Striped pants and Birkenstocks: work culture, gender, and clothing at Global Affairs Canada

Abstract

ABSTRACT The 2013 amalgamation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has facilitated far-reaching changes in how the merged department, Global Affairs Canada (GAC), organizes expertise and the day-to-day work of its professional officer personnel. This paper examines this institutional change by approaching GAC as a highly differentiated workplace and work force in which developing a common institutional mandate and culture remains a challenge. We center an issue with particular resonance for how GAC experts and officers see themselves in relation to each other, to the merged department, and to their work – namely, their work attire. Associated constructions of gender, professionalism, and institutional affiliation linked to and expressed through work clothing shape perceptions of difference and power in the amalgamated department. Examining these constructions and how they both persist and change amid institutional shifts contributes to building both feminist analyses of diplomacy and development as embodied practices, and a labor geography of the state, with work clothing as a key everyday materiality linking the sites and scales of the individual body to the broader spatial and social organization of the department, especially to stereotypes and ideals of gender, professionalism, and institutional affiliation.