USA – Will the US Pass a Feminist Foreign Policy Resolution – Analysis

By Lyric Thompson // 09 March 2023

First Sweden. Then Canada and Mexico. Now Germany, the Netherlands, and Liberia. What these countries, among others, have in common is that they have adopted a feminist approach to foreign policy. And now the United States has shown signs that it might soon join the club.

In establishing a feminist foreign policy, these countries’ governments have decided to prioritize leveraging their foreign policy toolbox to create a more just, equitable, sustainable, and peaceful world. There is hope now that the U.S. will do the same.

Aptly timed to International Women’s Day, Rep. Lois Frankel, Rep. Barbara Lee, and Rep.  Sydney Kamlager-Dove yesterday introduced a resolution, pushing for the United States to take up and implement a feminist approach to its own foreign policy. Among other key features, the bill would result in the U.S. government taking a feminist position on its foreign assistance, humanitarian response, trade, diplomacy, defense, immigration, and funding. Importantly, it includes accountability mechanisms to ensure that agencies are developing and measuring progress to determine what’s working and what’s not.

This legislation is, quite frankly, long overdue. Our neighbors to the north and the south have already demonstrated leadership on this issue. They have stepped up to assert that a feminist approach is the most effective way to make sure that foreign policy works properly, fosters more equitable economic growth, helps ensure populations that have been marginalized and ignored are finally prioritized, and combats discrimination that has, unfortunately, been baked into our policies for too long.

Canada has led the way on funding for women’s rights and feminist organizations, pioneering the use of innovative investment mechanisms to support grassroots women’s rights organizations in communities contending with everything from climate change to conflict-related sexual violence. Mexico was among the few countries pushing for women’s rights activists to lead the way in climate negotiations at the most recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

To date, the U.S. has taken small steps to make its foreign policy more feminist, but hasn’t fully committed. In our latest assessment, the Coalition for a Feminist Foreign Policy in the U.S. found that while the U.S. is making real progress in this approach, it still has significant room to grow. For example, the Biden administration has elevated gender by establishing a White House Gender Policy Council, led by a director who reports to the president, but its signature policy effort — the National Strategy for Gender Equality and Equity — fell short of embracing the F-word.

The administration’s 2023 budget request reserved a record $2.6 billion for gender equality in foreign assistance, but as a percentage of its overall aid, that still falls short of levels invested by leading feminist foreign policy donors, including Canada and the Netherlands. And the 2022 National Security Strategy fell woefully short of a feminist standard, largely ignoring gender save for a few references that largely cast women as victims and marginalized groups.

This flies in the face of increasing research documenting the importance of women’s participation in everything from economic processes to peace talks. And as today’s world contends with increasingly globalized challenges of conflict, global health threats, and climate chaos, there is simply too much at stake for the U.S. government to sit on the sidelines and conduct its foreign policy as if its business as usual.

Russia’s nukes are brandished by a strongman leader whose enormous ego is increasingly bruised; the country has abandoned the only remaining treaty on nuclear nonproliferation that had any hope of curtailing and keeping stockpiles secure. In Afghanistan, male leaders are taking the country back to the Stone Age, compounded by news this week that universities have reopened without women and girls.

And the downstream effects of conflict and climate are exacerbating economic, food, and environmental crises that disproportionately impact women and girls. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the Dobbs v. Jackson decision set women’s rights back decades by restricting a woman’s right to a safe abortion.

Rather than playing it safe, the U.S. needs to show leadership by prioritizing a feminist approach to how it conducts business abroad. The resolution would send the U.S. on course to do exactly that. Importantly, the resolution calls on the Biden administration to adopt a full-throated, feminist approach to all of its levers of foreign policy: from aid to trade, defense to diplomacy, and the sticky middle ground of immigration policy.

If implemented, the U.S. would reorient its foreign policy goals to reconstitute the shared global goods of equality, environmental integrity, and peace as being in the national interest.

Today, we call on members of the U.S. Congress to co-sign and help pass this fundamentally important bill. From the growing threat of nuclear conflict with Russia’s deadly and deplorable saber rattling to the recently burst balloon of U.S.-China diplomacy, the threats to global peace and security continue to put pressure on leaders around the world.

More than a dozen other countries have already stepped up to chart a new path forward to tackle these global challenges through solidarity and diplomacy, putting more women at the helm of our diplomatic engagements and representing a compelling new model for global cooperation that puts people, peace, and planet first.

It’s time for the U.S. to join in and adopt a feminist foreign policy — or risk falling further behind.

WUNRN

https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-the-us-must-pass-its-feminist-foreign-policy-resolution-105079