Feminist Foreign Policy: Centering Dignity, Equity, and Justice Worldwide

Feminist foreign policy is a policy framework that challenges traditional understandings of foreign policy. It prioritizes peace, gender equality, human rights, and environmental integrity. Jill Montilla, Development and Communications Associate with the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative and Spogmay Ahmed, Senior Policy Advisor with the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative, sit down to talk with us about why a framework that disrupts colonial, racist, patriarchal, and male-dominated power structures is critical.

Upwards of 15 global governments have formally committed to utilizing a feminist foreign policy, and many more have engaged with the topic in multilateral settings. A recent, re-occurring report from the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative, which analyses over 20 countries’ commitment to feminist foreign policy, found that these policies have survived more elections than they have lost, that several countries have expanded their commitments, and that several countries have increased multilateral, bilateral, and regional activity. Many governments have taken up sexual and reproductive health and rights, in particular, as a priority. Some countries have stepped back from their commitments, though, amongst a troubled landscape for funding. 

For more information, check out Amicus with Dhalia Lithwick: https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus

Transcript

Jennie: 1:06

Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health rights and justice. [music intro] Hi, rePROs. How's everybody doing? I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/ her. So, y'all, this was a fun little week for me. I just got back from a trip up to New York. It's like my third trip in like four weeks, which is wild because I hadn't been to New York for, I don't know, at least a year before that. But I've had some been lucky to have some really fun trips this last month. This most recent one, I was honored to be asked to come speak to a class at the Mailman Public Health School at Columbia University. I had so much fun getting to talk to those students. They had such great and smart questions for me. It was just so much fun. I was really honored to be asked, and it was so wonderful getting to know the professor that asked me out to come up and getting to talk to the students and look around the campus a little bit. It was it was a great time. I'm so glad I did it, and I hope to do things like that again. I really loved the professor, she was so sweet. Hi, Lauren. Thank you for asking me to come up and for your very, very kind words. Y'all, she had such kind words for me at the end. She made me cry in front of her students, but it was so much fun, and I really had a great time. So thank you for asking me, and I can't wait to do something like this again. Let's see what else. I feel like I came home and my cats thought I had like gone off to war or something. I they were so needy and whiny, they are finally settling down now they've been home for uh a little longer, a couple days. But let's see what else did I do. Oh, yeah, I also got to see my old roommate again while I was up in New York. Uh, we went out for dinner and I had went out for a Korean barbecue, which I think was like the first time I've done that. So that was a lot of fun. It was really nice to get to see her. Yeah, it was just a really fun little trip. And I really enjoy going up to New York every once in a while. There's just so much fun things to do, so much great food to eat. Taking the train up is so easy, and um, yeah, it was a good little trip. I had a lot of fun. Let's see, I'm trying to think if there is anything else exciting for me to talk about. I think those are like the big things going on. I am getting ready for the holidays and we'll be seeing my family soon, so that'll be really nice. Yeah, so those are the big things going on. I think maybe let's just turn to this week's interview. I am really excited. We have we've talked about Feminist Foreign Policy before on the podcast, but it's been a while. So I was really excited to have um two wonderful guests from the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative come on to talk about a new report they had that they released uh like a month ago, I think. Um, so with that, let's turn to my interview with Jillian Montilla and Spogmay Ahmed with the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative. Okay, let's go to my interview with Jill and Spogmay.

Jill: 4:17

Hi, Jennie. Thanks so much for having us.

Spogmay: 4:20

Thanks so much for having us.

Jennie: 4:22

Before we get started, let's do a quick round of introductions. Let's go reverse alphabetical. The last interview I did, I did alphabetical, so let's do the opposite this time. Spogmay, go first.

Spogmay: 4:33

Hi, my name is Spogmay Ahmed, and I am a Senior Policy Advisor with the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative, and I'm based in New York.

Jill: 4:41

Hi there, and I'm Jill Montilla. I'm the Development and Communications Associate with the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative, and I'm an American based in Paris.

Jennie: 4:51

Wonderful. I'm so excited to have y'all on here. We have talked about feminist foreign policy before. We had Lyric on, but it has been quite a while. So, I feel like we should maybe start with like the very basic of like what is Feminist Foreign Policy?

Spogmay: 5:06

Yeah, so Feminist Foreign Policy is a policy framework that is challenging traditional understandings of foreign policy. So, oftentimes when people think of foreign policy, the things that come to mind are defense, military, state-centered security, power, and competition. Feminist Foreign Policy is really an effort to shift away from that framing and instead towards a more people-centered approach to foreign policy. So, it's prioritizing things like peace, gender equality, human rights, and environmental integrity. The principles and the priorities of Feminist Foreign Policy are really rooted in legacies of feminist history and organizing. But as a policy framework, it was first introduced to the world stage by the government of Sweden in 2014. And since then, upwards of 15 governments have formally committed to a feminist foreign or development policy, and many more have engaged with the topic in regional and multilateral settings. At the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative, we have our own lengthy definition of a feminist foreign policy, which I definitely recommend folks check out on our website, ffpcollaborative.org. But essentially, it describes feminist foreign policy as the policy of a state that disrupts colonial, racist, patriarchal, and male-dominated power structures. And we follow a 5R framework for assessing a feminist foreign policy. Those include first, rights, so how does a feminist foreign policy ground human rights? Second, resources, or what's backing up a commitment to a feminist foreign policy. Third, representation, which is not just who's at the table making these decisions, but also how are we really meaningfully working with the communities who will be most impacted by foreign policy decision making? Fourth, research and reporting. So how are these commitments measurable? How can we track their progress? And lastly, reach, which arguably is the most important and also the hardest to implement. So reach is describing coherence in foreign policy. So, when we're calling for a Feminist Foreign Policy, we don't just want feminist commitments in development aid and security, we also want them in spaces like trade, immigration, refugee assistance, and so on. And also, is there a coherence between the commitments that governments are making at home in their domestic policies and in their foreign policies as well? So there's a lot packed in there, but essentially I think of it as a more people-centered approach to foreign policy that's centering human dignity and the centralization of equity and justice for all.

Jennie: 8:03

That's so great. I really, I have really enjoyed this idea. I've been involved with Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative over the years, and it really is just such a more, I mean, honestly, hopeful vision for the world, right? And it has always been great to learn more as this has gone forward over the years. And so one of the big things is y'all just released a new report on defining feminist foreign policy. What can you tell us about the findings in the report?

Spogmay: 8:34

Yeah, so our defining Feminist Foreign Policy report provides an overview of the state of the field of Feminist Foreign Policy. And it's a report that we at the Collaborative release every two years. So, this is the fourth edition of that report covering the period 2023 to 2025. And it's also our longest and most comprehensive yet. It provides an in-depth analysis of over 20 countries that have either committed to a Feminist Foreign Policy or are interested in this agenda. And I can share candidly that when we first started this report, we honestly thought that this was the beginning of the end of Feminist Foreign Policy. We started this research at a time when we were reading headlines of genocide, loss, and climate catastrophe. Right-wing governments were winning elections, several governments were starting to renounce their Feminist Foreign Policy commitments. And in such a dark context, we expected this to be our goodbye letter to this movement. But instead, we actually found a much more hopeful picture than we anticipated and proof that this work is continuing in spite of the most difficult circumstances. So, we found that Feminist Foreign Policies have actually survived more elections than they have lost. And in this time period, several governments developed and expanded their feminist foreign policies from Colombia to France to Spain, including by publishing new frameworks, action plans, and commitments. We also saw an increase in multilateral, regional, and bilateral activity around this agenda, from the United Nations, to what we call South-South cooperation efforts, where governments across the global south are working together to advance feminist foreign policy principles. And we identified a number of firsts or things that governments were doing for the first time to really sustain wins around Feminist Foreign Policy, whether that be things like establishing gender units in their ministries of foreign affairs or enshrining feminist principles into law. We also did a deep dive into four pressing issue areas in this report. First, of course, sexual and reproductive health and rights, which we'll get into, which we found for this report, was both an issue of consensus and one of contention. Second, the case of Palestine, which led to a lot of breakdowns in this field over the past couple of years. We reviewed evolving policy positions, challenges to government coherence, and the ways in which the feminist movement was stepping up and pushing back and using this framework to advocate for greater global justice. Third, an official development assistance and looking at the funding crisis around feminist foreign policy and how these commitments actually promote governments to invest more in women's rights and gender equality. And lastly, on institutionalization. So, how do we sustain wins around feminist foreign policy and gender equality? And this feels very real, particularly for those of us in the United States, of when we have a political window to advance gender equality, how do we make sure those gains aren't so easily reversed when political tides turn? So it's a long report, but definitely recommend taking a deep dive into some of it.

Jennie: 11:58

So let's do like a little deep dive into one particular section, and that's the sexual and reproductive health and rights section. Let's let's dig into it. What do we see in this section?

Jill: 12:10

Totally, and I think that's why we're all here today, right? So, we found actually between 2023 and 2025, FFP governments have really taken up SRHR as an urgent priority and also a site for collective action. And this is something that we've been calling for since 2018. So it's really good to see this unity right now, especially with the revival of the Geneva Consensus, which is an anti-SRHR and anti-LGBTQIA plus rights declaration signed on by I think 40 countries at this point. And from our research, I think there are two key trends that I kind of want to tease out. The first is around progress on coherence. This is something that we FFP advocates talk about a lot, and coherence between what a state claims to care about internationally on the shiny stages and what it actually does at home. So keeping this in mind, we we saw promising leadership on protecting SRH domestically among FFP countries. You've mentioned this before on the podcast, but France, for example, constitutionalized the right to abortion, and this was in direct response to the overturn of Roe v. Wade. And it's also an example of those institutionalization efforts that Spock made mentioned before, and something that we encourage administrations to do while you still have the kind of political power to be able to do so. I think within also this coherence kind of trend, we also saw leadership in Mexico, Luxembourg, and Chile, all who made moves to either decriminalize or constitutionalize the freedom to have an abortion since the publication of the report with varying degrees of success and resistance. And Spain has actually also taken the innovative step of enshrining its uh development financing commitments for gender equality and SRH specifically into law. I think on to the second trend that I think is relevant for the listeners is uh around increased coordination in uh multilateral spaces and negotiations. This is significant because we are seeing a huge surge of highly coordinated, well-funded anti-rights actors occupying these spaces, and they are eroding long-established norms and language around SRHR, women's autonomy, the idea of the family. So seeing progressive coalitions emerge to counter them is actually really inspiring. And for example, we saw Colombia, France, and Spain leverage their feminist foreign policies during UNCSW negotiations in March this year, and they actually positioned SRHR as a crucial component of their development cooperation. And we also saw promising coordination at the Commission on Population and Development in April. And most recently, and I think most strikingly, is in just this past October at the Fourth Ministerial Conference on Feminist Foreign Policy, which was hosted in Paris by the government of France. And the outcome of this conference was a political declaration, wherein 31 countries committed to working together on a number of key issues for the movement, including SRHR, and it even had an explicit mention to the right to safe abortion care. So just to kind of wrap it up, we're we're in a context where SRHR and abortion are often the first issues cut in the name of consensus. And also we're in a context where these rights are facing coordinated attack across sectors. So the significance that we didn't need to water down language to get 31 countries to say, hey, we need to work together right now isn't lost on us.

Jennie: 15:20

You talk about the moment and you're seeing a lot of pushback, particularly from anti-rights groups, but you're also seeing a couple of donor countries, key donor countries who have taken some steps away from feminist foreign policy, most notably Sweden, the Netherlands, and most recently Canada. What are we seeing with this?

Jill: 15:40

Yeah, Jennie, political declarations are important and they're important for- it's an important opportunity for states to demonstrate their political will, but at the end of the day, you gotta follow the money, right? So to be honest, the the funding reality for international feminist work is really tough right now. You know, we're even feeling it ourselves here at the collaborative for the for the first time. We we've lost funding because one of our donors shifted away from supporting US-based organizations in the current climate. And just to paint a more global picture, 11 donor countries have announced substantial cuts to official development assistance or ODA. And this accounts for 75% of all ODA that could amount to a decline of over $56 billion over the next two years. And what does this mean? And it means that half of the women's rights organizations working in crisis settings, filling critical gaps for services related to SRHR, are likely to close their doors within the next six months. As the UN Special Repertoire on Debt said uh just in the summer, um, when states make these decisions, there is blood on the budget line. And I think this all begs the question of why we're here today. And the question is one of the questions is that when a country adopts a feminist foreign policy, does it actually lead to any real change in development financing for gender equality? And our research says yes. And we found that there's a correlation between a state having an FFP and giving more money to feminist causes. And we can see that from the research from our Senior Fellow, Beth Woroniuk, that she launched in Paris, which dove into the ODA commitments of Feminist Foreign Policy countries that belong to the OECD Development Assistance Committee. And she found that up until 2023, compared to their non-FFP counterparts, FFP countries invest more of their ODA budgets into gender equality more broadly. They invest more into initiatives preventing and responding to violence against women. They invest five times more on a percentage basis in women's rights organizations. And we also found that countries that announce feminist foreign policies often launch special funding initiatives to accompany them. Special funding initiatives meant specifically for feminist organizations and ones that are aligned with feminist practice around power sharing. So this is what we're talking about with core, flexible, multi-year funding that puts more money into the hands of actual practitioners. I think one interesting data point that would I would be remiss to not mention was that we found also that Feminist Foreign Policy countries actually don't fund higher than the average when it comes to SRHR, though. Something that we've highlighted, we need more research to follow up on. So, that's what the research says. But if we want to zoom out and think about the question of the future of funding for Feminist Foreign Policy and SRHR, I think there are three points that I'd like to close off on here. And the first is just to address the elephant in the room. Uh, this data only goes up until 2023. So, we can expect that these numbers to drop in the next two years, given the massive cuts that have been recently announced. I think the second point that I want to mention is that we can't lose sight of the fact that when we talk about ODA cuts, whether they're coming from FFP or non-FFP countries, ODA is just one part of a larger set of dynamics that determines how this work actually gets funded. So I think it was in your conversation with Anu Kumar, the president of IPass earlier last month. Y'all discussed how the chaos created by USAID's dismantlement is sparking a lot of reshuffling of partnerships, new thinking on how to move beyond US financial assistance, and just a lot of reimagination. And in our corner of the FFP space, we're seeing similar, we're seeing a lot of thought leadership from our regional partners, particularly those in Africa, on how tax and debt justice could provide avenues to fill these gaps. So there are creative ways to overcome and think beyond the current bleak funding reality. And I think finally, like the point that I want to make is that there's a gap between what is announced when FFPs are abandoned and what's actually happening in terms of the portfolios, the staffing. And like you mentioned, Canada and Prime Minister Kearney's off-handed comment about Canada no longer having an FFP. Well, you know, feminist activists, along with elected officials and civil servants, are pushing back and saying, hey, feminism and caring about gender equality are very much so still part of our foreign policy. And not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it's a smart thing to do with our money. And I think this is a reminder that we need to continue to look beyond the headlines and remain focused and strategic.

Jennie: 20:06

So, you mentioned the Fourth Ministerial Meeting earlier. I feel like there's some more to dig into around what happened there. Can we talk a little bit more about what happened at the Ministerial Meeting?

Jill: 20:17

So, you know, my colleagues and I were looking at 2025 as a test case to see if this progressive cohort of countries could act as a sort of geopolitical counter to the rising authoritarianism and anti-rights backlash that we're seeing, seeing as represented by the bloc of 40 or so governments backing the anti-abortion Geneva consensus. And coming out of this ministerial conference on feminist foreign policy, the fourth of its kind that was held in Paris this past October, we have reason to believe, yes, the feminist foreign policy and allied countries are up for the task. I mentioned earlier this political declaration, which brought together 31 signatories. And I encourage everyone to go check out the full list because it's an interesting mix of countries bringing in allies from Eastern Europe, Europe, Africa, Latin America, I think a couple from Asia as well. And it contained many of the issues and language that feminists have been calling for states to stand up and protect. And so not just to name a couple, we have women and girls' bodily autonomy, we have SRHR, we have states not backing away from language on safe abortion care and maternal health, even the recognition of the existence of diverse forms of families and the role of the state to protect them. It mentions the need to combat gender-based violence as not only a national but also an international priority. So this is another example of that international coherence that we were talking about earlier. And also clear connections between Feminist Foreign Policy and climate change. So, on the point of declaration, it was exciting to see that there was real efforts to reclaim the idea of the family, but on feminist terms.

Spogmay: 21:52

Yeah, and I can share a little bit about the history and legacy of these conferences as well, is that they first started back in 2022 when the government of Germany introduced this ministerial-level conference to the world stage. Then they passed the baton to the government of the Netherlands, which passed it to the government of Mexico, and then just this October to the government of France. So it's been really interesting to see the evolution of these conferences over the years and see how feminist foreign policy is being increasingly platformed as an essential part of foreign policy discussions and the ways in which civil society are a part of that. So an exciting outcome that came out of the French conference was that the government of Spain committed to hosting the 2026 conference, which is really interesting because Spain has really stood out among this cohort of countries. As Jill mentioned, they've taken steps to implement principles of their feminist foreign policy into law. It's been the only country to refuse to commit to NATO's increased 5% spending target. Earlier this year, Spain hosted the fourth international conference on financing for development. So there's a real opportunity we have coming up to advance a lot of the issues that are important to sexual and reproductive health and rights, like peace and security, like funding and others that Spain has stepped up in amongst this cohort. Also, as part of the conference, outside of the formal plenary sessions, there were a lot of interesting discussions organized by partners and led by civil society, and sexual and reproductive health and rights was a part of that. So it was great to see that this is still a priority area for the governments and the partners showing up. We also organized a session on best practices and government civil society collaboration, which is something that we see as so integral to the success of feminist foreign policy, is how our inside and outside actors working together to advance more feminist principles. What are ways in which we can more effectively and meaningfully push for this agenda beyond just the buzzwords of hosting consultations and panel discussions? But what does real partnership look like and how do we advance that? We're also excited at the Collaborative to be launching an accountability project with the government of France. So over the next several months, we'll be tracking commitments that are made by governments anytime between now and the next ministerial conference. So definitely encourage folks to follow this, see what developments can be made, how governments can step up, and what commitments we can get out of the 2026 Spanish Ministerial Conference.

Jennie: 24:44

So the other thing I've been thinking about, and I mean you've raised the Geneva consensus a couple times. And as coined by Rachel Moynihan, it is neither a consensus nor base was it based in Geneva. It's just to put that out there, but the real strength we're seeing not strength, that feels wrong, but the growth and proliferation of the anti-rights movement. How are we kind of pushing back against this?

Jill: 25:12

Yeah, that's the million-dollar question, isn't it?

Jennie: 25:16

Right?

Jill: 25:17

Yeah, no. It's been I think at the top of this year, and I feel like most a lot of the movement has been really kind of grinded down. And the headlines are not helping, the numbers that we're citing are not helping. But I think a little kind of like a reframe that I heard um a couple weeks ago was that we're facing such immense backlash right now. It's because we were making progress, and I think we have to keep that in mind is that we were we're doing the right things or we are being effective, and that's why we're facing such vehement backlash across so many different sectors. And we're seeing that one in four countries are reporting backlash on women's rights in 2024 because we're making progress. And I think that it's also important to look at how funding for anti-rights actors is also exploding, just to be a bit more systematic on understanding what is the architecture behind this nebulous thing that we call anti-rights movement. And if we can look at maybe Europe as kind of a microcosm of what's definitely being replicated in different parts of the quote-unquote global south, there was some research that was published by the European Parliamentary Forum, and they issued two different reports, one back a couple years ago that looked at funding for the anti-gender pushback movement in European decision-making spaces from 2009 to 2018, and they found that there was $700 million that were being put to support orgs that are lobbying, litigating, fear-mongering around gender equality, SRHR, the rights of queer folk, and some aspects of children's rights. They recently updated this report based off of data from 2019 to 2023, and that number has more than doubled to 1.2 billion euros. So the funding available for anti-gender pushback has more than doubled in less than half the time. So the context, and this is all happening in the context of huge philanthropic cuts for the international feminist uh ecosystem with the disappearance of a lot of cornerstone funders for the movement. The Alliance for Feminist Movements, I think they estimated that a minimum of $2.83 billion per year will be introduced less into the funding ecosystem for feminist movements. At the same time, the the FFP countries we surveyed and the movement actors uh we we work with are pushing back. And I think it's funny because we're taking some lessons from the aunties. I think there are three things that I think strategies that are giving me hope, at least. And the first one is around leveraging caucuses at the United Nations. We have uh something called the Feminist Foreign Policy Plus group, which is an informal caucus of FFP and what we call FFP-curious member states that are interested in coordinating and that are strategizing ahead of key UN negotiations. And we also have organizations like our partners at the Feminist Diplomacy Lab that are filling a much-needed gap in capacity training for these negotiators. I think a second tactic that we're seeing the progressive uh cohorts adopt is around prioritizing strategic messaging. This is something that anties are very good at doing is leveraging emotion, primarily fear and anger to change public opinion on things that we regard as self-evident and adapting language depending on the political context and audiences that they're talking to. So we've seen now FFP governments and civil society paying a lot more attention to documenting our wins and telling the story of why FFP is important in order to be able to fill that gap in the media landscape. And the final tactic that, as Spogmay has already mentioned, but I think it's important to kind of it put in the context of this and the framework when we're talking about anti-gender backlash and how to push back is around the institutionalization of progress. We're working on a playbook right now, and what we're trying to do is we're trying to aggregate through strategies with actual feminist policymakers and activists, aggregate strategies that they're using where they're able to leverage legal avenues, budgetary ring fencing, and other methods in order to be able to protect progress for not if, but when administrations change.

Jennie: 29:18

I feel like the another big challenge facing Feminist Foreign Policy right now is just the conflict and crisis we're seeing all over the place. What are some of the ways that Feminist Foreign Policy is working to deal with this big crisis right now?

Spogmay: 29:31

Yeah, I think one of the real strengths of Feminist Foreign Policy— and we see this amongst our partners and with our networks— is that it provides a framework for us to address a host of issues impacting gender equality and human rights. So, those of us who work in gender, we see how a lot of the times our approaches to advocacy and policy can be kind of siloed. We have folks working on SRHR, we have others working on gender-based violence, we have others working on women, peace, and security. But Feminist Foreign Policy is really an intentional effort to bring a lot of that together under the frame of Feminist Foreign Policy and coherence. So for us, we see it as really important to build greater linkages between SRHR, conflict, crisis, and climate change. You've had people on this podcast, Jennie, who have shared more about reproductive violence in Palestine, in Sudan, in other conflict and crisis settings. UNFPA describes Afghanistan, for example, as one of the most dangerous places in the world to give birth. So there's a real urgency of addressing sexual and reproductive health and rights within a broader lens and looking at these bigger structural issues. So feminist foreign policy helps us to understand how these issues are intertwined, and it also pushes governments to address them in a more coherent way. And we see that as really integral as civil society members, people in our community are trying to get governments to understand that, yes, you can invest in suction reproductive health and rights, but how far is that progress going to go if there are also policies that are impacting women's lives through military expenditure, through climate change, through debt and through taxation? How can we look at broader structural issues and the impacts that they have and making people's lives harder and bringing that linkage to SRHR? So feminist foreign policy is one lens to better cohesively address this and something that I think we're trying to increasingly push for as we get deeper and deeper into this movement. That's great.

Jennie: 31:52

I love that you're looking at the new areas to get involved with, and I feel like one of those areas is looking in the digital space. So, do we talk a little bit about some of the work y'all are doing around the digital space?

Jill: 32:04

We're seeing, at least in our corner, that there's an increasing recognition of the surge of violence and exclusion that is accompanying the so-called digital transformation and acceleration of AI development. And we're seeing the emergence of new forms of online and what we're calling technology-facilitated gender-based violence. And these come in many scary forms, including sex tortion and doxing and cyberbullying, stalking, deep fakes, and increasingly now, especially with the accessibility of different kinds of AI, free AI-generated platforms, the development of AI-generated non-consensual pornography. And what this is doing is it's shrinking online civic space for these organizations to be able to do their work and get their messages out. It's discouraging women to get in and stay in politics, and it's threatening the security and lives of many people, including those of women's human rights defenders that are oftentimes leveraging the internet to be able to expand their message. At least from our research, we've been able to see that most FFP governments are really seeing this and they're integrating feminist or at least gender-sensitive principles into their digital innovation systems. And I think it's also been exciting to see how Feminist Foreign Policy countries are trying to get gender out of its silo when it comes to talking about this kind of insular insulated space of digital development. So we had, for example, France earlier this year hosted an AI summit. And within that summit, one of the main pillars to talk about was gender equality. This is a very good example of how states are trying to integrate gender, feminist foreign policy principles into these spaces that usually don't ever hear about human-centered approaches. And at the end of the day, AI and other digital innovation has enormous potential to help identify and combat gender discrimination and gender-based violence, or to worsen them. And I think that Feminist Foreign Policy, because the very core of Feminist Foreign Policy is innovation, I think that it's the proper framework and tool to be able to take on the challenge of AI and the threats that it poses to gender equality.

Jennie: 34:14

So, you know, with all of these threats you're seeing and seeing some of the countries taking a step back, it seems like a really important to find new ways to step to move forward and finding new allies. So tell us a little bit about some of the stuff you're doing in that area.

Spogmay: 34:31

Yeah, absolutely. I think I'll highlight two things here, which is first, we've talked a lot about the gains that we've made through feminist foreign policy and a lot of the positive results that we saw from our research, which has been so reaffirming. But also just want to point out feminist foreign policy as a discourse has only existed for just over a decade, which in the broad scheme of foreign policy is not a very long time. So this is still a pretty marginalized discourse in broader foreign policy conversations. And we at the collaborative and with our partners really want to be entering new spaces, want to speak to people who are more involved in mainstream foreign policy discussions, whether they be about defense or security or trade or immigration. So we're looking at broadening our alliances, seeing who we can identify in new spaces, how we can share that Feminist Foreign Policy is a people-centered approach that supports all and contributes to the advancement of democracy and things that are really fraying right now in this political context, and how shifting our framework to understand foreign policy through this lens can be so powerful and so beneficial. Another thing I'll point out is just coming back to Jill's points around the anti-rights movement. The anti-rights movement has been so successful in broadening its own membership, its own alliances, and exploiting things like culture and religion and tradition. But it's really important for us to remember that the rise in anti-rights movements is it's not something that is inherently rooted in any culture or religion or tradition. It's just the exploitation of social conservatism for power and political gain. So it's troubling to me that the feminist movement is the one that cares about diversity and intersectionality and inclusion, but the face of the anti-rights movement is actually oftentimes more diverse than the face of the feminist movement. So, we can and we should be speaking to new audiences. We should be understanding that women's leadership and agency and reproductive health are so important and foundational to so many cultures, contexts, and communities. And how do we use that to better understand people, identify our sisters across the feminist movement, and continue pushing and broadening our alliances, entering new spaces, and hopefully one day winning again.

Jennie: 37:14

So to get us winning again, we need to get more people involved. So I feel like this is a great time to talk about what can our audience do? Like how can our audience get involved in this fight?

Spogmay: 37:23

Yeah, so I want to actually get back to the points that we made about institutionalization. And I know that that's a big word, but in our paper, we had the opportunity to identify a couple of strategies for what sustaining feminist foreign policy or institutionalizing feminist foreign policy looks like. So those five strategies are first policy, which is pushing for legislative or administrative frameworks. Second, architecture, through establishing dedicated departments or units for this work. Third, budgetary, through earmarking specific funds or investment in key initiatives. Fourth, leadership, through tapping dedicated high-level roles and positions. And lastly, capacity through staff training on feminist foreign or development policy. So these are all different strategies that communities can be pushing for. We should be encouraging our governments, our legislators, our allies to be getting a little bit more creative and protecting gains for feminist foreign policy when we have them. Of course, I think in this difficult funding period, in this real political crisis, we've also really realized the power of the feminist ecosystem. So who's doing the policy work, who is on the front lines, who's most at risk, and how can we collectively step up? So we definitely encourage working in partnership with others, working in coalition with others, checking out which organizations are a part of this movement and how we can get involved. There's a real eagerness for support across the feminist community and across the feminist ecosystem. And of course, I think there's a real opportunity now for feminist foreign policy governments and allies to rally around this agenda. So continuing to build linkages between the domestic and the international. So those of us in the US, for example, are facing unprecedented things for the first time. How do we lean into our allies in other countries? How do we get support from our feminist partners who have faced similar crises in the past? So, I think there's a lot to say here around network building, partnership, and also pushing for those advocacy changes that can protect concrete wins when political tides turn.

Jill: 39:49

And I think just one last thing that I wanted to tag on to everything that Spogmay just said. I think for if you're if you're listening to this podcast, if people are listening to this podcast, you probably already have your lane when it comes to women's rights, gender equality, SRH— whether that be the fact that you're the most progressive person at the dinner table at Christmas, or if you actually if you work in an organization that's dedicated to women's rights, in any case, it's just important that we again maybe take a lesson from the aunties and remember that we need to play the long game. They've paid the long game; they've been patient; they have been building political power; they've been raising the money; they've been building networks, and we need to remember that it is the moment is bleak right now, but we will find our way through it. And that strength that we find in each other, we need to reach for it and we need to find new friends, unlikely allies. And just to reach for a quote from a uh Palestinian human rights activist here in Paris, she said something that has really stuck with me and I've been really clinging to in the past few years, really, which is that, "the victory is in the fight." And so just keep fighting and keep up to date. You can connect with us with our newsletter or by joining the Global Party. Network for feminist foreign policy for updates and just yeah, thank you for being in the fight and just thank yourself and thank your community.

Jennie: 41:12

Thank you all so much for being here. It was so great to get to talk to you about Feminist Foreign Policy today. Spogmay and Jill, it was great. Thank you so much.

Jill: 41:22

Thanks, Jennie.

Spogmay: 41:23

Thank you, Jennie. It's our pleasure.

Jennie: 41:25

Okay, y'all. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Spogmay and Jill. It was so great to hear what was new and happening around feminist foreign policy. And it's always great to check back in in that area. There's so many interesting things happening. And with that, I will see everybody for a special fun bonus episode of SRHR Hero Origin Stories next week. And then we'll be off between Christmas and New Year's. So with that, I'll see everyone next week. If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com, or you can find us on social media. We're at rePROs Fight Back on Facebook and Twitter, or @reprofb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and want to make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you want to make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprosfightback.com. Thanks all!