Feminist Foreign Policy

PSIA presents a special conference with leading experts:

Feminist Foreign Policy:
A Comparative Perspective from France, Sweden and the United States

Wednesday 10 March 2021 | 5:00pm - 6:15pm CET

A discussion chaired by:

• Enrico Letta, Dean of the Sciences Po Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA)

With guest speakers:

• Delphine O, Ambassador-at-large and Secretary General of the Generation Equality Forum
• Melanne Verveer, former US Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, current Executive Director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security
• Margot Wallström, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden, former Vice President of the European Commission.

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Feminist foreign policy is increasingly growing traction within national and international discourse and policy-making.

A few years after Sweden adopted a feminist foreign policy in 2014, several countries including France have followed its lead, raising pressure on the United States to do the same.

Feminist foreign policy consists in “applying a systematic gender equality perspective throughout the whole foreign policy agenda” according to Sweden’s handbook on the topic.

This event will present and discuss the perspectives from France, Sweden and the United States through the voices of three leading experts: Margot Wallström initiated this approach when she was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden. Melanne Verveer was the first US Ambassador-at-large for Global Women’s Issues (2009-2013) and worked with Hillary Clinton at the State Department to incorporate a gender lens into US foreign policy decisions in particular. Delphine O is Ambassador-at-large and Secretary General for the Generation Equality Forum, the largest international summit for women’s rights since 1995, convened by UN Women and co-chaired by France and Mexico.

GUEST SPEAKERS' BIOGRAPHIES

Delphine O

Delphine O is ambassador-at-large and Secretary General for the Generation Equality Forum (Beijing+25). She leads the organization of the largest international summit for women’s rights since 1995, convened by UN Women and co-chaired by France and Mexico.

She was previously a Member of Parliament for La République en Marche, elected in Paris. A member of the Foreign Relations Committee and chairwoman of the France-Iran friendship group at the French National Assembly, she authored a report on the strategic stakes in the South China Sea.

Delphine O graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Harvard Kennedy School. After working at the French embassy in Seoul, the Consulate General in New York and the Stimson Center in Washington, she moved to Iran and cofounded the information website “Persian Letters”.

She is a French-American Young Leader 2019, Munich Young Leader 2019, member of the Council at the Council on Foreign Relations, member of the Strategic Orientation Board of the German Marshall Fund France and a board member of IRIS (Institut des Relations Internationales et Stratégiques).

Melanne VERVEER

Ambassador Melanne Verveer is the Executive Director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She also serves as the Special Representative on Gender Issues for the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office.

Ambassador Verveer previously served as the first U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, a position to which she was nominated by President Obama in 2009. She coordinated foreign policy issues and activities relating to the political, economic and social advancement of women. She worked to ensure that women’s participation and rights are fully integrated into U.S. foreign policy, and she played a leadership role in the Administration’s development of the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. President Obama also appointed her to serve as the U.S. Representative to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

From 2000-2008, she was the Chair and Co-CEO of Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international NGO that she co-founded to invest in emerging women leaders. During the Clinton administration, she served as Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady. She also led the effort to establish the President’s Interagency Council on Women, and was instrumental in the adoption of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. 

Margot WALLSTRÖM

Margot Wallström is a Swedish politician of the Swedish Social Democratic Party who served as Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden from 2014 to 2019. In those same years, she also served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Sweden.

Wallström previously served as the first United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict from 2010 to 2012, as Vice President of the European Commission and the European Commissioner for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy from 2004 to 2010. 

In 2014, Wallström made headlines around the world as Sweden became the first country in the world to formally adopt a “feminist foreign policy.”

Portraits from left to right: Delphine O (©DR); Melanne Verveer (©GIWPS); Margot Wallström (©Kristian Pohl).