‘Safety First’: Gender and the Boundaries of Diplomatic Identity in Britain, 1945-1970

Abstract

ABSTRACT This analysis explores the shifting definitions of what constituted a diplomat in post-Second World War Britain. Post-war women’s liberation generated unique dilemmas for Foreign Office recruiters: whilst reluctant to employ women on equal terms with men, they nonetheless fell under pressure to demonstrate that Britain’s self-styled international reputation as a vanquisher of Nazi tyranny and oppression applied to women’s employment. Women were admitted to the Diplomatic Service in 1946 on the basis that arguments in favour of women diplomats complemented and even enhanced Foreign Office attempts to model itself as a bastion of equal opportunity, fairness, and, later, ‘meritocracy’. This analysis explores internal Foreign Office debates about the employment of women diplomats after the Second World War, but it also makes a related argument about the value of ‘organisation history’ and what a study of Foreign Office culture can reveal about the society in which is operated.