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Feminist foreign policies in general have been increasingly implemented since the mid 2010s, with countries such as France and Mexico recently announcing their plans to implement this kind of policy in 2019 and 2020 respectively. The area of foreign policy where there tends to be the most gender mainstreaming is foreign development and aid. General criticisms of feminist foreign policies that have been put forth by global north countries are that other areas of their foreign policy perpetuates vioence towards women, most considerably arms sales. Another critique is that it causes women to be viewed as weak and maternal and in need of protection. It also does not include gender non-conforming people, who also face many of the same issues as women in conflict such as sexualized violence as well as their own unique challenges and discrimination that is not being addressed in these policies.

In 2017 Canada launched its new foreign assistance plan, Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. The policy describes where Canada’s budget for foreign will be allocated, and Canada chose to focus on putting money towards initiatives that support women in the global south. The policy outlines six action areas that Canada intends to focus on: Human dignity, growth that works for everyone, environment and climate change, inclusive governance, peace and security and the main core focus of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. These action areas align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, with a focus on goal number 5 which is gender equality. Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy states that its overall goal is the eradication of poverty and that the most effective approach to achieve this goal is the promotion of gender equality.

Canada’s new policy stems from the concept of gender mainstreaming, which means that gender is at the forefront of a given initiative, and this concept has been utilized in discussions surrounding foreign aid for awhile. The first major landmark international legislation that included gender mainstreaming was the United Nations Resolution 1325 that was passed in the year 2000. Part of this resolution is the Women Peace and Security agenda which has goals including: support for sexual violence survivors as well as supporting women’s involvement in peace processes. Canada’s policy focuses on the empowerment of women, which emerged in the discussion of development in the 1980s and 1990s, but at the time was considered a radical concept. The goal in promoting the empowerment of women is to give them confidence to challenge social norms that may be harmful to their community as well as to change gendered power relations.