The election of Joe Biden as President of the United States created an opening for a gender-sensitive approach to foreign policy. Two years in, historic firsts and enduring obstacles present a mixed picture.
Joe Biden’s election as President of the United States was seen by many as an opportunity to push gender policy back into the political mainstream. In contrast with the administration of Donald Trump, whose policies had oscillated between indifference and push back against women’s rights, Biden advocated for the advancement of gender equality during his campaign. His Agenda for Women included goals related to healthcare, fighting violence against women, promoting economic security and leadership of women worldwide. His victory at the polls ignited hopes for a change that would go beyond the simple reversal of his predecessor’s policies – a chance for a holistic approach to policy-making that takes gender inequalities into account. In the realm of foreign affairs, some dared to dream that the administration would embrace a new political framework adopted by several American allies: a feminist foreign policy.
First introduced by the Swedish government in 2014, feminist foreign policy’s exact definition remains contested, and its characteristics vary based on national context. It is generally understood as an approach prioritizing equality, peace, human rights, and the dismantling of oppressive power structures rooted in patriarchy and colonialism. It adopts an intersectional lens, which takes into account the overlapping forms of disadvantage and discrimination facing individuals based on their belonging to multiple social categorizations. Feminist foreign policy rejects unidimensional and state-centric policy-making in favor of responses which embrace the multilayered dimensions of global challenges. By acknowledging the unique lived experiences of each individual and the differential impact of crisis on various societal groups, it focuses on human over state security. Countries that have adopted some form of a feminist foreign policy to date include Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Luxembourg, and Mexico.
The idea of establishing a feminist foreign policy challenges traditional frameworks of foreign policy formulation and implementation in the United States, which are rooted in realist ideas of the centrality of the state and power politics. The debate over the feminist label itself exemplifies the obstacles this idea must overcome. Feminism is a loaded term in the United States; its heavy politicization reflects the ideological fault lines within American society. In light of this, government officials have usually avoided the term feminist or feminism, showing how delicate executive action on gender priorities has become.
Despite embracing some aspects of the spirit of feminist foreign policy, President Biden’s record until now suggests that its implementation in the United States is far from becoming a reality. While the administration has had notable accomplishments, from the repeal of Trump-era policies detrimental to women to the creation of a new White House Gender Policy Council, it has failed to be bold in advancing progressive gender policies that will endure beyond his tenure. Missed opportunities during the first half of his term when Congress was controlled by Democrats, the failure to truly integrate gender perspectives across government, the sidelining of feminist priorities in times of crisis - it all points to a lack of transformative political will in this realm.
Nonetheless, the adoption of such policies by US allies and the efforts of civil society groups (such as the Coalition for a Feminist Foreign Policy in the United States) have sparked conversations and debate in the US. Democratic members of the House of Representatives have twice introduced resolutions supporting the goals of a feminist foreign policy (first in 2021, and most recently on International Women’s Day 2023). Two years into the mandate of the Biden-Harris administration, what is the likelihood of a more fully-fledged feminist foreign policy – and what needs to be done?
Progress on gender policy under the Biden administration
The Biden administration has certainly made progress in incorporating gender and intersectionality into its policy-making. Biden’s actions stand in especially stark contrast to the previous administration. One of his early achievements was in representation, as the president fulfilled some of his campaign pledges by nominating the most diverse cabinet in US history and appointing the first African American woman to the Supreme Court. He has created new roles within the administration to target social inequality, such as the State Department’s first Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice. However, while these are important steps, the White House has not achieved gender parity in the cabinet (as it had pledged), nor equal representation in terms of race at the senior decision-making level. Furthermore, key posts devoted to the promotion of women’s rights within the executive, such as that of Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues, remain vacant.
In March 2021, the White House announced the creation of a Gender Policy Council (GPC), a body tasked with advancing gender equality and a broader gender agenda (including LGBTQI+ issues) through domestic and foreign policy-making. It is the first policy council within the Executive Office of the President dedicated to gender equality, a successor to the Obama-era White House Council on Women and Girls, created in 2009 and dissolved by the Trump administration in 2017. The GPC formulates strategies to pursue gender-related goals and engages with executive departments and agencies for their implementation. The foremost achievement of the GPC has been the formulation of the first-ever National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality. This document contains ten interconnected strategic priorities to achieve gender equity and equality, informed by an intersectional approach and with the aim of a whole-of-government implementation. It provides a roadmap for American foreign policy by mandating that diplomatic, defense, and foreign assistance efforts should formulate strategies to promote gender equality. The National Strategy has shaped documents such as the updated Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally, published in December 2022, and the Strategy on Global Women’s Economic Security, published in January 2023. However, major executive publications such as the 2022 National Security Strategy still lack a comprehensive gender approach, raising questions about the influence of the National Strategy.
The GPC has an important symbolic value, as the first policy council within the Executive Office dedicated to gender equality and a membership spanning almost all cabinet members, federal agencies and White House office leaders. However, its staff is limited compared to other councils, making it heavily reliant on gender leads across agencies, where cooperation is sometimes fraught by interagency competition. Initially intended to have a dual leadership, it has been led by a single co-chair for the past year. There is often little transparency with regard to the work of the council, making it difficult to assess its effectiveness and its role in guiding executive policy making. The first progress report of the National Strategy, which was delayed, failed to highlight particular advancements achieved by the GPC, and agencies’ promised plans to implement the strategy have not been publicly released. Spogmay Ahmed, Senior Policy Advisor at the U.S.-based Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative, an organization bringing stakeholders together to advance FFP, observes that while the new GPC signals progress, it has little involvement in decision-making. “We really fear that they experience the same marginalization felt by many of us [in civil society], and that they may not be taken seriously against other ‘hard security’ offices,” she said.
Internationally, the Biden administration has tried to distance itself from the previous administration’s unilateral America First policy-making. Re-engagement in multilateralism is an important tool to further international cooperation on feminist issues. Rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement were among the first actions taken by the new government. Biden has invested in a positive relationship with the United Nations, for example by achieving reelection to the Human Rights Council, a body that the US had left under Trump, and by making the US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a fully-fledged cabinet member. In 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris became the most senior member of a US administration to participate in the UN Commission on the Status of Women. But there are still obstacles to the United States’ credibility in this realm, such as its continued refusal to ratify fundamental human rights treaties such as the UN Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In international development, the Biden administration made headlines by requesting $2.6 billion in foreign assistance programs promoting gender equity and equality in its 2023 budget. This is twice as much than the previous year and is the largest in US history. It includes $200 million for the Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund (GEEA), which finances projects dealing with the gendered impact of health crises and security threats. At COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, the United States announced that USAID would commit $21.8 million of the GEEA to gender-responsive climate action, almost $8 million more than pledged at COP26. While Biden’s commitments signal a significant change in trajectory from the Trump administration, it is important to consider these numbers in context. While the amount of funding devoted to gender equality is the largest in US history, it surpasses the highest request made under Obama by only $300 million (adjusted for inflation). In the past, the United States has ranked low compared to other OECD countries in the ratio between gender equality aid and total official development assistance (ODA). The $2.6 billion requested for FY23 represents only about 4.6% of the total budget request of $60.4 billion for USAID and the State Department. While the amount of funding may be large in absolute terms, a true commitment to gender mainstreaming – the integration of gender perspectives with the objective of achieving gender equality in all aspects of foreign assistance – requires wider requests, as well as a more holistic and cross-cutting approach. While USAID is required by law to include a gender lens in all its projects, other agencies and departments are not, and even the development agency has struggled in the past to effectively adhere to this commitment.
Reproductive rights
Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) are an important priority of feminist foreign and development policy. At the start of his term, one of Biden’s first acts was the repeal of the Mexico City Policy, also known as the “global gag rule.” Under this policy, initiated by Reagan in 1984, non-governmental organizations could receive US global family planning assistance only if they certified that none of their activities – even if performed with non-US funds – promoted abortion as a means of family planning. The Trump administration significantly expanded the reach of this policy to include any type of US global health assistance.
While Biden’s repeal of the rule was particularly impactful given Trump’s harsher iteration, he has not gone beyond previous Democratic presidents. The adoption of the gag rule by Republican presidents and its repeal by Democratic ones is a well-established routine. Furthermore, as an executive action, the Mexico City Policy builds upon congressional laws that restrict the use of US funding for abortion services, such as the 1973 Helms Amendment. This law restricts US international assistance for “abortion as a means of family planning” and therefore provides the legal basis for the global gag rule. In practice, the Helms Amendment has resulted in a total ban on funding safe abortions, without consideration of minimal exceptions for rape, incest, or life endangerment, even in recipient countries with liberalized abortion laws. According to the feminist organization Fòs Feminista, the repeal of the Helms Amendment would result in 19 million fewer unsafe abortions and a 98% decrease of abortion-related maternal deaths each year in recipient countries with liberalized abortion laws. President Biden’s failure to press for a permanent repeal of the Mexico City Policy or the Helms Amendment – which has not been addressed by the current administration in any significant capacity – highlight a lack of serious consideration for SRHR in US global assistance efforts.
Defense and security
In the realm of defense, Biden aims to rebrand the US military as a diverse and inclusive space for recruits. For example, during his first week in office, Biden signed an executive order overturning the Trump-era ban on transgender people serving in the US military, denouncing discrimination based on gender identity. The administration also adopted new policies to ease the process of gender transition for service members. The president and his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have prioritized the fight against sexual assault and harassment in the military, tasking an independent review commission to formulate recommendations. While there has been some progress to increase accountability for such acts, for example by removing their prosecution from the military chain of command, reports of sexual assault increased in Biden’s first year in office. Officials themselves acknowledge that the root cause is a toxic climate and culture that requires structural change which existing policies have failed to bring about successfully.
With regard to female participation and gender-sensitivity in defense and security, the Biden administration has continued to champion the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. In 2017, the United States became the first country to codify the strategy contained in UNSCR 1325 into law. WPS enjoys bipartisan support, which has enabled its advancement under changing governments. The Trump Administration launched a national strategy on WPS in 2019. Relevant agencies and departments have produced implementation plans and congressional reports have measured their performance. Dedicated WPS personnel have been employed in the military, national and foreign troops have received WPS trainings, and projects to promote female participation in decision making have been funded.
While the progressive approach of this administration has furthered WPS, it remains a rather uncontroversial policy because its impact is still limited. The US continues to focus mainly on participation, often limited to its own institutions, rather than adopting a more holistic gender mainstreaming stance targeting policy and affecting the substance of its approach to conflict. This becomes all too clear in times of crisis. In Afghanistan, the US failed to ensure women’s inclusion in peace negotiations with the Taliban, and the prioritization of troop withdrawal by Biden caused women’s rights to drastically deteriorate within a very short period of time. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US has not intentionally employed WPS in bilateral relations with the Ukrainian government. NATO, to which the United States is by far the greatest contributor and therefore a major decision maker, has also failed to center WPS and concretely articulate its relevance in the Alliance’s response to the war. The lack of meaningful inclusion of WPS in times of crisis shows that the policy is still widely perceived as an add-on rather than a truly transformative agenda in its own right.
The domestic dimension
While foreign policy faces outward, it is intricately connected to domestic conditions. In the context of feminist foreign policy, this has led to a dissonance between external commitments to feminist values and de facto conditions domestically. While gender equality is not a reality anywhere in the world, the contrast is particularly staggering in countries that have announced a feminist foreign policy while failing to adopt urgent measures to protect women – or even actively promote policies that increase inequality.
Were the United States to adopt a feminist foreign policy, the government would have to be open to public debate closely scrutinizing the US record on women’s rights, racial equality and social justice. Issues such as police violence against people of color, attacks on voting rights, and the increasing lack of abortion access reflect poorly on the government’s ability to safeguard equal rights for all. While the Biden administration has implemented some relatively progressive policies to tackle social injustice in the United States, it has also introduced regulations targeting the rights of vulnerable groups, such as migrants, just as previous administrations, whether Republican or Democrat.
The gap between US action abroad and its domestic reality is particularly striking in the realm of gender policy, where its foreign programs are at times much more progressive than what would be politically viable at home. Susan Markham, an expert in gender, foreign policy and development, highlights this discrepancy: “We talk a great game about [women’s rights] and we are great advocates around the world and we do fund international organizations that are fighting for this, but we can’t use the tools that we successfully employ in other countries because we would not be willing to do these sort of programs [domestically].” Not only does this affect the United States’ credibility when it acts on these issues in the international sphere, it also risks sending conflicting messages on policy directions to countries that are reliant on the US for aid and other forms of support. “We are leaning in and providing what we can as far as rhetorical leadership and often funding leadership, but it would be much more powerful if we could point to much more at home than we are doing,” Markham adds.
To conclude, as mentioned earlier, the noticeable absence of the very word “feminist” from White House rhetoric around gender policy gives an indication of the long road ahead of a possible feminist foreign policy in the US. Following the feminist movement’s heyday in the 1960s and ‘70s, it experienced a backlash, which distorted the understanding of the concept and led many to avoid association with the label. In polls administered well into the 2000s, the percentage of American women identifying themselves as feminists was consistently less than half. Although a “feminist renaissance” has changed this in recent years, identification with the label remains bound to age and political affiliation.
Finally, the chance that the Biden administration defining any policy – foreign or domestic – as feminist is inherently less likely than in countries like Germany, Spain or France, where this term is not as politically loaded. This is especially true for traditionally male-dominated spaces like foreign and defense policy. Administration officials, even those working on gender policy like GPC Chair Jennifer Klein, have shown a tendency to disregard the importance of labeling US foreign policy “feminist.” The argument is that terminology is secondary to substance, which is hard to argue with. However, the decision not to use the term sheds light on policy intentions and on the administration’s will to work on the politicization of women’s rights.
Where does the United States stand on feminist foreign policy?
The Biden administration has made undeniable progress on the promotion of gender approaches in foreign policy. Starting with the national strategy on gender, the administration has achieved many firsts and made large-scale commitments to gender policy across foreign, development, climate, and defense policy. However, limitations persist that threaten the effectiveness of some of these accomplishments, rooted in a lack of political will to bring about true, transformative change.
Reversing the destructive policies implemented by the Trump administration requires sustained efforts from the current government. It is an ongoing process, which will hopefully repair some of the lasting damage inflicted on the rights of women and marginalized communities globally. For this the Biden administration deserves to be recognized. At the same time, the comparison with the Trump administration has allowed Biden to earn more praise for progressiveness than he might have received with a different predecessor. It is more helpful to compare Biden’s policies to those introduced under Obama to gain a more nuanced picture of the advancements made under the current leadership. Generally speaking, there has been a gap between rhetoric and reality. In the first half of his term, President Biden failed to leverage the potential of a Democrat-controlled Congress in advancing key priorities in gender policy. The government has also mostly failed to draw adequate lessons from the backlash during the Trump administration. The Biden administration has failed to institutionalize positive changes related to gender and human rights that can span beyond the current tenure.
Although officials have affirmed their commitment to the values of feminist foreign policy in spirit, if not in name, a review of the Biden administration’s records shows that the United States still has a long way to go in this regard. The promised “whole-of-government” approach to gender policy has failed to materialize. Gender offices are often siloed within the executive, creating progressive echo chambers whose guidance is rarely considered in the mainstream. The influence of civil society remains limited. Given the absence of proper institutionalization, the prioritization of gender, diversity and intersectionality in policy-making remains heavily dependent on officials’ personal interests and inclinations.
The administration may not lack goodwill in promoting the inclusion and uplifting of women and marginalized communities in foreign policy. However, a failure to put this issue at the heart of policy formulation and implementation prevents truly transformative action. The consequences of a casual approach in this realm become painfully evident in times of crisis. The unsatisfactory incorporation of gender considerations emerged in the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, where women were excluded from US negotiations with the Taliban. The same is true for its reaction to the war in Ukraine, where the US response has lacked a strong gender lens, and to the protests in Iran, where the U.S. failed to sufficiently emphasize and uplift the gendered dimension of the uprising. Yet it is precisely in these moments that gender-sensitive approaches are most vital, as they present the opportunity to translate lofty commitments into tangible change.
Feminist foreign policy is much more than a mere commitment to equal rights for women. It implies a systematic rethinking of the role of gender policy and the adoption of an intersectional lens in all aspects of decision-making. It requires acknowledging how much of what is traditionally accepted as the right way of conducting foreign, security, and development policy is rooted in patriarchal power structures. This process takes much more than a four-year mandate to come to fruition – in many cases it requires generational change. However, the Biden administration has not signaled that it is contemplating this profound shift in perspective.
The United States is clearly far from adopting a feminist foreign policy. Nonetheless, the Biden administration has taken actions that constitute steps in the right direction. These should be appreciated as a starting point for more wide-ranging initiatives to transform US foreign policy on feminist terms. Future administrations must work on cementing these advancements and forging a path for foreign policy that promotes the well-being of all people. Lasting change will depend on the ability of officials to frame the goals of feminist foreign policy beyond partisanship to create policy that can withstand changing political tides, for example by formulating long-term strategies that anchor feminist priorities in institutional work.