Feminist approach to foreign policy - stakeholder engagement workshops: evidence report

Footnotes

1 Alongside Scotland are Sweden (2014), Canada (2015), Luxembourg (2018), France (2019), Mexico (2019), Spain (2021), Libya (2021), Germany (2021), Chile (2022), the Netherlands (2022), Colombia (2022), Liberia (2022) and Slovenia (2023).

2 With the election of a more right-wing government in 2022, Sweden has since jettisoned its FFP.

3 For feminist scholarship on this point see, for example: Columba Achilleos-Sarll, “Reconceptualising foreign policy as gendered, sexualised and racialised: Towards a postcolonial feminist foreign policy (analysis)”, Journal of International Women’s Studies, 19(1): 34–49, 2018; Yolande Bouka, “Make foreign policies as if black and brown lives mattered”, in Megan Mackenzie and Nicole Wegner (eds), Feminist Solutions for Ending War, 2022, Pluto; and Carol Cohn, “What does the ‘feminist’ in FFP mean, and how does that constrain FFP’s approach to the climate crisis?”, International Studies Review, 25(1), 2023.

4 Participants from the Global south were offered a contribution of $50 per hour for their time. All participants were offered help with childcare or other costs necessary to facilitate their participation, including travel costs for the in-person workshop.

5 The Scottish Government has a small assistance programme targeted at partner countries in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda, which includes a specific programme dedicated to working towards climate justice.

6 This is complicated, because policy coherence is an important element of feminism and FFPs (and a principle to which the Scottish Government has already committed). Nonetheless, in order to help develop a distinctive “foreign policy”, we were aiming for policies that are primarily focused on making a difference to women and girls overseas and to achieving global justice, peace and security, rather than making a difference to women and girls in Scotland and achieving peace and justice in Scotland.

7 This also seemed ethically appropriate, so as not to risk wasting the valuable time of the participants.

8 Where a participant made reference to a source of evidence or recommended a toolkit, we have sought to include a link to it. We have also added links to many of the claims made in the discussion, so that the reader can find more information and evidence on the point the participant was making.

9 These arguments are developed in a range of expert reports. See, for example, Roos Saalbrink, "The Care Contradiction – The IMF, Gender and Austerity", ActionAid International, 2022; "A Feminist Agenda for People and Planet: Principles and Recommendations for a Global Feminist Economic Justice Agenda", WEDO, WWG-FFD, FEMNET and PACJA, 2021 and Oxfam and NAWI 2023, Assault of Austerity.

10 Feminist economists in the Global North and Global South have advocated for a focus on the care economy for many years, arguing that investing in the care economy in sectors such as health and education is a key means to create decent jobs for women, given that women are overrepresented in these sectors. Many of their insights are collected in UN Women Reports, which provide concrete actions for a range of actors to take, including governments. The ideas are sometimes conceptualised as a new feminist and antiracist social contract. Care infrastructure tends to mean universal, publicly funded and publicly delivered services – see the various feminist Global South movements who are signatories to The Global Manifesto for Public Services. Many feminists also note that jobs in the care sector are relatively low-carbon and non-polluting.

11 Some suggested drawing on initiatives developed in Scotland, such as Police Scotland’s Don’t be that Guy campaign.

12 Participants shared useful research and guides on best practice in this area, for example Emilie Tant and Diana Jiménez Thomas Rodriguez, "How to partner with feminist movements for transformative change", policy brief, ODI, 2022.

13 This is evidenced in numerous reports, such as in Small Arms Survey's 2014 report 'Women and Guns'; also see Ray Acheson and Madeleine Rees, "A feminist approach for addressing excessive military spending," in Rethinking Unconstrained Military Spending UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, 2020.

14 Research finds that women and girls are most acutely affected by nuclear weapon development, testing and use. See According to the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, women in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had nearly double the risk of developing and dying from cancer due to ionising radiation exposure; girls are considerably more likely than boys to develop thyroid cancer from nuclear fallout; and pregnant women exposed to nuclear radiation face a greater likelihood of delivering children with physical malformations and stillbirths, leading to increased maternal mortality.

15 Some suggested the Scottish Government should promote recognition of the universality of the WPS Agenda – that it is relevant across all of the UK, not just overseas, a point finally recognised in the new UK Women, Peace and Security National Action Plan (WPS NAP), launched just after the final workshop, on 23 February 2023.

16 The GAPS UK tool on meaningful engagement of women was recommended.

17 Noting that the UN Secretary-General and the OECD have recommended that at least 15 per cent peace and security funding has gender equality as a primary objective.

18 WEDO supports women from the Global South to attend climate conferences; supports indigenous women leaders’ climate solutions; and enhances the analysis, communication, use of and learning from cross-sector data and information in relation to gender and the environment (the “Gender Climate Tracker”) to ensure effective policy-making and implementation.

19 African Feminist Taskforce and Women and Gender Constituency at the UNFCC, “Standing in our power: African women’s and girls’ demands for COP27”.

20 See, for example, Matthias Busse and Christian Spielmann, “Gender inequality and trade”, Review of International Economics, 14(3), 362–79, 2006.

21 This is set out in the Gender and Trade Coalition’s vision for a gender-just trade system. For more detail on the reforms required, see Oxfam International’s proposals for trade justice and Action Aid’s proposals for gender-just trade.

22 A new Alliance report, Measuring Scotland’s Global Impact in the National Performance Framework, suggests ways in which adding oil and gas and arms exports to the National Performance Framework could enable the Scottish Government to better measure Scotland’s “spill over” impacts on human rights and the environment.

23 Oxfam’s Behind the Barcode campaign was highlighted as example of good practice.

24 Noting the standards set in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

25 Participants suggested as examples of good practice the EASE project and WATERSPOUTT.

26 Good practice was noted regarding a hub in South Africa making an alternative to the Moderna Covid vaccine, training scientists and sharing the vaccine technology.