Women’s Organisations of Diplomats: A New Era for Diplomacy?

Since the early 2000s, collectives of women diplomats have emerged as spaces of creative agency in diplomacy at local, regional, and global levels. Despite constraints, these women’s organisations of diplomats (WODs) have (un)intentionally disrupted the image of the male diplomat as the sole legitimate enactor of state sovereignty, questioning who can materialise state authority. In addition to contesting the exclusionary practices that fix diplomatic identities and authority, WODs promote a more inclusive, equitable, and horizontal approach to diplomacy, statecraft, and foreign policy.

The Rise of the WODs

There are currently 19 WODs in Europe, Latin America, the Pacific, and the Middle East. In the 21st century, the first WOD to be established was the Association of Italian Women Diplomats and Executives (DID) in 2001. The Middle East and Latin America launched their first WODs in the early 2010s: the Women in Diplomacy Network and the Group of Brazilian Women Diplomats. Between 2021 and 2022, two regional networks and one global network were created: Diplomáticas IberoAm, Wedin EU, and the Global Women Diplomats Network. Earlier WODs included the Women’s Action Organization (WAO) in the US, the Women’s Network in New Zealand (1970s), and the Network in Sweden (1980s). The UN General Assembly has acknowledged these “associations of women diplomats” and at its 76th session proclaimed 24 June as the International Day of Women in Diplomacy (Resolution 76/269). The dissolution of the WAO and the Network in Sweden, the endurance of the Women’s Network, and the absence of a WOD in Africa merit further investigation.

Women Diplomats’ Collective Agency

WODs demonstrate that diplomacy is not a stable entity that seamlessly enters global affairs. Their collective agency presents diplomacy as a contested field within the state bureaucracy, where marginalised groups (un)intentionally (re)negotiate their identities and state authority. I refer to this disruption as “domestic estrangement”, where diplomats’ identities are shaped by societal norms, institutional regulations, and power hierarchies that continually delimit who can embody and enact state sovereignty. The notion aligns with the feminist adage that the domestic is international.

The Conflicted Field of Diplomacy

(Re)framing diplomacy entails questioning which bodies can engage with what Costas M. Constantinou terms the four “fictions” of diplomacy — the sovereign subject, the representative agent, the instrumental object, and the specialised process. Women were historically barred from enacting the sovereign subject, as they could not be accredited as diplomats or hold diplomatic passports. Restrictions on same-sex couples persist, as many countries do not issue diplomatic passports or visas to these officials. In handbooks on the perfect/ideal ambassador since the 16th century, the ambassador has traditionally been framed as a white, male, Western figure, endowed with divine abilities. Protocol rules further delimit how bodies use the instrumental object, evident in arrangements at official functions and sartorial codes that connote authority in diplomacy. Practicing diplomacy as a specialised profession, women diplomats have been unconventionally represented as eccentric.

Diplomacy has thus historically been defined as a male business, and statecraft as white-heterosexual mancraft. Diplomacy has thus historically been defined as a male business, and statecraft as white-heterosexual mancraft. The emergence of WODs should not be seen as an independent phenomenon but as one entangled in the material-discursive elements that shape diplomacy as a gendered, heteronormative, racialised, colonial enactment of state sovereignty. (Re)imagining diplomacy raises questions about the physical spaces allowed for bodies, the capacities in which they operate, and the social, institutional, and personnel management rules that govern these interactions.

(Re)imagining Diplomacy through WODs

WODs are (un)intentionally reclaiming the articulation of women and other marginalised bodies as legitimate enactors of state sovereignty, even though their members are diplomats. This ambiguity reveals a crisis in the ontology of the diplomat, where women experience both belonging and foreignness in diplomacy and adopt dual identities as societal and state agents within WODs. From this displacement, WODs embody the (re)articulation of diplomatic norms and practices.

WOD members do not mobilise for gender equality in diplomacy due to inherent self-identification with the category of woman. The reiteration of the undesirability of their bodies through situated diplomatic practices motivates them to take up this role. Many WOD members report recognising their womanhood only after joining the foreign service.

WODs challenge schemas that historically relegated women in diplomacy to roles as hostesses, housekeepers, caregivers, and wives. WOD members reclaim their embodiment as capable professionals who should occupy all discursive-material spaces of diplomacy. Regional and global WODs decentre Eurocentrism in diplomatic practice, promoting non-hierarchised interactions that challenge the colonial trope of the West as the locus of progress. While acknowledging that gender discrimination is pervasive, WODs (re)enact diplomacy by embracing a plurality of subjectivities of state sovereignty in a more horizontal manner.

Decentralised, horizontally organised through social media, and focused on a common cause, WODs operate in sharp contradiction to the hierarchical, secretive, and formal principles that have defined modern diplomacy. Yet WODs perceive their actions as diplomatic, emphasising trust and relationship-building as core to their efforts. This (re)conceptualisation suggests that diplomacy can, too, be decentralised, horizontal, and disruptive of schemas that delimit its boundaries.

There are, however, limits to their political agenda: in particular, WOD members juggle voluntary activities with demanding diplomatic careers, while not all women diplomats align with WOD agendas and feminist ideas, and women ambassadors in powerful positions do not necessarily prioritise gender equality. Additionally, WODs often maintain a sensitive relationship with their respective foreign services, which tend to support them only when it increases the institution’s profile. Finally, interactions among WODs may reproduce, rather than disrupt, historical hierarchies among states, by reinforcing binaries that differentiate between normal, developed, and civilised versus abnormal, underdeveloped, and uncivilised states.

A New Era for Diplomacy?

The embodiment of women as diplomats exposes how they balance belonging and marginalisation in the conflicted field of diplomacy. The potential for WODs to (re)enact diplomacy in a more inclusive manner is contingent on their ability to navigate and disrupt entrenched diplomatic norms and practices.