Last month, several women rose to the top ranks of international politics. Kamala Harris became the leading US Democratic presidential candidate, Ursula von der Leyen was elected to a second term as President of the European Commission, Kaja Kallas was appointed European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Rachel Reeves became Britain’s first female Chancellor.

And yet, while feminists were broadly pleased, they were not particularly enthusiastic. Every success counts, they say, especially if Harris becomes US president and assumes the most influential political office in the world. But there is little reason to believe that the arrival of some women in top positions will change the way international affairs are handled in a male-dominated world.

According to the United Nations (UN), at current rates of trajectory, it will take nearly a century and a half to achieve gender equality in the highest positions of power, and nearly four more decades to achieve gender parity in national legislative bodies. There are simply not enough women in top positions to make the concerted, collective push needed to implement a feminist foreign policy and bring about the radically different world order that feminist intellectuals desire.

“It is often said that we just need a woman at the top and everything will change, but we know that is not true,” says Miriam Mona Mukalazi, a fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute and a feminist foreign policy scholar. “They are still in the same system; they can only disrupt it a little; and it also depends on how far they are willing to go (to risk their careers for a better world).”

Scholars say women in government formation – from the queen to the prime minister – are expected to behave like men and show “strength”, a euphemism for their ability to condone bloody wars and defend national borders at all costs.

“Foreign and security policy are in some ways linked to men and masculinity, so female leaders had to justify whether they were warriors or not,” said Ann Towns, professor of political science at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg. Foreign policy on the phone. “It is an important feature that is more about conflict resolution through violence than about cooperation and peace.”

A feminist foreign policy, on the other hand, puts human security above state security and calls for a radical rethinking of the current system. It focuses on eliminating the causes of conflict, demilitarization, a multilateral approach and diplomatic interventions.

In discussions with Foreign policyMany scholars suggested that a gradual approach was the only way to move forward, and that while women’s representation in top positions was a necessary condition, it was only a start. They said the idea was to achieve gender parity in public life across the board and to drive policy change at home and abroad. Once the current power imbalance is sufficiently corrected, the practice of international relations can be fundamentally overhauled. Policymakers could even debate the drawbacks of the nation-state concept.

A decade ago, it seemed that some feminist ideas were gaining ground. Sweden was the first country to introduce a feminist foreign policy in 2014; Canada followed in 2017, France two years later, and then Mexico, Spain, Luxembourg, Germany and Chile. But all of these policies were still in the development phase and took into account the political realities of the time. They did not reflect the goals of feminist foreign policy as a whole.

According to experts, the frameworks adopted lacked vision and ambition, and their implementation was hampered by several factors. While making progress in patriarchal societies and power structures has always been a daunting task, experts say, a rising far-right ideology and political parties further hampered progress. For example, Sweden’s feminist foreign policy was reversed when a government backed by a far-right party came to power. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine further strengthened the state security argument, at the expense of pacifist movements that support the FFP’s ideas.

Sweden was the torchbearer. Towns said she had seen “increasing gender mainstreaming” across all ministries and a feminist approach to diplomacy and bilateral trade. “They had to start thinking about foreign trade – what does an FFP in trade look like?” she said. Sweden’s efforts also led to the adoption of a resolution in the UN Security Council that introduced sexual and gender-based violence as a ground for sanctions.

On the other hand, Sweden exported billions of dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia between 2015 and 2021, despite reports that it had terminated an agreement with Saudi Arabia because of human rights violations in the country, according to the non-governmental organization Svenska Freds.

According to a 2017 report by CONCORD, a group of 19 civil society organizations, Sweden continued to sell weapons to non-democratic countries, including to Saudi Arabia in 2016 and 2017 when it carried out air strikes against Yemen.

Towns said she believes the defense industry is too big a beast, even for the government. “It would be a challenge to big companies and their big profits, and at the same time to national security advocates,” she said. “I think they’ve considered starting with simpler things,” such as increasing female representation.

Canada has become one of the largest international donors to women’s well-being and reproductive health, placing a focus on gender equality projects between 2021 and 2022. But failures were also revealed: Canada did not disclose how it selected the recipients of its donations and whether this improved outcomes for women and girls.

In 2023, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Development Minister Svenja Schulze unveiled Germany’s version of a feminist foreign policy to great applause. They included FFP guidelines for everything from conflict resolution to aid delivery to green policies, and channeled 85 percent of aid to projects with a gender equality dimension.

“We couldn’t use the ‘F-word,’” Mukalazi said of feminism until the FFP guidelines were introduced. “The conservatives wanted us to call it gender-positive politics, and even the liberals were against the German translation feminist foreign policy.”

But the German FFP was also viewed critically. Firstly, it was adopted by two ministries and not by the entire government. Secondly, the Chancellor’s position on the program was unclear, which raised doubts among experts “as to whether the agenda would be implemented at the highest level.”

Barbara Mittelhammer, a Berlin-based analyst at FFP, said Germany’s feminist foreign policy has been successful to a limited extent. “More gender programs and instruments and more representation are very valuable,” she said, “but it is not a feminist foreign policy in the sense of any other political priority.”

Feminist scholars argue that German foreign policy has gone in the opposite direction due to the Russian threat looming over the European continent. Turning point In his speech (“Turning Point”) he called for unprecedented investments in the German defense sector and considered reintroducing conscription.

While there is no debate among feminist scholars about whether arms sales to authoritarian states should be stopped, the discussion becomes more difficult when it comes to territorial integrity or the threat to a smaller state from a larger, authoritarian state.

“It is difficult to understand what a feminist foreign policy contributes to understanding the greatest security threat we face,” said Kristi Raik, deputy director of the Estonian think tank International Centre for Defence and Security. Kallas, the new EU foreign policy chief and former Estonian prime minister, is expected to push feminist policies in her new post while her country faces an imminent threat from Russia.

In von der Leyen’s campaign policy guidelines, the word “equality” appears seven times, while “defense” is mentioned in 30 different places. Von der Leyen’s focus will also be on defense in the wake of Russian aggression. The guidelines state that total EU defense spending increased by 20 percent from 1999 to 2021; over the same period, Russia’s defense spending increased by almost 300 percent and China’s by almost 600 percent. Von der Leyen wrote that European spending was “too uncoordinated, uneven and not European enough.”

If Harris were to become president, the challenges would be even greater. Women and girls not only in the United States but around the world would look to her to improve their lives in more substantive ways than through handouts from aid organizations. Although experts believe she would not drastically change U.S. policy, Harris has struck a feminist tone on several issues, including the war between Israel and Hamas and women’s rights in Iran. Israel has “the right to defend itself, and it matters how it does that,” she said. “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”

Harris spoke out in favor of women’s rights in Iran during mass protests in 2022. But Iranian exiles and women’s rights activists expect more. They say she should use her influence to encourage the UN to criminalize gender apartheid.

Taghi Rahmani, the husband of imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, said his wife and other activists have called for gender discrimination to be criminalized internationally. “Ms. Harris can contribute to this issue,” he wrote to Foreign policy via encrypted communication from Paris.

“I believe that in the broader context of (US) foreign policy and the makeup of Congress, it is unlikely that a Harris administration would attach the feminist label to its foreign policy,” wrote Fonteini Papagioti, deputy director for policy and advocacy at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). “However, I believe that a Harris administration represents an opportunity to advance gender equality globally and domestically – particularly with regard to sexual and reproductive health and rights.”

Activists say a feminist foreign policy only makes sense if feminist principles are first applied to domestic policy at home. Harris’ first challenge will therefore be to protect women’s rights regarding their own bodies in the United States.