GenDip seminarium med Malena Rosén Sundström

By Ole Elgström & Malena Rosén Sundström, Lund University

Abstract

In 2014, Sweden became the first country in the world to declare that it would henceforth pursue a Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP), which entailed a “systematic gender equality perspective throughout foreign policy” (Ministry for Foreign Affairs 2019: 19). In October 2022, however, the new right-wing government announced it would abandon the FFP. The new government emphasized that it would continue to work for gender equality in the EU and globally, but suggested that the “feminist label” had been provocative and too radical. Together with the new regime’s emphasis on Sweden’s “near abroad” and Swedish trade and security interests, while downsizing Sweden’s multilateral engagements, the decision to abolish the FFP signalled a new direction in Swedish foreign policy. We thus identify and address two significant foreign policy changes – introducing a “radical” feminist agenda and then, eight years later, rescinding this policy – leading us to pose the following two interrelated research questions:

• To what extent have these decisions changed external perceptions of and attitudes towards Sweden’s normative leadership on gender equality?

• To what extent was FFP, in the eyes of Swedish diplomats, implemented and how has the abolishment of the policy influenced practices and decision-making processes within the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

To answer our research questions, we rely on a perceptual approach, using data from in-depth interviews with Brussels-based diplomatic representatives of other EU Member States but also – regarding practices and decision-making processes – self-perceptions of Swedish diplomats. We explore perceptions, expectations and evaluations of Swedish diplomatic activities, comparing the era when the FFP was in place with the period after its abolishment. We also compare the perceptions of representatives from Like-Minded Countries (LMC) – countries with similar gender equality policies as Sweden – with those from countries that have demonstrated scepticism towards FFPs.