Gendering Zoom Diplomacy: Women’s Participation in Digital Diplomacy

Abstract

Abstract In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent emergence of “Zoom diplomacy,” scholarship on digital diplomacy has shifted attention from the nexus between social media and foreign policy to exploring the use of digital technologies in diplomatic encounters. While these studies have generated important insights on the affordances and limitations of digital diplomacy, we know much less about the impact of digitalization on the gendered hierarchies and power dynamics that characterize diplomatic practices. In what ways does digitalization of diplomacy shape these hierarchical and gendered practices of diplomacy? In taking stock of recent empirical findings on digital diplomacy, the analysis reviews the varied effects of digitalization on women’s diplomatic agency. Focusing on peace diplomacy, it suggests that digitalization of diplomacy produces ambivalent agency where digitalization opens up some opportunities for disrupting gendered diplomatic practices, but within patriarchal gender structures. The analysis highlights the ways in which digital diplomatic agency and competence are shaped by gendered material and normative structures, suggesting that on the borders of what is conventionally regarded as diplomacy, digitalization may be reinforcing diplomacy as a masculine practice.