The representative for UN women Pakistan Ms. Sharmeela Rassool congratulated Germany’s centre-left government on its announcement of new feminist guidelines to shape its diplomacy and development work including the creation of a new role for an “ambassador for feminist foreign policy“.
She praised the fact that Germany will lobby to ensure women’s concerns are more in focus worldwide, that women are better represented and that the country’s generous development funds are allocated more to projects that tackle gender inequality.
This move gives fresh momentum to the feminist foreign policy movement, which was pioneered by a leftist Swedish government in 2014.
This move is also welcomed by Germany’s first female foreign minister Baerbock, who has already made a point on her trips abroad to address gender issues such as sexual violence during the conflict in Ukraine and abortion in the United States.
Critics say the government needs to avoid coming across as moralising. Sweden antagonised several allies after it started focusing more on gender equality and human rights in its diplomacy.
Baerbock addressed those concerns in her speech presenting the guidelines, saying they were not a missionary pamphlet with which we naively want to improve the world and that Germany had much to learn from other countries.
Gender will also be taken more into account in foreign policy spending, according to the foreign ministry. The ministry said Germany would also seek to ensure European foreign policy would focus more on the concerns of women.
Former conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel became a feminist icon during her 16 years governing Germany, but it was only towards the end of her tenure that she accepted that label and conceded “we should all be feminists”.
