The Making of “Gender Diplomacy” as a Foreign Policy Pillar in Kenya and Namibia
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2019-08-16
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Rowman and Littlefield
Abstract
Can the “gender equality” norm stand out as a “game-changer” in shaping a country’s foreign policy and diplomatic engagements? African states, like many other nations globally, often influence regional and global processes through foreign policy tools such as trade, politics, governance, law, and defense, as well as international norms such as gender equality (Crapol 1994). Gender-minded international relations theorists interpret international system by drawing from salient issues that influence women-men power relations (Youngs 2004). On this note, feminist scholars have argued that issues such as the international political economy, women rights, and women empowerment can be effective instruments of moderating women-men power relations when they become part and parcel of a country’s foreign policy (Tickner 1992; Peterson 1992). Despite the fact that gender equality norms have existed since 1970s (Stevenson 2016), African nations are still bedeviled with divergent conceptual and methodological problems in an attempt to bridge the gender gap in their foreign policies. Moreover, in most developing societies, foreign policies are often a product of a historically and structurally male-dominated patriarchal system (Porter 2013). This, therefore, explains why there are fewer women diplomats. The exclusive diplomatic space in Africa is partly attributed to the paucity of scholarship on the link between gender equality and diplomatic theory and practice. It is rare to find a well-articulated idea in the International Relations (IR) scholarship on how effective gender norms could be integrated in diplomacy. Classical liberal icons in the study of IR such as John Locke, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Giuseppe Mizzini, and John Stuart Mill identify four fundamental principles and institutions that characterize liberalism; Chapter 21
Description
Keywords
Citation
Onditi, F. (2019) The making of "gender diplomacy" as a foreign policy pillar in Kenya and Namibia. In: Onditi, F., Ben-Nun, G., D'Alessandro, C. & Levey, Z. (eds).Contemporary Africa and the foreseeable world order. Lanham: Lexington Books. 377-397. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/14328