Feminist Foreign Policy: A Dangerous Proposition for the European Union?

For as long as the European Union has existed, its identity as a foreign policy actor has been questioned. This comes not from the denial that the EU does things abroad but from whether what it does or can do is comparable to the actions of a state. Challenging those who question its role as a security actor, the last few years have seen an increased militarization of the EU in the security domain. Militarization is supported by an ideology—militarism—that has war as its constant point of reference for security governance. Often, this is measured by the increase in resources assigned to the military and to military solutions to global challenges.

For feminists, this approach to the security dimension of foreign policy reinforces stereotypically masculinized traits for the security actor over its feminized security subjects. The EU’s security governance has therefore becomes worrying, with its shift towards increased military spending and ease with acquiring more military assets, given that many of the subjects of its new security governance are in the Global South. As increased power comes with military accumulation, in this context a hierarchy is established where the EU has power over subjects in the majority world.

The impact of this militarization cannot be underestimated. While the deployment of EU military assets in countries like Guinea Bissau, Mali, and Niger has helped to establish its security credibility, this has also caused significant suffering in these places, especially for women and girls. This militarization’s main result there has been to reinforce the status quo, or to increase harm if recent coups in Mali and Niger are to factor into how we understand the EU’s global security reach.

Enter Feminist Foreign Policy

Sweden was the first country to adopt a feminist foreign policy (FFP) in 2014. Organized around the “3Rs” (rights, representation, and resources), this sought to place gender equality at the heart of the country’s foreign policy, leveraging the mythology of its internal identity. Since then, many other countries have made a shift towards FFP. With the majority of these being in Europe, it is unsurprising that some have called for the EU to also adopt its own FFP.

This call stems from the fact that, over the last decade or so, the EU has sought to internalize feminist principles in its foreign policy structures and practices. For many, it has done this reasonably well. For example, the EU has demonstrated its commitment to global initiatives like the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly the gender equality one, and the Women, Peace, and Security agenda initiated with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000. In this regard, the EU commits itself to gender perspectives in its development and security policy. As a way to integrate this commitment within its work, the EU adopted its third Gender Action Plan in 2020. This followed on from its 2018 Strategic Approach to Women, Peace, and Security, which supports the implementation of this agenda in domestic and foreign policy. The European Parliament also passed a resolution on gender equality in the EU’s foreign and security policy in 2020.

As a result of the above, the EU emphasizes the promotion of women’s and girls’ participation in formal institutions. More recently, it has also considered intersectionality by acknowledging various identities that can be subject to discrimination and unequal treatments that it wishes to challenge. The majority of this work is covered by the European External Action Service and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Partnerships.

In addition to creating new frameworks to implement global commitments, the EU has initiated gender programs to demonstrate its global leadership on gender. One example is the Spotlight Initiative, in partnership with the UN, which, with initial funding of €500 million, is currently the largest investment to fight gender-based violence in the world. The initiative aims to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls, including femicide, domestic and family violence, female genital mutilation, and sexual and economic exploitation. It is a one-of-a-kind gender program targeting countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Pacific.

The EU’s tentative engagements with feminist principles means that to, an extent, it is attending to the marginalization and rights of women and girls within global politics. But, as many feminists have argued, feminism goes beyond gender equality. The notion of feminism as an entry point to inclusive policies that benefit women and girls only captures a narrow element of its potential. Activists and scholars advocating feminist inclusion often seek systemic transformation against patriarchy and sexism in every aspect of society. At the same time, gender, understood in its fullness, is not just about these issues. A transformative feminist approach is holistic in that it seeks to challenge a broader range of social inequalities so that men and women can live their lives fully.

Given that feminism aims for the transformation of the status quo, FFP should seek to transform the status quo of foreign policy, which would fundamentally interrogate how the world is ordered, so as to undermine hegemonic power hierarchies. The deployment of intersectionality in the EU’s approaches to gender and within many FFP articulations further reinforces this aim, in theory. Intersectionality, which comes from Black feminist thought calls attention to the ways in which different structures of power such gender, race, and sexual orientation intersect to magnify the marginalization of minoritized identities.

The Dangers of Competing Priorities

What the adoption of the language of feminism in the EU context has revealed is the inherent contestation within its foreign policy architecture. Which one wins when militarism and feminism are in competition? Invariably, the quest for mainstream credibility outweighs the liberatory demands of feminism for the EU. FFP that mainly focuses on separate programs for promoting women’s representation or women’s rights is able to give foreign policy actors a pass on other areas that continue to cause harm, including to women, from defense spending to extractive trade policies, since these undermine justice for those who are most marginalized in global politics.

Feminism deployed in the EU context, in this manner, provides an alibi for the status quo, wherein militarization can sit easily with the promotion of gender equality. The uncritical adoption of FFP as the foreign policy identity of the EU is therefore potentially dangerous as it can be used to reify prevailing hierarchies of power. While, in many respects, the EU’s gender programming as part of its foreign policy practice has been positive, militarization has elided any significant scrutiny. Yet, to be true to feminism, FFP must working towards liberation as its ultimate aim. And what that entails is likely to be messy and uncomfortable for FFP advocacy in Europe.

Toni Haastrup is professor and Chair in Global Politics in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester. She was Emma Goldman Fellow at the IWM in 2023.