Introduction

Until recently, official diplomatic positions, such as those of ambassador, envoy and diplomat, were exceptionally male-dominated. Particularly through the professionalization of diplomacy in the 19th century, institutions, such as foreign ministries, embassies and permanent missions were made to be masculinized institutions, attributed putatively ‘masculine’ traits, and made to accommodate men and male roles. Starting in the 20th century, often due to mobilizations by women, the diplomatic office was not only opened to women, but several institutional features developed that challenged the male dominance of foreign policy. This chapter aims to identify, map and theorize some of these changes over time. Our key argument is that such institutional features may be related to the implementation of foreign policy and that both diplomacy and foreign policy scholars should pay more attention to the links between diplomatic institutional infrastructure and foreign policy contents.

With this aim, our chapter brings novel knowledge to the study of gender, diplomacy and foreign policy analysis (FPA). In the large academic literature on diplomacy, there has been a remarkable growth of studies on gender and diplomacy in the past decade (for overviews, see Aggestam and Towns, 2018 ; 2019; Niklasson and Towns, 2022). The aim of these studies has primarily been to document and analyse the gendered institutional features that advantage men to the detriment of women. Our chapter turns this question around, centring on institutional changes that help challenge the androcentrism and male dominance of diplomacy. We also suggest that these institutional features may shape the concrete form foreign policy comes to take when it is implemented. In other words, with new institutional forms that enable or promote the participation of women in diplomacy, we may also see new foreign policy content.

We also speak to scholarship on continuity and change in diplomacy (Leguey-Feilleux, 2009; Hamilton and Langhorne, 2011; Neumann, 2020). Diplomatic change and continuity have been debated for over a century – the impact of democracy and technological changes have been of particular interest – but this voluminous body of work has not yet looked at transformations in the gendered features of diplomacy over time. In turn, FPA has recently seen a vibrant research agenda on gender emerge, with a slew of innovative agenda-setting pieces (Achilleos-Sarll, 2018; Aggestam and True, 2020; 2021; Smith, 2020) and careful empirical analyses (Dean, 2001; Haastrup, 2020; Lee-Koo, 2020; Thomson, 2020).