Gender Culture in Diplomacy A Feminist P

Culture Mandala, Vol. 13, No. 1, December 2018, pp20--44.
Copyright © 2018 Cindy Minarova-Banjac
Gender Culture in Diplomacy: A Feminist Perspective1

By Cindy Minarova-Banjac2
Abstract
Diplomacy, despite 21st century innovations, remains a gendered institution in which the
woman diplomat – let alone ambassador – is still a rarity. Globally, women constituted only
15 percent of ambassadors and nine percent of negotiators. There continues to be a pervasive
masculine culture that constrains female diplomats and ignores matters of gender and sex in
the conduct of diplomacy. This article argues that inclusion alone has not gone far enough to
challenge the elite patriarchal structures that function to devalue femininity and limit the
ability of women to function as diplomats. In arguing the case, this article considers three
aspects of the problem: 1) the invisibility and exclusion of women in diplomacy; 2) other
gendered aspects of the diplomatic institution, namely, the body/clothing of the diplomat,
masculine negotiation styles, and an instrumentalist inclusion rhetoric; and 3) potential ways
of developing a post-patriarchal diplomacy. This article finds that such a post-patriarchal
development holds the prospect of enriching diplomatic practice and creating an environment
in which the woman diplomat is no longer a rarity.
Keywords:
Gender in Diplomacy; Feminism; Women Diplomats; Post-Patriarchal Diplomacy; Masculine

Negotiation Styles; Patriarchy
Introduction
Diplomacy can be described as an adaptive institution. It is both public yet secretive; statist,
although the institution has long existed before the nation-state; and it has a code of honour,
but no moral code as the practice has nothing to do with righteousness or goodness.3 When
described by scholars and practitioners, it is expressed in neutral terms: as a means of
representation, communication, and negotiation between two political entities. Its relevance is
shown in the history of international statecraft when diplomacy became the main tool that
1
The views in The Culture Mandala are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, position
or policies of the Centre for East-West Cultural and Economic Studies. Bearing in mind the controversial
debates now occurring in International Relations and East-West studies, the editors publish diverse, critical and
dissenting views so long as these meet ethical and academic criteria.
2
Cindy Minarova-Banjac completed her Master of International Relations at Bond University. She works as a
Senior Research Assistant within the Faculty of Society and Design, and as a Research and Communications
Coordinator for the Centre for East-West Cultural and Economic Studies at Bond University.
3
James Connolly, “Diplomacy,” Worker’s Republic (November 6, 1915). Retrieved from
https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1915/11/diplmacy.htm.
20
Culture Mandala, Vol. 13, No. 1, December 2018, pp20--44. Copyright © 2018 Cindy Minarova-Banjac
governments used to resolve conflicts and carry out strategic dialogues and negotiations.
However, what is less adaptive and flexible about diplomacy is its masculine nature and how,
as an institution and practice, it is one of the many aspects of international relations that has
remained male-centric. In most of the literature on diplomacy,4 the practice is portrayed as an
art that is carried out by an exclusive group of males with trained intuitions.5 Historically,
beyond the extraordinary females who were able to transcend their social constraints and
make an impact on foreign policy, very few women were recognised as practising diplomats.
Instead, women in diplomatic circles were restricted to the status of wives who acted as
soundboards for their diplomat husbands, and if they behaved correctly by acting as good
hostesses, there was a chance that they could help their government achieve its international
objectives.6
In today’s political environment, despite significant increases in women’s
participation in politics, 77 percent of the world’s parliamentary seats are occupied by men;
82 percent of senior ministers are men as are 90 percent of heads of state. 7 Although women
make up 25-45 percent of ambassadors in states like Finland (44 percent); Sweden (40
percent); and the United States (30 percent),8 globally 85 percent of ambassadors are men,
and between 1990 and 2017, women constituted only nine percent of negotiators. 9 These
statistics reveal a grim picture. Indeed, the issue of women’s gross under-representation and
exclusion has only recently received scholarly attention with the publication of two edited
volumes by Aggestam and Towns10 and Cassidy,11 who focus on women in the United
Nations and female diplomats in different country case studies. While a few policy reports
4
See, for example, the traditional scholars such as Geoffrey Berridge and his book, Diplomacy. Theory and
Practice, 4th ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010). In Kerr and Wiseman’s 2013 book Diplomacy in a Globalizing
World: Theories and Practices, women are mentioned once in the index under the title ‘Women and Peace and
Security, resolution 1325’. In the edited book The Diplomatic Corps an Institution of International Society,
edited by Paul Sharp and Geoffrey Wiseman, women are mentioned only three times in the entire 277-page
book.
5
Karin Aggestam and Ann Towns, “The gender turn in diplomacy: a new research agenda,” International
Feminist Journal of Politics (2018): 3. DOI: 10.1080/14616742.2018.1483206.
6
Cynthia Enloe, Making Feminist Sense of International Politics: Bananas, Beaches & Bases (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1989), 93.
7
UN Women 2017, “Facts and figures: Leadership and political participation,” retrieved from
http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-political-participation/facts-and-figures.
8
Anna Towns and Birgitta Niklasson, “Gender, International Status, and Ambassador Appointments,” Foreign
Policy Analysis 13 (2017): 521-522.
9
Karin Aggestam and Isak Svensson, “Where Are the Women in Peace Mediation?” in Gendering Diplomacy
and International Negotiation, eds. Karin Aggestam and Ann E. Towns (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018),
149.
10
Karin Aggestam and Ann E. Towns, Gendering Diplomacy and International Negotiation (Cham: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2018).
11
Jennifer A. Cassidy ed., Gender and Diplomacy (Oxon: Routledge, 2017).
21
have focused on women’s participation in peace diplomacy, academia has, for the most part,
failed to highlight how gender frames and constrains diplomatic theory and practice.
To help fill these gaps in the literature and promote the analysis of diplomacy from a
feminist perspective, this article aims to examine how and why diplomacy continues to be an
overwhelmingly homosocial activity that centralises male knowledge and experience and
privileges male diplomats over female ones. Although there have been some efforts to
include women in diplomacy, particularly by inter-governmental and non-governmental
organisations that push for greater inclusion for women in peace and security, there continues
to be a pervasive masculine culture that constrains female diplomats and ignores matters of
gender and sex in the conduct of diplomacy. Thus, it will be argued that inclusion alone has
not gone far enough to challenge the elite patriarchal structures that function to devalue
femininity and limit the ability of women to function as diplomats. Indeed, the masculine
norms of diplomacy have set up particular power structures and organisational arrangements
that are resistant to alternative, especially feminist, perspectives and viewpoints.12 What is
needed is the creation of two kinds of diplomatic subjectivities, methods, and knowledges for
the development of a female voice in diplomacy that does not have to subsume, eradicate, or
compete with the current masculine system. Such an alternative perspective can operate
beyond diplomacy’s elitist patriarchal foundations and provide new ideas and approaches to
international politics.
To begin this discussion, the first section will examine the invisibility and exclusion
of women in diplomacy and address some of the key problems facing the modern-day female
diplomat. The second section addresses other gendered aspects of the diplomatic institution,
including the body/clothing of the diplomat, masculine negotiation styles, and the false claim
that diplomacy can lead to gender equality, which keeps diplomacy’s approaches and
assumptions male-centric. The final section considers potential ways of developing a post-
patriarchal diplomacy through different theorists and perspectives and shows that simply
adding the feminine or the word ‘feminist’ to diplomacy is not an adequate solution to
address diplomacy’s masculine nature. Diplomacy’s gender culture requires more profound
change if it is to overcome its patriarchal bias.
12
Nela Taskovska, “Why Diplomacy Needs to be More Feminist: The Creation of a New Approach to Political
Mediation,” (Order No. 1537063, Roosevelt University, 2013), 2. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy.bond.edu.au/docview/1356784333?accountid=26503.
22
The Historical and Modern-Day Woman Diplomat
Exclusion and Silencing of Women

Western patriarchal discourse is based on a historical masculine system that excludes women.
It is a system that devalues the feminine and keeps men in positions of power by silencing
women’s voices and refusing them entry into male privileged domains.13 Culturally, women
have been constructed as man’s negative (his ‘Other’) and forced to adopt a male-defined
feminine identity, where women must be submissive, obedient, and receptive to succeed in
the patriarchal economy. This is because patriarchal discourse only allows for one universal
subject, and that subject is male, while woman is understood to be the complement of man:
“his inverse, his scraps, his need, his other”.14 Western philosophy’s complete valuing of the
masculine, of rationality over irrationality, of dominance over submission, of activity over
passivity, of mind over body, and the assignment of women to the latter categories, has set up
a gender ideology that keeps women, as a class, in a state of subordination and
vulnerability.15 Since the classical Greek period, this unequal status was institutionalised by
the division of the public and private spheres, which divided society into a public space
where free men would collectively develop the political economy and receive paid
employment, versus the private sphere which was occupied by women and slaves and
associated with the physical aspects of life like reproduction, shelter, and food.16
In international relations theory, too, the sovereign state may be viewed as a
masculinist construct which is based on this public/private divide. This is not simply because
the practice of international politics has been primarily populated by privileged, white,
Western men, but – as political theorist John Hoffman points out –it is seen in the sovereign
state being posited against a devalued and negative state of anarchy, which is characterised
as a space that is external to the state and chaotic.17 Thus, the sovereign state system can be
interpreted along political realist lines as a mechanism for survival in an inhospitable state of
nature.18 In this state, the neutral (male) human is insecure, suspicious, and reacts in an
13
Michelle Boulous Walker, Philosophy and the Maternal Body: Reading Silence (London: Routledge, 1998),
9.
14
Luce Irigaray, I Love to You: Sketch of A Possible Felicity in History (Oxon: Routledge, 1996), 63.
15
Murphy Megan, “‘I do what I want, fuck yeah!’: moving beyond ‘a woman’s choice’” in Freedom Fallacy:
The Limits of Liberal Feminism, eds. Miranda Kiraly and Meagan Tyler (Victoria: Connor Court Publishing Pty
Ltd, 2015), 21.
16
Anna Snaith, Virginia Woolf: Public and Private Negotiations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 8-9.
17
John Hoffman, Gender and Sovereignty: Feminism, the State and International Relations (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 118.
18
See Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan. 1651. Edwin Curley (Ed.) (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1994).
23
aggressive and self-interested manner to secure his freedom. It is, as Christine Di Stephano
explains, a world and type of creature completely devoid of maternity and feminine
qualities.19 In the writings of Italian diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli, Fortuna, originally
referring to an unpredictable Roman goddess, is another feminine force that men must
struggle against to maintain autonomy and independence. Machiavelli writes that “Fortune is
a woman, and it is necessary if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force”.20 Here,
women are depicted as a threat to male masculinity and like anarchy, are seen as dangerous
and inferior to the orderly world of man. Through such writings, one can see that a clear
division of power has been set up. The association of the feminine with chaos,
unpredictability, and danger has been used as a justification for keeping women out of
politics and out of the public domain.
In that sense, it is not surprising that women have been made invisible in diplomatic
history. The public/private divide meant that women who sought to become active in the
political sphere were often met with increased suspicion about their motives and intentions.
The cultural image that was often raised in early modern Europe to support these claims was
that women, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, were inherently deceptive and vengeful and
were out to manipulate men into committing offences.21 Some women were even described as
lacking ‘maternal instinct’ and seeking illegitimate influence through their aristocratic
linkages.22 Despite these ideas about the dangers of letting women ‘loose’ into the world of
men, McCarthy and Southern point out that women were present in diplomatic dealings. 23
But, their presence was, and in some cases continues to be, monitored and guaranteed (or
denied) because of their relations with men. For example, during the twelfth century Alice of
Antioch, who rose to power after the death of her husband Bohemond II and engaged in
secret diplomacy to seize control of territories in her principality, was described as
‘capricious’, ‘overly ambitious’, and ‘a bad mother’ by the Kings of Jerusalem and the
chronicler William of Tyre.24 Her downfall came when Antioch was presented with a male of
19
Christine Di Stephano, “Masculinity as Ideology in Political Theory: Hobbesian Man Considered,” Women’s
Studies International Forum 6, no. 6 (1983): 637.
20
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses (New York: Random House, 1940), 94. Cited in J. Anne
Tickner, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security (New York:
Colombia University Press, 1992), 39.
21
See, for example, the literary descriptions of women in Brian Donnelly’s Reading Dante Gabriel Rossetti:
The Painter as Poet (New York: Routledge, 2015).
22
Helen McCarthy and James Southern, “Women, gender, and diplomacy: A historical survey,” in Gender and
Diplomacy, ed. Jennifer A. Cassidy (Oxon: Routledge, 2017), 21.
23
McCarthy and Southern, “Women, gender, and diplomacy: A historical survey”, 15.
24
Adriana Almedia, “Alice of Antioch and the rebellion against Full of Anjou,” Medievalista [Em linha], no. 5
(2008). Retrieved from http://www2.fcsh.unl.pt/iem/medievalista/.
24
high birth, crusader Raymond of Poitiers, who married Alice’s opponent, her daughter
Constance, when she was only eight years old.25 Thus, although Alice was skilled and
influential in crusade diplomacy, she was quickly cast as unfeminine and unsuitable for
political rule by influential male voices, and was eventually dethroned and humiliated by a
man of high status who took her daughter away.
In the nineteenth century, Dorothea Lieven and Germaine de Staël also gained status
by marrying ambassadors, which granted them access to high-level political networks that
they used to host salons and act as facilitators of communication for their husbands.26
According to Cynthia Enloe, the ambassador’s wife learns that “if she can plan the progress
from drinks to formal dinner to coffee [then] a maximum amount of business can be
conducted ‘with a minimum of artificiality’”.27 The private space of the home or
ambassador’s residence was considered a place where trust and confidence could be fostered
if the wife correctly performed her domestic duties and created a conducive atmosphere for
male encounters. In that case, the diplomat’s wife acted as an object for and between men in
what Luce Irigaray calls a ‘hom(m)osexual’28 order, where women’s bodies are valued and
made to exclusively serve male needs, desires, and exchanges. The feminine was always
constrained in these dealings. When the wives of diplomats transgressed social norms and
started to play a more active role in securing their country’s interests, they were shamed. For
instance, a Russian envoy is noted to have described de Staël, the wife of a Swedish
ambassador who was a central figure in Parisian salons and spoke out against Napoleon, as a
monstrous figure who looked “like a woman,” but spoke and wrote “like a man”. 29 The
resistance to women’s political participation shows that although some women used their
positions as queens, wives, and mistresses to gain political influence, often through high
ranking men, their limited inclusion did not change the status of inferiority for women in
general.30
25
Natasha R. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Woodbridge: The
Boydell Press, 2007), 84.
26
McCarthy and Southern, “Women, gender, and diplomacy: A historical survey”, 22.
27
Enloe, Making Feminist Sense of International Politics: Bananas, Beaches & Bases, 99.
28
Here Irigaray is referring to the fraternal order where ‘hom(m)osexual’ is both an order of the same (homo)
and an order of men (homme). See Emily Zakin, “Psychoanalytic Feminism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, 2011. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-psychoanalysis/.
29
Glenda Sluga, “Women, Diplomacy and International Politics before and after the Congress of Vienna” in
Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500, eds. Glenda Sluga and Carolyn James (London:
Routledge, 2015), 130.
30
Marilyn French, The War Against Women (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), 44.
25
Under-representation and Gender Bias

Even today, the modern-day female diplomat faces challenges because of her sex and gender.
Just as women in the 1980s were more likely to be placed in consular posts rather than
policy-oriented posts and less likely to be chosen by superiors to attend international
conferences,31 Town and Niklasson’s 2017 study on 7,000 ambassador appointments from
the fifty highest GDP ranked countries of 2014,32 shows that women are still less likely to
occupy high-status positions compared to their male counterparts.33 Although popular
opinion in Foreign Service institutions is that women face few limitations because they are
women, Town and Niklasson revealed that only fifteen percent of ambassadors were women,
which made the high ambassador role another international post dominated by men. 34 In
addition to the unequal division of family responsibilities that may hold some female
diplomats back from being promoted to a prestigious ambassador position, the reason why
women are less likely to be appointed as ambassadors is because positions of high status have
mainly been occupied by men who are presumed to have innate masculine traits such as
assertiveness and the ability to reason rather than feminine traits.35 According to researchers
Buscatto and Fusulier, the naturalist argument that men are inherently masculine and women
inherently feminine remains deeply entrenched in Western societies despite gender being
deconstructed by sociologists and anthropologists for decades now.36 This means that if
women behave in what is deemed to be a feminine way, such as by displaying emotional
expression or caring for others, this behaviour acts to confirm that women are inherently
feminine. It also means that they are less likely to be employed in positions that prefer
individuals considered masculine. In that case, biased recruitment patterns, as well as overt
discrimination, allows foreign affairs ministries to retain a gendered culture.37
In some countries, the marriage ban, which forced women to leave their diplomatic
careers if they got married, was not lifted until the late 1960s and early 1970s, 38 but in
practice, the combination of life as a married woman diplomat, especially with children and
31
Enloe, Making Feminist Sense of International Politics: Bananas, Beaches & Bases, 118-119.
32
The states that appointed the most ambassadors.
33
Towns and Niklasson, “Gender, International Status, and Ambassador Appointments”, 521.
34
Ibid., 538.
35
Ibid., 526.
36
Marie Buscatto and Bernard Fusulier, “Presentation. “Masculinities” Challenged in Light of “Feminine”
Occupations,” Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques, 44-2 (2013): 1a-19a. Retrieved from
https://journals.openedition.org/rsa/1026.
37
Towns and Niklasson, “Gender, International Status, and Ambassador Appointments”, 526.
38
Karin Aggestam and Ann E. Towns, “Conclusion: The Quest for Gender Justice in Diplomacy,” in Gendering
Diplomacy and International Negotiation, eds. Karin Aggestam and Ann E. Towns (Cham: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2018), 281.
26
the responsibility to do the bulk of the housework, continues to be problematic for women.
Flowers explains that given the demands of diplomacy, which include moving frequently
with little say in postings, there are no guarantees that spouses will find employment
abroad.39 Because men are usually the ones with more stable careers, the social expectations
that women should be mothers and spouses first, and the way that Foreign Service jobs fail to
accommodate women’s roles and responsibilities in the home, limits women’s opportunities
in international politics. Furthermore, even when women are appointed as career diplomats,
there is often a cluster of women in what is seen as the ‘feminine’ business of peace-making,
while men are put into the ‘hard’ fields of military and economic diplomacy. Although it is
important that women are recognised as agents in peace-making and peace-keeping,40 and are
not simply seen as passive victims, America’s ‘Women, Peace, and Security’ Act 41 that seeks
to include women in diplomacy and development as part of the US’s “smart power arsenal”42
is problematic. It draws on the essentialist assumption that women are inherently peaceful
and for this reason are key to successful peace negotiations. The representation of women
here is based on a simplistic image of woman as caregiver and mother, with a peaceful and
innately passive disposition. The rhetoric in the ‘women, peace, and security’ literature also
persistently couples “women and children” as a single entity, which reinforces cultural
stereotypes of women as helpless and dependent beings.43 Through these projections of an
idealised femininity, women are presumed to be effective peace-oriented diplomats who can
be instrumental to the state. But once again, the discourse turns women into tools to be used
by men and their institutions. This characterisation also disregards the reality that women
commit political violence and that men, especially young men, men from lower classes, and
39
Petrice R. Flowers, “Women in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” in Gendering Diplomacy and
International Negotiation, eds. Karin Aggestam and Ann E. Towns (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 140.
40
According to Fryer, the emphasis on women’s involvement in peacekeeping is somewhat ironic when
considering that peacekeeping operations have often been found to perpetuate patriarchal cultures and social
hierarchies by, for example, exploiting women and girls (and men and boys) in local communities. She states,
“By focusing on women’s involvement in peace and security rather than their involvement in wider social
decision-making structures—including government and defence—confuses the issues of women’s equality and
the need for peace in society. Emphasising the importance of the role of women in building a peaceful society
overlooks the possibility that, in certain societies, peace may not be so peaceful for women.” (p. 7). See Denna
Fryer, “Women, peace and security: the agenda is not women and it won’t achieve peace or security,”
Australian Defence Force, 2016. Retrieved from
http://www.defence.gov.au/adc/adfj/Documents/issue_200/Fryer_Nov_2016.pdf.
41
Officially signed into law by American President Trump on October 6, 2017.
42
Melanne Verveer, “Why Women Are a Foreign Policy Issue,” Foreign Policy, April 23, 2012. Retrieved from
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/04/23/why-women-are-a-foreign-policy-issue/.
43
Rita Santos, Silvia Roque and Tatiana Moura, “Missed Connections: Representations of Gender, (Armed)
Violence and Security in Resolution 1325,” Revista Critica de Ciencias Sociais 5, no. 5 (2013). Retrieved from
https://journals.openedition.org/rccsar/462.
27
men of colour, can be victims of violence and do not always use violence to assert their
power and masculinity.44
Finally, women’s participation in male-dominated political environments like
diplomacy can be harmful when women are exposed to verbal or physical assault. Although
there are currently no recorded statistics or available data on the number of female diplomats
who have been assaulted, recent news reports reveal that a former American envoy was
harassed by a senior lawmaker while she was serving on the White House Security Council. 45
In 2017, it was also reported that British diplomat Rebecca Dykes was found dead after being
“strangled and sexually assaulted”46 during her overseas mission in Lebanon, and women in
the Australian parliament often report on bullying and intimidation by their male
colleagues.47 But rather than seeking to change the culture around violence and harassment
against women by providing stronger legal and social frameworks within political and
diplomatic institutions, complaints of this nature are often not taken seriously and countries
like Japan have even suggested that there is no incentive to assign female diplomats to posts
in dangerous regions.48 It stands then that women’s voices will continue to be silenced while
certain posts remain reserved for men as female diplomats are seen as extra burdens on
government missions.
Other Gendered Aspects of Diplomatic Institutions
The Body/Clothing of the Diplomat

A distinctive feature of the gendered culture of foreign affairs ministries is the imagined body
of the diplomat, which is assumed to belong to men.49
44
See, for example, Sara Meger, “ “No Man is Allowed to be Vulnerable”: Fitting the Rape of Men in Armed
Conflict into the Feminist Wartime Sexual Violence Paradigm,” in Engaging Men in Building Gender Equality,
eds. M. Flood and R. Howson (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015).
45
Nike Ching, “Top US Women Diplomats Speak Out on Sexual Harassment,” VOA News, December 1, 2017.
Retrieved from https://www.voanews.com/a/top-us-women-diplomats-speak-harassment/4145802.html.
46
News Corp Australia Network, “British diplomat Rebecca Dykes murdered in Beirut after being sexually
assaulted and strangled,” The Sun, December 18, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.news.com.au/world/british-
diplomat-rebecca-dykes-murdered-in-beirut-after-being-sexually-assaulted-and-strangled/news-
story/62dfd797705aeb40dcea019a8ab8ecf9?from=rss-basic.
47
Van Badham, “Julia Banks and Jacinda Arden show it’s women’s fate to be diminished and objectified,” The
Guardian, November 28, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/28/julia-
banks-and-jacinda-ardern-show-its-womens-fate-to-be-diminished-and-objectified.
48
Flowers, “Women in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs”, 137.
49
This is evident when one searches for news stories and articles on diplomats. In almost all cases, the neutral
word ‘diplomat’ will be used to refer to a male diplomat, while female diplomats always need ‘woman’ or
‘female’ before their job title.
28
Although bodies are real, weighty, corporeal masses, they are also socially
constructed. For example, when attending various conferences on cultural geography,
Longhurst noted that the word ‘body’ was being used, but other words and functions related
to the body, such as sweat, urine, hair, mucus, etc. were rarely mentioned.50 Thus, the body
was constructed as being tidy and incorporeal since speakers at the conference discussed
bodies that did not leak or seep and were mess and matter-free.51 This is a common
conception in ‘professional’ and ‘respectable’ places, where there are often unwritten rules
about how the body should be conducted and presented in such a way that represses
sexuality, emotional expressions, and bodily functions52 things usually associated with the
feminine. In Western discourse, the construction of the masculine sex privileges a unified
self, the visible,53 and the erection (which is the self-becoming in physical form).54 This logic
is not applicable to the female sex, who is either excluded from the cultural imaginary or
reduced (in Sartre’s choice terms) to ‘holes’ and ‘slime’.55 McDowell explains that the female
sex is described in this way because her existence is centred on a complex network of
relations and experiences like menstruation and lactation which challenge bodily
boundaries.56 Women’s bodies, according to the binary gender logic of separation/relation,
solidity/fluidity, rationality/irrationality, can be understood as insecure by discharging blood
and milk into the masculine world where the (male) self is supposed to be contained and in
control of his bodily boundaries. Although these representations and ideas have little to do
with the actual way male and female bodies function in everyday settings, they are powerful
in conveying messages about which bodies are seen as acceptable in public spaces and which
are not.57
In diplomatic institutions, diplomats are expected to act in a way that is professional,
rational, and in control of their bodies. The diplomat’s body is often constructed through
clothing since dark-coloured business suits function to seal the body and convey messages of
50
Robyn Longhurst, bodies: exploring fluid boundaries (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 4.
51
Ibid.
52
Ibid., 92.
53
Which Luce Irigaray refers to as ‘ocularcentrism’ or the belief that vision and sight is the best and most
reliable way of making sense of the world.
54
Luce Irigary, “Veiled Lips,” (trans. Sara Speidel) in Feminist Interpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche, eds.
Kelly A. Oliver and Marilyn Pearsall (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University, 1989), 111.
55
French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre uses the words ‘holes’ and ‘slime’ to describe female sexual
organs as suffering from a lack. For example, according to Sartre, the vagina is a hole that wants to be filled: it
is a lack because it lacks in flesh. For more, see Christine Daigle, “Where Influence Fails: Embodiment in
Beauvoir and Sartre,” in Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence, eds. Christine Daigle and Jacob Golomb
(Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2009), 38.
56
Linda McDowell, “Space, place and gender relations: part II identity, difference, feminist geometries and
geographies,” Progress in Human Geography 17, no. 3 (1993): 306.
57
Longhurst, bodies: exploring fluid boundaries, 2.
29
power and status.58 In his observational study on the bodies of Norwegian diplomats,
Neumann describes the expectations for “bodily comportment” as “relaxedly authoritative”
and that:
. . . hair should be short and slightly pomaded, the shirt should be white and rich in cotton, to
be worn with a tie or a bow-tie, the shoes should be black and shining, the suit should be dark,
59
with optional pin-stripes.
Neumann calls this ‘traditional civil servant masculinity’, which also plays out a performative
function in informal social events that are centred around masculine bourgeois dinner parties
and outings.60 The body in this performative role is assumed to be male, heterosexual, and
able-bodied. The firm, straight lines of the suited diplomat also give the body the appearance
that it is resistant to outside penetration and matter, such as sweat, urine or tears, seeping its
way into the outside world. This construction fits into what Neumann calls “two
hierarchically ordered hero scripts” in diplomacy, which include that of the mediator, who
often does something exemplary in exceptional circumstances, and that of the bureaucrat,
who does so in everyday circumstances.61 Controlled and secure bodies are considered to be
important in carrying out these heroic roles, despite the inherent fragility of bodies and their
complex biological systems. Moreover, there is also the well-recognised psychological
vulnerability associated with the ‘uncontrollable’ body. Indeed, the ejaculation of semen is
feared in workplaces and in ‘honey trapping’ operations, where an attractive person uses their
sex appeal to coerce targets and gain secretive information. Thus, masculine norms in the
diplomatic institution monitor and discipline bodily breaches by setting standards on dress
and behaviour. Over time and with repetition, these norms naturalise masculinity and contrast
women’s corporeality, which is defined by seepage and uncontrollability in cultural
representations.62
58
See Ben Barry and Nathaniel Weiner, “Suited for Success? Suits, Status, and Hybrid Masculinity,” Men and
Masculinities (2017): 1-26. DOI: 10.1177/1097184X17696193; and Tim Edwards, “The suit: a symbol of
masculinity?”, University of Leicester, May 8, 2014. Retrieved from https://www2.le.ac.uk/projects/social-
worlds/all-articles/sociology/suit. According to Edwards, the suit also emphasises male sexuality by widening
the shoulders, narrowing the hips, and linking the Adam’s apple to the genitals through the tie.
59
Neumann, “The Body of the Diplomat”, 682.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid., 684.
62
Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1994), 203.
Of course, there are challenges to excluding women’s seeping bodies in professional environments. For
instance, in 2018 New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden was the first female politician to bring her baby
and breastfeed during a UN General Assembly meeting. Although she mainly received support, breastfeeding
female politicians are often criticised as ‘unprofessional’ and ‘inappropriate’ as there is still a distinction
30
This does not mean that women’s bodies are inherently uncontrollable or more fluid
than men’s, but that discourses of seepage construct such a reality. It often means that female
diplomats are forced to adopt masculine standards of dress to be taken seriously in diplomatic
institutions. For instance, former US Ambassador to Mongolia Jennifer Zimdahl Galt stated
that some of her success could be attributed to dressing professionally, which for her meant
“wearing a suit at all times”.63 Likewise, in professional business guides available online and
in leadership courses, women are encouraged to wear traditional masculine attire like
pantsuits “to make a good lasting impression”.64 Both of these examples reveal that there is a
split in identity occurring where the subject needs to choose whether she is either a woman or
a professional/diplomat. For some female diplomats, gender is a given status, so they present
themselves as women who happen to be diplomats versus those that present themselves as
diplomats who happen to be women. There are costs for choosing either identity. For
example, by privileging her gender, the woman-first-diplomat-second dis-privileges her
professional status and the professional status of other women as her actions may be seen as a
representation of her entire sex and often explained through gender stereotypes.65 That is,
when women are perceived as ‘too emotional’ or ‘erratic’ in their behaviour, this reproduces
and confirms male stereotypes of femininity as overly sensitive and highly emotional. On the
other hand, the diplomat-first-woman-second identity insists that she is the same as other men
and will accept operating on terms that impersonate masculine actions and behaviour that are
not her own.66 In this regard, there is an inherent tension between the status of presenting
oneself as a ‘woman’, especially through male-defined stereotypes and expectations, and as a
‘diplomat’, which is assumed to belong to a suited, masculine body. The issue is not which
strategy is better for women to succeed. Both gender roles are used to survive and exist in
masculine workplaces.
The Diplomat’s Behaviour through Masculine Negotiation Styles

The gendered culture of power in diplomatic institutions that prioritise masculine
personalities and characteristics over feminine ones means that official diplomatic negotiators
between the male, professional, public space and the female, private space where bodily functions can be carried
out.
63
Ching, “Top US Women Diplomats Speak Out on Sexual Harassment,” VOA News.
64
Myrna Hoover, “Dressing to Impress: The Secrets of Proper Attire,” The Career Centre, The Florida State
University (2013). Retrieved from
https://career.fsu.edu/sites/g/files/imported/storage/original/application/f419a5c727af1077ae5a4766776fd361.pd
f.
65
Neumann, “The Body of the Diplomat”, 687-688.
66
Ibid.
31
will more likely be male rather than female.67 Negotiations usually involve parties that
represent different sides of a conflict, and the most qualified negotiators are often high-level
political and military men.68 As one American ambassador noted in the 1980s, what this
means is that Foreign Service representatives tend to be “male, pale and Yale”69 or the ideal
American: 5’10, 160 pounds, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant man in perfect physical and
mental shape.70 As a result of this cultural construction, women remain significantly under-
represented in negotiations. For instance, it is estimated that globally women make up only 2-
3 percent of chief mediators.71 Paffenholz notes that common resistance tactics to keep
women excluded from male negotiation spaces ranges from questioning the female
negotiator’s independence and emotional stability to harassment and threats of violence.72
The logic that keeps diplomatic negotiation male-centric is that feminine traits like passivity
and agreeableness are believed to lead to poor negotiation performance even though, in
reality, various traits that are considered feminine, such as empathy, are important for
negotiation successes.73
Overemphasising and devaluing stereotypically feminine behaviours in negotiation
forms part of the warrior narrative of diplomacy, which sees the entire purpose of negotiation
as victory or defeat.74 Such ‘win-lose’ approaches that focus on taking value and not creating
value are common in Western countries that follow the old laws of masculinity where the
ideal man is supposed to be dominant, self-controlled, and rational. In his discussions on
diplomats, political realist Hans Morgenthau suggests that “political men”75 must use a
combination of persuasion, compromise, and threats to secure their country’s foreign policy
goals. Diplomatic theorist Harold Nicholson also maps out two ideal diplomatic types. The
first is the hyper-competitive, self-interested type that seeks to win a zero-sum game by using
threats and manipulation. The second type takes an assertive, self-controlled approach that
67
Abigail E. Ruane, “‘Real Men’ and Diplomats: Intercultural Diplomatic Negotiation and Masculinities in
China and the United States,” International Studies Perspectives 7 (2006): 348.
68
Thania Paffenholz, “Women in Peace Negotiations,” in Gendering Diplomacy and International Negotiation,
eds. Karin Aggestam and Ann E. Towns (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 175.
69
Shawn Dorman, “The Reality of Foreign Service Spousal Employment,” Foreign Service Journal 79, no. 6
(2004): 36.
70
Ruane, “‘Real Men’ and Diplomats: Intercultural Diplomatic Negotiation and Masculinities in China and the
United States”, 348.
71
Aggestam and Svensson, “Where Are the Women in Peace Mediation?”, 149.
72
Paffenholz, “Women in Peace Negotiations”, 175.
73
Elizabeth Layne Paddock and L.J. Kray, “The role of gender in negotiation,” Research Collection Lee Kong
China School of Business (2011), 14. Retrieved from
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4175&context=lkcsb_research.
74
Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 25-27.
75
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 7th edition (Boston:
McGraw Hill, 2006), 537.
32
tries to create value and maximise benefits by sharing information and finding out the other
side’s interests and needs.76 In both cases, the diplomatic types ascribe to traditional
masculine models where the effective negotiator is a dominant and rational male subject.
Although women were historically excluded from conducting official negotiations, a
feminine negotiation type does exist in the West. Nicholson describes this as “boudoir
diplomacy”, which is the informal network that wives and mistresses often used to lubricate
male relationships.77 Similar to the vulnerability, noted above, of the ‘uncontrollable’ male
body, women in boudoir diplomacy would use their private and informal relationships to flirt,
seduce, and bribe persons of interest to advance their husband’s cause. To distance
themselves from this image, when women started occupying senior positions in foreign
affairs ministries, they began adopting masculine norms and practices to succeed. For
instance, successful women in diplomacy and politics who adopted masculine behaviour are
described as “iron ladies” or “men in skirts” (e.g., Britain’s Margaret Thatcher; the
Norwegian Conservative leader Erna Solberg, also called ‘Iron Erna’; and Wu Yi, who
negotiated China’s inclusion into the World Trade Organization). These women are often
stereotyped and objectified as not being ‘real’ women or they are mythologised as ‘witches’
or ‘hags’.78 At times, female negotiators will try to be like men to be taken seriously or they
will focus on negotiating ‘soft issues’ and obtain legitimacy from adopting a maternal role. 79
In some cases, regardless of which option they choose, female negotiators are simply ignored
in practice. According to Aharoni, who investigated the role of Israeli women in the failed
Oslo process, although many women felt personally empowered by sitting at the negotiating
table with powerful men and getting their voices heard, their incorporation was never
publicly acknowledged.80 Thus, as Ellerby states, “a seat at the table is not enough”81 to
overturn the hegemonic masculine culture of diplomatic negotiators which devalues and
excludes women.
76
Nicolson, Diplomacy, 25-27.
77
Nicolson, Diplomacy, 31-32.
78
Note that when Margaret Thatcher died, her critics sang the song “Ding dong, the witch is dead”. ‘Witch’ and
‘hag’ are words that originally meant ‘female demon’ or ugly-looking old women and historically millions of
women were massacred for being accused of witchcraft. It is not accidental that these particular words are used
to characterise female politicians and diplomats who dare enter and participate in traditional male spaces. For
more on patriarchal language, see Mary Daly, Gyn-ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1978).
79
V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan, Global Gender Issues (Boulder: West View Press, 1999), 105.
80
Sarai B. Aharoni, “Diplomacy as Crisis: An Institutional Analysis of Gender and the Failure to Negotiate
Peace in Israel,” in Gendering Diplomacy and International Negotiation, eds. Karin Aggestam and Ann E.
Towns (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 202.
81
Kara Ellerby, “A Seat at the Table is Not Enough: Understanding Women’s Substantive Representation in
Peace Processes,” Peacebuilding 4, issue 2 (2016): 136.
33
Inclusion Rhetoric as a Neoliberal Fantasy: Inclusion does not equal Empowerment and
Empowerment does not equal Change82
While there is significant debate around women’s inclusion and representation in patriarchal
political institutions like diplomacy, many scholars and activists agree that changing the
masculine nature of state structures is possible. As a result, since the 1970s, organisations,
including the United Nations, have been advocating for the recognition of women as
important political and social actors in development efforts and peace negotiations.
According to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), which
specifically looked at the absence of women in diplomacy, the exclusion of women is an
‘inefficiency’ problem as women’s participation in foreign policy decisions can lead to
greater economic growth.83 On UNITAR’s website, it is stated that selected women can take
a two-day negotiating course for US$1000 to enhance their negotiating skills, assume
leadership positions, and apply this newly acquired knowledge in their everyday lives. 84 The
main United Nations body even issued numerous declarations that outlined how combining
community activities such as sports to diplomacy can “promote a culture of peace, social, and
gender equality”.85 Other Western organisations and companies, including the World Bank,
NIKE, USAID, and individual state governments have also approached the issue of gender
inequality by claiming that girls and women, particularly from the Global South, have the
ability to ‘empower’ themselves and their communities through sports diplomacy. 86 For
example, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that government-sponsored
sports diplomacy missions “can help nurture the next generation of girl and women
athletes.”87 This is because “sports can make you stronger, tougher, more confident, [and]
82
Here the phrase ‘empowerment does not equal change’ is meant to acknowledge that empowerment rhetoric
and inclusion of women does not always transform the overriding patriarchal ideology that keeps women in
state of subordination.
83
UNITAR, “UNITAR aims to promote the advancement of women in the United Nations system through an
advanced- level, skills-building workshop,” 2018. Retrieved from http://www.unitar.org/unitar-aims-promote-
advancement-women-untied-nations-system-through-advanced-level-skills-building-workshop.
84
UNITAR, “Workshop on Negotiation Skills and Techniques,” 2016. Retrieved from
https://www.unitar.org/event/full-catalog/workshop-negotiation-skills-and-techniques.
85
United Nations General Assembly, “58/5. Sport as a means to promote education, health, development and
peace,” November 17, 2003. Retrieved from
https://www.un.org/sport2005/resources/un_resolutions/engl_58_5.pdf.
86
See Lyndsay Hayhurst, “Corporatising Sport, Gender and Development: Postcolonial Feminisms,
Transnational Private Governance and Global Corporate Social Engagement,” Third World Quarterly 32, issue
3 (2011): 531-549.
87
U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Clinton Empowers Women and Girls through Sports,” 2012. Retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z1hXlZGfTw.
34
more resilient”,88 which supposedly can empower women and lead to greater gender equality
in the long-term. Therefore, it is not only women who can use sports and diplomacy to
improve their economic and social security, but governments themselves can use sports
diplomacy to convey positive messages about women’s rights and participation in society.
While this may seem like a noble way of giving women skills that can create change
(as claimed by various organisations and states), as a women’s ‘empowerment’ narrative it
obscures unequal power relations. The goal of states using any type of diplomacy is to get
others to do or want the outcomes that the instigating state desires. 89 A country that uses
sports to empower women is not aiming to change the status of women in territories beyond
its borders; rather, it is concerned with promoting its national interests. Gender diplomacy
would thus provide a more ‘benevolent’ image for a country that is better known for its
coercive and interventionist reputation in foreign policy, as exemplified by the United States
when its name was associated with greed for oil, torture, illegal surveillance and extrajudicial
killings, as found for example, in controversial drone strikes.90 Thus, the ‘soft’ or ‘smart’
focus on women’s rights and sports has served American national security interests. When
the United States acts like a corporation to build its national brand, it does so to ‘sell’ or
legitimise its foreign policy abroad.
Furthermore, some researchers have argued that the diplomacy and women’s
empowerment narrative is often used to justify hegemonic neoliberal development discourses
that rely upon and reinforce gender inequality to sustain global capital accumulation.91 In
other words, the instrumentalised use of women and girls in these programs is not so much
concerned with changing women’s long-term status as underclass citizens as it is about
ensuring returns on investment by focusing on how these programmes are structured and
88
Jane Morse, “ESPN Joins State Department to Empower Girls and Women through Sports,” United States of
America Embassy IIP Digital, 2012. Retrieved from
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2012/06/201206217844.html.
89
See Joseph Nye, “Public Diplomacy and Soft Power,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science 616, issue 1 (2008): 94-109.
90
Mary G. McDonald, “Imagining neoliberal feminisms? Thinking critically about the US diplomacy campaign,
‘Empowering Women and Girls Through Sports’,” Sport in Society 18, no. 8, (2015): 913. DOI:
10.1080/17430437.2014.997580. For drone strike debates, see Gordon, Rebecca “How the US Military Came to
Embrace Extrajudicial Killings”, The Nation, 18 July 2016. Retrieved from
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-the-us-military-came-to-embrace-extrajudicial-killings/.
91
Michelle Dyer, “Neoliberalism and the international gender-development agenda: Escaping lyrical
metaphorical seduction in the Solomon Islands,” in Proceedings of the Australian Sociological Society
Conference, 116-122. Retrieved from https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/42957/.
35
monitored to ensure economic gains.92 The Nike Foundation’s Girl Hub programmes in
Nigeria and Rwanda is one example of this. It claims to give women safe spaces and
development opportunities. But as Boyd reveals, these women and girls are “protected due to
[their] merit as future human capital—not because of an altruistic endeavor to emancipate
girls and women”.93 In the system of patriarchal capitalism, the bodies of women and girls
are marked by corporations and state organisations as ‘potentials’ that can be transformed
from passive subjects to bodies that can be of service to the state and market.94 Koffman and
Gill note that development and diplomacy programmes portray young women as ‘already
entrepreneurial’ because they have had to be entrepreneurial to survive in poverty.95 Women
and girls in these situations simply lack the confidence to create change and so, the logic
goes, by stepping in and justifiably intervening in these communities, companies and states
can respond to a demand for investment in human capital. Gender equality here is used and
re-instrumentalised for economic growth and state influence.
Oftentimes, the diplomacy and gender equality narrative appeals to popular
representations of women as nurturing and hard-working individuals who can lift their
families and communities out of poverty and inspire a future generation of girls to feel
empowered (and eventually become economically viable investments).96 Such
characterisations not only reinforce gender stereotypes of woman as the ‘self-sacrificing good
mother’, but also assume that with guidance and training from wealthy Western organisations
and states, women and girls from the Global South will gain the necessary skills in diplomacy
and economics to escape from poverty and oppressive cultural practices. These programmes
appeal to the ideals of liberal individualism by “championing the benefits of ‘choice’ and the
possibility that freedom is within reach, or occasionally, that it already exists should women
choose to claim it”.97 This ignores the substantial drivers of poverty, including structural
adjustment, labour exploitation, and debt, as well as the racial and gendered systems of power
92
Kathryn Moeller, “ “The Girl Effect”: U.S. Transnational Corporate Investment in Girls’ Education,” In
Globalization & Education: Integration and Contestation Across Cultures, eds. Nelly P. Stromquist and Karen
Monkman (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).
93
Ginger Ging-Dwan Boyd, “The Girl Effect: A Neoliberal Instrumentalization of Gender Equality,”
Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development 15, issue 1 (2016): 155.
94
Ibid., 149.
95
Ofra Koffman and Rosalind Gill, “‘the revolution will be lead by a 12-year-old girl’: girl power and global
biopolitics,” Feminist Review 105, (2013): 83-102. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24571900.
96
Andrea Cornwall, Jasmine Gideon, and Kaplan Wilson, “Introduction: Reclaiming Feminism, Gender and
Neoliberalism,” IDS Bulletin 39, issue 6 (2008): 8. Retrieved from
http://bulletin.ids.ac.uk/idsbo/article/view/710.
97
Miranda Kiraly and Meagan Tyler eds., “Introduction,” in Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism
(Victoria: Connor Court Publishing Pty Ltd, 2015), xi.
36
and privilege that contribute to women’s oppression and subordination. The outcome is that
through diplomacy and development programmes, women’s liberation is reduced to
individual feelings of empowerment, all the while perpetuating neoliberal policies and
interventionist strategies that promote free markets, privatisation, and labour market
deregulations as solutions for poor and marginalised communities.
Adding ‘Feminism’ to ‘Diplomacy’
The role of the diplomat in the ‘business of peace’ is to act as a representative of a political
entity and to speak, negotiate, and secure this political entity’s interests. To understand how
women fit into this role, scholars and practitioners should avoid debating about whether
women or men are the better diplomats98 and focus on how the presence of woman or the
‘feminine’99 disrupts the power structures and dynamics that keep diplomacy male-centric.
As Irigaray claims, feminist analysis is not simply concerned with destroying a few
prejudices, but with upsetting the whole set of dominant values. Such an approach seeks to
question the very foundation of the political, cultural, and social orders prescribed by the
patriarchal system.100 In diplomacy, it is a call for examining the operation of cultural
constructions and the silences that keep women in their symbolic place as commodities to be
exchanged among men.101
It is true that women have a place in diplomacy, historically as wives and now
increasingly as diplomats. However, as this article has argued, the elite patriarchal structures
that devalue femininity have limited the ability of women to occupy higher status positions in
the institution. Statistics alone reveal how constrained women are as diplomats and this not
only comes down to overt discrimination, biased recruitment patterns, and strong male
homosocial networks, but the masculine norms that create particular organisational
arrangements that resist women’s bodies and perspectives. The three gendered aspects of
diplomatic institutions examined here, including the body/clothing of the diplomat, masculine
negotiation styles, and false inclusion rhetoric, reveal that women still have to choose
between being a woman-first-diplomat-second or a diplomat-first-woman-second since the
98
See Joyce Hackel, “Madeleine Albright: ‘Many of the best diplomats are women’,” PRI, January 25, 2018.
Retrieved from https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-01-25/madeleine-albright-many-best-diplomats-are-women.
99
‘Feminine’ here refers to a feminine subjectivity that is different from a masculine subjectivity and not the
binary construction of femininity in male-defined gender stereotypes.
100
Luce Irigaray, “Women's Exile,” (trans. Couze Venn) Ideology & Consciousness 1 (1977): 68.
101
Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gilligan C. Gill (New York: Cornell University, 1985),
75.
37
categories of ‘woman’ and ‘diplomat’ are still conceptually separate. The diplomat was never
supposed to be a woman, and so when women enter into the institution, they must mimic the
male diplomat and adopt his suited, masculine body, or they are not taken seriously and
remain unheard and silenced. Negotiation practices also devalue feminine traits as approaches
like win-lose and win-win in Western contexts ascribe to masculine models where the
diplomat is imagined to be a strong, dominant, and rational male subject. A seat at the
negotiation table is not enough to overturn these cultural ideals as a woman’s choice again
remains constrained: she must either act as the social lubricant for men or she must speak ‘as
a man’ to be taken seriously. However, even if she renounces her sex and begins to speak and
act like a man, her presence as a woman means that more often than not she will be ignored.
Whatever the case, the more choices she has as a female diplomat or as a woman who is
encouraged to adopt diplomatic skills to succeed in life does not necessarily mean greater
freedom. This is because individual choice and individual case-studies of women succeeding
in diplomacy does little to address the issues of power, context, and cultures that operate on
the basis of gross inequity.
For some scholars like Taskovska, there is a need to promote new models of human
behaviour that necessarily embody feminine values such as dependence, empathy, and
sensitivity in the practice of statecraft. She states that diplomatic behaviour should be based
on the rational reasoning of politicians who take part in professional dialogue in order to
achieve the best, humane results for international society. Henceforth, a feminist diplomacy
based on principles of feminist ethics would:
. . . be based on a collectively unified decision-making process, on numerous collaborative

meetings between state representatives, on a collective voting procedure when it comes to the
adoption of foreign policy and finally, on a redesigned agenda that expands the meaning of
national interest to include issues of gender and race…[allowing] diplomats to avoid political
prejudice, to disregard initiatives for personal profiteering and self interest and to focus on
102
creating a more politically just institutional structure.
While Taskovska’s ideas are admirable in that she suggests specific ways in which the field
of diplomacy can be transformed in such a way that interrogates current gendered structures,
the cultural milieu remains so fixed that the masculine construction of diplomacy is rarely
noticed by students and scholars. Being a good diplomat remains impossible for the
‘liberated’ woman; even if every man changed his behaviour and clothing, the virtues of a
102
Taskovska, “Why Diplomacy Needs to be More Feminist: The Creation of a New Approach to Political
Mediation”, 70.
38
diplomat remain masculine. Just like the businessman who tries to add a ‘human’ face to his
capitalist enterprise, the capitalist environment necessitates that at the end of the day the aim
of his business is to make the most profit rather than to protect workers or the environment.
Conclusion
If, as Grosz explains, “femininity cannot be simply added to existing discursive frameworks
for there is no space for such an addition,”103 perhaps then the task should be to construct two
kinds of diplomatic subjectivities, methods, discourses, and knowledges, which allows for the
development of the feminine in diplomacy that does not have to compete with or be
hierarchically ordered within the current masculine system. For it is not a project that seeks to
eradicate the difference between the sexes or reduce all to the (patriarchal) economy of the
‘Same’, which valorises the one masculine diplomatic subject and allows man to see himself
reflected everywhere.104 Rather, such a revision involves adding gender into the theoretical
framework. It requires experts in the field to include this perspective in their writings, to have
chapters and books on women and their experiences in diplomacy and not just as bypassing
mentions, and it requires practitioners to look around the negotiation table and realise that the
voices that they hear most likely belong to only one type of human being. Only once this
reality is understood and acknowledged can women diplomats and writers begin to construct
a diplomatic language and discourse by and for women. Women need to encourage each
other to think, speak, and write in such a way where the feminine subject, beyond masculine
frameworks and dichotomous gender ideologies, can be realised.
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Culture Mandala, Vol. 13, No. 1, December 2018, pp20--44.

Copyright © 2018 Cindy Minarova-Banjac

Gender Culture in Diplomacy: A Feminist Perspective1

Gender in Diplomacy; Feminism; Women Diplomats; Post-Patriarchal Diplomacy; Masculine

The Historical and Modern-Day Woman Diplomat

Exclusion and Silencing of Women

Under-representation and Gender Bias

Other Gendered Aspects of Diplomatic Institutions

The Body/Clothing of the Diplomat

The Diplomat’s Behaviour through Masculine Negotiation Styles

Adding ‘Feminism’ to ‘Diplomacy’

. . . be based on a collectively unified decision-making process, on numerous collaborative

Boyd, Ginger Ging-Dwan. “The Girl Effect: A Neoliberal Instrumentalization of Gender

Buscatto, Marie & Fusulier, Bernard. “Presentation. “Masculinities” Challenged in Light of

Connolly, James. “Diplomacy,” Worker’s Republic (November 6, 1915). Retrieved from

Di Stephano, Christine. “Masculinity as Ideology in Political Theory: Hobbesian Man

Dyer, Michelle. “Neoliberalism and the international gender-development agenda: Escaping

Flowers, Petrice R. “Women in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” In Gendering

Hayhurst, Lyndsay. “Corporatising Sport, Gender and Development: Postcolonial Feminisms,

McDonald, Mary G. “Imagining neoliberal feminisms? Thinking critically about the US

Nicolson, Harold. Diplomacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963.

Paffenholz, Thania. “Women in Peace Negotiations.” In Gendering Diplomacy and

Tickner, J. Anne. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving

UNITAR. “Workshop on Negotiation Skills and Techniques,” 2016. Retrieved from

Zakin, Emily. “Psychoanalytic Feminism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011.

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