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Does Female Leadership Matter? An Analysis of Swedish Foreign Ministers and their Parliamentary Speeches, 1955–2016

Bäck, Hanna LU orcid and Björkdahl, Annika LU (2017) In STANCE Working Papers Series 2017(10). p.1-32
Abstract
The current Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström, has in her foreign policy statement claimed that a feminist foreign policy will be an integral part of activities throughout the Swedish Foreign Service. Even though an explicit ‘feminist foreign policy’ is a rather recent and ‘Swedish’ phenomenon, foreign policies in line with such a general ‘feminist’ agenda may have been implemented throughout history, by various foreign policy leaders. The question is, does the gender of leaders matter for foreign policy? The previous literature on women in foreign policy making has mainly been based on case studies of individual women in power, or on gender equality as key to explaining sustainable peace. We contribute to the literature on gender... (More)
The current Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström, has in her foreign policy statement claimed that a feminist foreign policy will be an integral part of activities throughout the Swedish Foreign Service. Even though an explicit ‘feminist foreign policy’ is a rather recent and ‘Swedish’ phenomenon, foreign policies in line with such a general ‘feminist’ agenda may have been implemented throughout history, by various foreign policy leaders. The question is, does the gender of leaders matter for foreign policy? The previous literature on women in foreign policy making has mainly been based on case studies of individual women in power, or on gender equality as key to explaining sustainable peace. We contribute to the literature on gender and foreign policy by systematically evaluating a claim that female foreign policy leaders make a difference, that is, having a female foreign policy leader in a country is likely to lead to certain policy outputs in the area of foreign policy. We evaluate this claim by analyzing the changes in policy rhetoric and suggested policy measures of Swedish foreign policy leaders, male and female, in their domestic foreign policy declarations during the post-world war II period. (Less)
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author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Working paper/Preprint
publication status
published
subject
keywords
feminism, female, foreign policy, Sweden, leadership
in
STANCE Working Papers Series
volume
2017
issue
10
pages
32 pages
publisher
Department of Political Science, Lund University
project
State-Making and the Origins of Global Order in the Long Nineteenth Century and Beyond
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
712c8332-789a-4449-a6f4-f7e8778233b8
date added to LUP
2018-01-23 14:51:50
date last changed
2021-03-23 22:19:37
@misc{712c8332-789a-4449-a6f4-f7e8778233b8,
  abstract     = {{The current Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström, has in her foreign policy statement claimed that a feminist foreign policy will be an integral part of activities throughout the Swedish Foreign Service. Even though an explicit ‘feminist foreign policy’ is a rather recent and ‘Swedish’ phenomenon, foreign policies in line with such a general ‘feminist’ agenda may have been implemented throughout history, by various foreign policy leaders. The question is, does the gender of leaders matter for foreign policy? The previous literature on women in foreign policy making has mainly been based on case studies of individual women in power, or on gender equality as key to explaining sustainable peace. We contribute to the literature on gender and foreign policy by systematically evaluating a claim that female foreign policy leaders make a difference, that is, having a female foreign policy leader in a country is likely to lead to certain policy outputs in the area of foreign policy. We evaluate this claim by analyzing the changes in policy rhetoric and suggested policy measures of Swedish foreign policy leaders, male and female, in their domestic foreign policy declarations during the post-world war II period.}},
  author       = {{Bäck, Hanna and Björkdahl, Annika}},
  keywords     = {{feminism; female; foreign policy; Sweden; leadership}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Working Paper}},
  number       = {{10}},
  pages        = {{1--32}},
  publisher    = {{Department of Political Science, Lund University}},
  series       = {{STANCE Working Papers Series}},
  title        = {{Does Female Leadership Matter? An Analysis of Swedish Foreign Ministers and their Parliamentary Speeches, 1955–2016}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/37490805/2017_10_Ba_ck_Bjo_rkdahl.pdf}},
  volume       = {{2017}},
  year         = {{2017}},
}