be some of the largest institutional donors to FFP research and programming. Ideally, this would create an ecosystem that allows experts and feminist researchers to shape FFP. But in reality, recent events suggest that this donor money is rather creating FFP research and public narrative that affirms the work of FFP countries like Canada and Germany – and criticizes it only with the aim of mild reform – as being feminist at any cost. In other words, the cart is being put before the horse. That being said, there is clearly increasing protest from affiliates (or former affiliates, like the Advisory Board of CFFP) of funded organizations, and we can only hope that organizational survivalism (or ‘strategic palatability,’ as I like to call it) is no longer prioritized over true liberatory feminist frameworks.

In essence, feminist foreign policy is much like the term ‘feminism’ itself – it remains too disputed for a shared definition, and, in its effort to find legitimacy in national governments, elite organizations co-opt the term andcreate a purposely gentle framework in its critiques of imperialism and capitalism, with little calls for anything particularly revolutionary or novel. FFP, on an official level, continues to centre the category of ‘women’ over (and erasing) the category of worker or colonized person, with only surface-level discourse on the tension between Western feminism and other forms of oppression. Beyond the work of sorely funded research groups, grassroots organizations, and individuals, there remains few structures for accountability or introspection. This allows for elite organizations and individuals to coopt the term, defining the framework as progressive enough for optics, but never disruptive or ‘too’ offensive to oppressive world orders.

In seeing FFP unfold into nothingness on official and elite-civil society levels, and the subsequent push-back from anti-imperialist feminists, I’m reminded of an anecdote told by Bolivian anti-imperialist organizer, Domitilia Barrios de Chungara, in her transcribed interview ‘Let Her Speak!’. In 1975, US feminist activist Betty Friedan and de Chungara met at the first UN-launched International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico City. The two, both invited for their work mobilizing women in their respective communities, quickly clashed. Following Barrios de Chungara’s presentation on worker exploitation in Bolivia’s mines, Friedan is said to have told Barrios de Chungara to ‘stop her ‘warlike activity,’ and that Domitilia’s work ‘only thought about politics, ignoring women’s problems.’  What Friedan was describing as ‘warlike activities’ and ‘politics’ are the anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism work of the Housewife Committee of Bolivia, an organization of women mine workers and wives of mine workers that sought to end the exploitative conditions of Bolivia’s mines and shift resource ownership to the workers. In the eyes of Friedan, feminism shouldn’t have been anti-capitalism or in any way disruptive to the status quo imperial order. This contention is an early display of fundamental tensions between Western capitalist feminisms, and anti-capitalist feminisms that focus on cross-gender collaboration again capitalism and view the category of class as a stronger force of oppression than gender. Decades later, looking at the strategic palatability of large FFP organizations and Western state bodies, whose use of the framework is apparently unable to address ongoing imperial exploits in Gaza, I’m reminded of this persisting clash. Is FFP a revolutionary framework for justice as several activist groups claim, or a new manifestation of the capitalist, choice-feminist framework of Friedan and her contemporaries versus the anti-imperialist movements of Global South organizers like Barrios de Chungara? In her discussion with Barrios de Chungara, Friedan’s obsession was on gaining elite acceptance, a tactic mirrored by FFP organizations who continue to subscribe to an FFP that is devoid of structural critique and instead focusses on FFP as a buzzword. The desire for elite acceptance may be a survival tactic, for funding reasons or even a half-hearted attempt at just keeping the movement alive and not scaring anyone off. However, feminism is an inherently liberatory framework, that must centre on the dismantling of existing oppressive elite-run institutions, and this liberation will never be condoned or led by elites.

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