What is American Feminist Foreign Policy? A Brief Analysis of the Representation of Women in American Foreign Policy Legislation, 1973–2020

Abstract

As several countries (e.g., Sweden, Mexico, Canada) are claiming to practice a feminist foreign policy, interest groups in the United States are constructing their own templates for an American feminist foreign policy. However, this is not a new idea. The American government has a long and complicated history of claiming that advancing the status of women and gender equality are American foreign policy objectives.1,2,3 Before adopting this potentially problematic trend, we need to first analyze the history of how foreign women’s interests have been represented by the US government. In this article, I trace how members of the US Congress have represented the interests of foreign women in foreign policy legislation, based on a content analysis of bills introduced between 1973 and 2020. In my analysis of over four hundred bills, I describe five eras of women’s foreign policy and find that American foreign policy has consistently prioritized women’s roles in economic development. Other global women’s rights, such as reproductive health, freedom from violence, and political participation, seem to gain greater traction only when they serve domestic gender politics and/or strategic national interests. Thus, as American feminist foreign policy conversations unfold, scholars, activists, and policymakers need to explore how and why other human rights for women remain contentious in American domestic and foreign policy. I suggest that US support for UN global women’s rights policies (such as CEDAW), where foreign women have some authority over how their policy interests are represented, best reflects the principles of global feminism, which should guide claims of feminist foreign policy in any country.