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Hello. Thank you for joining us. We are proud to welcome you to our special series, Across the Rainbow, brought to you by Brill, where we talk about gender equality, its past, its present, and its future. I'm your host, Lee John Greco.
Today we're talking with Anne Townes, Professor of Political Science at University of Gothenburg, and Katosha Nha Yajarska, Associate Professor of Political Science at University West. Our article is COVID-19 and Gender, a necessary connection in diplomatic studies. Welcome. Thank you.
So first of all, just a little introduction to your piece here. The point of your recent article was to use COVID to raise questions about the gender dimension in diplomacy. So diplomacy remains fairly male-dominated. But we have seen this rapid rise in the number of women in diplomats in the last two decades.
Can you tell us a little bit more about those? This is Anne. So in the 19th and early 20th century, women were not allowed to start with diplomats at all. So they were banned legally from diplomacy.
And after that, the bands were lifted, well, then marriage bands on women diplomats were put in their place. So you had a situation where male diplomats were expected to marry a woman, and that woman was often expected to carry out crucial, but unpaid diplomatic duties to help him. Female diplomats, they were not allowed to marry, and they had to carry out this work of a diplomatic wife and the work of a diplomatic ones. And so these marriage bands on women, they weren't lifted until the 1970s.
It's not really surprising that the number of women in diplomacy remained low throughout the 20th century. But then in the past 20 years or so, the number of women has risen rapidly, as you suggested, right? So in some ministries of foreign affairs, like some of the Scandinavians and Sweden, for instance, where we're at, women are now in the majority. But there really isn't any comparative data, so on numbers, so male and female diplomats.
So it's really difficult for us to track these developments over time, and we don't really know. So because of that, Chandip, which is this research program on gender diplomacy that I've run to get with Karajina and with Bighit Danyi-G and with Bighitanyi-Gchasan, we're putting together a database that looks precisely at this question on gender and diplomacy. We're focusing on bilateral ambassadors. And of course, the ambassador positions kind of the top were the apex of diplomatic career and far from all diplomats or ambassadors, of course, but at least it's a start, we're thinking.
And in this database, we tracked the number of women and ambassadors from 1969 until the present. And we haven't analyzed the data yet, but we so we can't really say anything specific about the trend, but we'll release that data in our analysis shortly. But what we have analyzed is a small slice of that data, and that's ambassador postings made by the 50 wealthiest countries in 2014. And if we look at that data, we see that 85% to the world's ambassadors were male, 85% men.
So that tells you, I think a little something about the male dominance diplomacy. And the share of women, of course, is larger at the non-investor level, since there's no cross national data. I can't really say how much larger. And I think to just kind of conclude on that, I get questioned, the animates a lot of my research now is how this male dominance shapes diplomatic practice.
So I think we need to ask, right, in what ways and to what extent might diplomacy be formed by in premised on these particular forms of masculinity that might be in place because it's been so male dominated. Because even though women are making inroads, it seems like they have to contend with the male dominance diplomacy. I mean, the model diplomatic envoy still in many ways premised on a male diplomat, married to a woman who assists him. And as Elise Stevenson has shown on her research, women diplomats with wives, they find diplomatic life a lot easier than women that diplomats with husbands.
That's really fascinating because I remember when I lived in DC, just talking with friends who wanted to go into diplomacy, wanted to be foreign officers, and they would often mention how male dominated the field was. But I had no idea that there were those actual barriers that were in place up until very recently, as you said. And then there are other more or less explicit barriers that might still be in place, right? Because we know that in this various between ministries and foreign affairs.
But there are things like, you know, are you, I mean, we need to think about things like, you know, can you give birth while on a posting, right? Is there parental leave or maternity leave while you're on a posting? What kind of support is there for spouses to find work, for instance, right? We know that a lot of male partners have not content with taking the role as a diplomatic wife, which might make it more difficult for women to have to bring their families with them.
And that's to bring their families with them on postings, right? These are not formal bans on women diplomats, but it does make life as a diplomat more difficult, right, for women, than for men. And that said, also given that, you know, many more women also want their own careers these days, it also makes life more difficult for male diplomats, to some extent, that they can't necessarily bring a spouse, right, they can have a career of their own. So with that as a background, can you tell us a little bit about how the move online during COVID affected women in diplomacy?
Sure. So the move online is obviously shaking up diplomacy in a lot of ways. I mean, some online features that already been integrated into diplomacy, but the pandemic has met disruption in many central components of diplomatic interactions, like the face-to-face meetings, the handshakes, the settings that allowed for interpersonal trust to develop and so on. And we don't really know whether or not this has different implications for men and women diplomats, right?
And for that reason, we wrote the article that you mentioned in the hate journal diplomacy, raising that question. So I can speculate a little bit based on what we do know from existing research. So for one, we know that masculineized forms of networking remain, such as around the golf course or at bars, right? There's been a lot of discussion, for instance, golf diplomacy and the Trump administration, right?
And Deepak Naier has noted in his research the male dominance historically in golf diplomacy and ASEAN. So if the move to online diplomacy disrupts these practices and networks, then that might provide new openings for women, right? And also appearance standards in diplomacy are such that women ambassadors have to spend twice as much time as men, getting dressed, changing outfits between different events, putting on and refreshing makeup, fixing their hair and so forth. And with a move online, there may not be as much attention to appearances, right?
And there aren't all these changes between different events, changes that do take more time for women. So this might also even the playing field a little bit between women and men diplomats. With that said, we also know that the online move through to the pandemic is not limited to diplomacy. And in many countries, schools have also moved online, right?
And since women remain the primary caretakers in any places, even when they do work, this has meant a huge added workload for women as they juggle children and work in the same space. And there's no reason to believe that this might not also be the case in diplomacy. So the net impact on women and men and diplomacy is not entirely clear, right? There might be some advantages, but there also might be some disadvantages to women and to men.
But what we do need is more research to figure this stuff out. So this is our call, right? And the article is to just encourage people to ask more questions about gender diplomacy. Do you feel like you had a limited amount of time because of how long COVID has been going on to sort of assess how women were affected by that move online?
I mean, we're now starting to see countries open back up again. I sort of assume that might mess with the data kind of using COVID as a control and a way, I guess. Well, yes, to some extent, yes, right? This is hopefully of, you know, not a permanent state of being, but rather something that's, you know, hopefully we're reverting back to normal soon, but we don't know that and we're not there yet.
So we might still have, you know, a bit of time. And I also think, you know, obviously you can continue if you rely on interviews, for instance, you can continue interviewing diplomats for some time after the lockdown, the moves online, right? So, you know, I think that the pandemic will be, they'll still be able to be able to recall what that situation was. But yes, it's a window, I think, of a few years maybe, where we can do this research.
So I think some attentiveness to like, you know, what the adaptations have been now during the pandemic and the lockdown, but also what will continue afterwards when we study gender diplomacy, I think it's important. And then I think the pandemic itself, I'm just a very quickly gender dimensions of the responses and the adaptations of the pandemic raised this question, they're more enduring about gender. And we have to pay attention to gender diplomacy. It's just, it's a very integral and central and kind of, you know, absolutely just, I mean, it's one of those fundamental structures of diplomacy that's been, you know, unexamined for so long.
So speaking of lockdowns, really fascinating part of your article was talking about these gendered lockdowns, which happened in several countries like Peru, for instance, this often resulted in overcrowded grocery stores because, as you mentioned, women often take the bulk of the domestic work. It also ended up with the harassment of trans people in those countries because people were going out on certain days, depending on the gender that they identified with. How does the COVID-19 crisis amplify the need for diplomacy scholars to examine the relations between civil society, the actors and diplomats? Yes, so in general diplomacy scholarship has paid rather little attention to the links that we diplomacy and civil society.
So according to traditional view diplomacy is a matter of high end relations that we instate officials. But we also know from empirical studies that context with civil society actors are an important aspect of what diplomats to. So for instance, civil society is crucial in diplomatic tasks of information gathering about the culture country. So especially in context where if we don't suppress, you know, express as far as to where in times of fast tracking legislation as indicated in the case of COVID-19 in the main countries, civil society provides a counterbalance to government control media or the official communication.
And local activists are usually quick in highlighting various log reaches for misconduct of public administration and development, as well as discriminatory policies of legislation. So in the case of Peru that you brought up, but similar solutions weren't based in Panama, Bogota in Colombia, policies were legislated to enforce physical distancing is one measure to suppress this political pandemic by obstructing the mobility of a citizen. And as you mentioned, these restrictions were based on binary understandings of gender and associated norms. So on alternative days, women were allowed to access essential services, so to grocery stores and pharmacies.
And in other days, men. So for one, this was a logistic problem for people that exist outside of had a large amount of money. So thanks to grassroot mobilization of funds, gender activities and allies, the gender based regulation was relatively quickly rescinded in Peru. Massage cases make it very clear that marginalized groups and civil society actors supporting them need allies to support their organizational capacity, but also to boost their message in the national and international arena.
And diplomats who are placed in those countries have the function of such megaphones so supported as it was. So one of the projects that we have in gender in our gender and diplomacy program is exactly studying how frontline diplomats with different plays abroad intersect with the society. So we try to bring some systematic understanding of the forms and patterns of these interactions. So one data point you brought up that I found really shocking was that as many as 48 countries are at a high risk of authoritarian backsliding as a result of the pandemic.
And the measures taken to curb the spread of COVID have also affected women disproportionately. How do COVID put those countries at risk and how did that affect women? Yes, so authoritarian backsliding or a de-democratization as it's sometimes called is indeed a growing, it is growing globally. So within the number of countries showing decline in democratic qualities is actually surpassing, or has to pass those that show a strengthening of democracy in the past decade.
And we know that in opposition to gender equality and liberalism in general is linked to authoritarianism. Many of these illiberal regimes implement so-called anti-gender politics at home and abroad, it is politics that openly counter gender equality. And COVID-19 has not made the situation better. Sam autocrats have used the pandemic as an excuse to introduce further restrictions on civil rights and liberties.
And they were not always related, those restrictions were not always related to measures aimed into container pandemic. And the fear is that these restrictions will say even after the pandemic is under control. So in combating the pandemic, both in democracies and in democracies, several to introduce measures disproportionately affected women, right? And many have brought this up already in their publications.
So for instance, these are the things they were also discussing the paper, de-lockdowns and consignments to the home, per light for this pike in internet partner violence. So the UN estimates the point to around 20 to 30% increase of 20 to 30% in the internet party violence. Then we have unintended or unwanted pregnancies that are on the rise because of restricted access to contraceptives during workdowns. And because of gender and stratification of the labor markets in many countries, women are more at risk as they are overrepresented in the essential worker category.
So for instance, as health workers. And then if we apply in a dissection of events, we can observe that differently situated groups are affected by the growing epidemic and the measures to combat it in various ways. So class, race, sexuality and gender, in various consolations might account for the not to play effect of burdens. So with these exacerbations of gender and other inequalities highlighted by the pandemic, it is more important than ever that for diplomacy and diplomats to engage with civil society and with women and other marginalized groups demands.
And as the fear of action of progressive CSR or civil society organizations is shrinking in authoritarian states in general and due to the pandemic even more, all allies, those groups can have and diplomats are very important such allies should come to the point. And there is a growing international skills that we can observe in general that we in this pro and anti gender equality agenda and diplomats are this is a fascinating new front of our studies highlighting that diplomats are uniquely equipped to maneuver a dislike of division. And you mentioned that during the pandemic, there are so many women who are overworked, but in a lot of places women have also lost jobs disproportionately to men, at least in the US, the unemployment for women has been much higher. And so I wonder how those factors also contribute to either this authoritarian backsliding or just sort of general inequality for women that's been exacerbated by the pandemic.
So, we don't mean, as you say, there are the effects go in many different ways they hit women and other groups they hit men as well, obviously in various ways and it's very hard to say exactly how this contributes to more democratization, this specific effects. What we know is that our territory is more to turn towards authoritarianism correlates with anti gender policies quite often. So, women will be either discriminated directly, women's groups will be harassed in various ways, legally and diversity and so on. So, so it's not that those specific measures against or combating the pandemic will lead to more authoritarianism.
We don't know that exactly, but we know that women are targeted by authoritarian regimes. We know that COVID lockdown and COVID there's COVID measures and have hit women in various ways, and we need to study more and understand more about those how does they not explain out. There are two other authors of this article as well. And Catherine Crefte and Brigitte Nicholson, where there are certain insights from them at all that you wanted to include or give some voice to on this podcast.
I should probably mention that Brigitte Nikoson has, she's one of the first people to do work on whether there are women based or women's networks within diplomacy and whether women network differently than men do. And she suggests that there are indeed ways in which women can reach out more to women's organizations or that they, you know, when they do, you know, make connections in civil society that they have access to women's spaces that men may not have access to and so forth. And that's, you know, a race that a bit already in the interview, but that's an important dimension to keep in mind that even as we move online, there might still be these kind of gender dynamics in terms of who speaks to whom and who has relations, relationships and access to whom, right, that might be shaped by gender. And so, you know, in the case of the women's work, she does work on sexualized violence and conflict and how women mobilize in response, politically mobilized in response to that violence.
And so she has, you know, raised this issue of kind of how the international community responds to and connects with that mobilization. I think that's a very important dimension to keep in mind too and a set of questions someone should ask right like, what is the role of diplomats and diplomacy in meeting kind of women's organization, women's mobilization, not just in the COVID pandemic and responding to that but more broadly to to sexualized and, you know, and gender based violence against women. And so, you know, as you've been through with COVID that perhaps some of those issues that you mentioned gender based violence, for example, will get more attention in diplomacy that there will be more resources devoted to it because you now have sort of a blueprint from COVID as far as handling things through the Yes, I actually do feel a little bit optimistic about that. I do think that there's more attentiveness and I know that there are embassies and their diplomats, they're working on kind of a restart of like, you know, like starting over and starting in the right place after the COVID epidemic is so clear, right, that how the pandemic is played out that, you know, who would affect and responses is just permeated by inequality, right, it does not affect people equally or in similar ways, right, and gender is of course just one of many relations of inequalities it's obviously not the only one right, but it is one of them and it has become clear I think to lots of people that like just how gender the pandemic is.
So I do think that with that and then with the increasing attention to gender issues and feminist issues with the declarations of feminist foreign policies, the kind of convergence of those two issues I do think, you know, it, you know, implies or suggests that there might be more even more attention to this after, you know, after the worst parts of the pandemic have played out. There was more and more evidence that, as we discussed the authoritarianism and the trend in the world is paired with anti gender policies and diplomats are discussing this so on one side we have this huge like larger part of the countries that sign up to anti gender values and then we have countries that are putting feminism under foreign policies so this becomes like a very polarized session internationally and diplomats represent those both ends or both polls, but also have to negotiate that so I definitely think that this is the gender issues will be more and more on the agenda. I mean, I just want to have a question, I agree. That's Katana Urjarska.
She's an associate professor of political science at University West and Antowns, professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg. They are authors of COVID-19 and gender, a necessary connection in diplomatic studies. Thank you so much to you both. Thank you.
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