Gendering the practice turn in diplomacy

Marriage diplomacy

Marriage diplomacy is an example of how changes in the stakes-at-stake, particularly the shifting location of political authority, changed the value of femininity-as-capital. In pre- and early modern Europe, the locus of political authority was vested in nobles and their kin. As such, marriage served as a means of securing diplomatic ties among families. While Bourdieu conceives of marriage as a mechanism that allows men to accumulate women’s symbolic capital (2001: 43), marriage diplomacy was a more complicated practice of gendered exchange. For example, Fichtner (1976) demonstrates that marriage was fundamental to Habsburg diplomacy. The Habsburgs mainly pursued marriages within diplomatic spheres of interest, such as Poland and Bavaria, illustrating that marriages were less a matter of preference than politics. The occasion of marriage was not only an exchange in itself, but also created obligations between the parties that would shape future interactions. By marrying from within dynastic ranks, marriage also helped to consolidate political power that would ensure the continuity of the empire through the production of legitimate heirs.

The agency of women also mattered: outside of Europe, there is evidence of Mongolian ruler Genghis Khan using the marriages of his daughters to secure influence over different areas of his empire. While their husbands were nominally in charge, Khan’s daughters exerted influence through their relationships with their father (Weatherford, 2011). Women seem to have played similar informal roles in Ottoman diplomacy (Rumelili and Suleymanoglu-Kurum, 2018). For female monarchs like Elizabeth I of England, marriage was fraught with diplomatic significance and anxiety over the boundary between the Queen’s body and the body politic (Saco, 1997). Negotiations over marriage to the Duke of Anjou failed not because of Elizabeth I’s unwillingness, but the objections of her court to the influence the Duke may have over English affairs (Mears, 2001).

The change in the field of diplomacy led to changes in the value placed on femininities. The importance of marriage diplomacy waned in Europe as the modern state emerged, which displaced representation from families to increasingly professionalized diplomatic corps (although their members were still mainly drawn from the aristocracy in the beginning) (McCarthy, 2014). Marriage remained central, but it underpinned a new practice of constructing the embassy as a family. McCarthy describes how early British embassies tended to house several representatives together, and how an ambassador and his wife would take a parental interest in the welfare of junior bachelors. The ambassador might invite junior bachelors to dine, while the ambassador’s wife would provide emotional labour in support of young men. The role of the diplomatic wife became increasingly defined in terms of the metaphor of an ‘official family,’ which emphasized the importance of domesticity and hospitality, key components of a bourgeois Western femininity (Wood, 2005). Thus, the shifting stakes-at-stake helped redefine the role of marriage in diplomacy.

The Women, Peace and Security Agenda

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda is an example of the rise of non-territorial authority in diplomacy. That is, diplomatic claims are increasingly grounded in symbolic sources, rather than territorial sovereignty (Sending et al., 2011). The WPS Agenda is a bundle of feminist conceptions of violence, agency, security and the international (Cohn et al., 2004; Kirby and Shepherd, 2016). It can be traced back at least one hundred years to the interwar activism of female pacifists and has global authorship (Basu, 2016b). Despite contestation, the articulation of gender equality as a norm of global governance has become more insistent and specific. Women’s bodies and perspectives are now things over which diplomats must negotiate and the national interest may now be a ‘feminist’ one. States like the US (under Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State) and Sweden have claimed that gender equality is a foreign policy priority. The UN Security Council remains ‘actively seized’ of gender equality, meaning diplomats have to learn how to negotiate over these issues (Basu, 2016a).

Moreover, the emergence of the WPS Agenda has empowered non-state actors to engage in diplomatic representation (Sending et al., 2011). Nongovernmental organizations like the NGO Working Group for Women, Peace and Security maintain a permanent presence at the United Nations, make speeches and interventions into UN debates, represent a feminist political viewpoint and constituency, and attempt to influence the behaviour of member states through informal negotiations and public communications strategies (NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, n.d.). These are all, arguably, diplomatic practices. Such groups locate their authority in the norm of gender equality and a transnational constituency of women, rather than in a territorially bounded nation-state.

As these examples demonstrate, changes in the stakes-at-stake in diplomacy have gendered consequences. Marriage diplomacy waned partly because it no longer served to buttress political authority in the modern nation-state. Marriage took on a new role in strenghtening diplomatic embassies abroad. Moreover, changes in gender relations in other fields have spilled into diplomacy, leading to the coexistence of traditional and non-traditional forms of authority and representative practices based on the goal of gender equality. The national interest, in some cases, is articulated through these practices.

Habitus, gender and representation

Habitus, gender and representation are closely entwined in diplomacy. Feminist IR scholars have pointed out that the modern nation-state and the international system are patriarchal constructs (Parashar et al., 2018; Tickner, 1992). For example, Wilcox (2009) examines the ‘cult of the offensive’ that led to disastrous military policies in World War I. Countering Van Evera (1984), she argues that gendered conceptions of the role of the state as a masculine protector and hero legitimate offensive military postures and doctrines. Similarly, Sjoberg (2013) modifies structural realism by arguing that conceptions of hegemonic masculinity differentiate states, creating gendered international order. Thus the representative role of the diplomat, who embodies the state, is drawn along similar lines. The embodiment of masculinities among diplomats is a tangible expression of the links that feminist IR scholars have drawn between foreign policy, national identity and gender. Here, I examine how gendered habitus figures in the representative work that diplomats and their spouses do, and how this has changed over time.

Texts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries specify the connection between the state and a diplomat’s habitus. Satow advises that ‘good temper, good health, good looks, [and] rather more than average intelligence’ are necessary qualifications for diplomats (Satow, 1922). Wood discusses how the US State Department at the time evaluated male diplomats on their appearance as an indication of their potential. Officials valued diplomats who projected a ‘stately and sophisticated, yet masculine, image reflecting U.S. power, prosperity, and prestige’ (2007: 517). They emphasized the importance of a tall, slender, prepossessing physique and expressed concern over the capabilities of men who were ‘thin,’ ‘effeminate,’ ‘weak,’ and ‘small in stature’ (2007: 516). When diplomats represented their country, they not only represented policy positions but also virile masculinity.

These gendered representations are unstable and contested. In the Norwegian context, a significant change over time has been the entry of men from the middle class, leading to a proliferation of masculinities among diplomats. Neumann notes that successful male Norwegian diplomats modeled their comportment on 20th-century European bourgeois ideals: ‘The bodily comportment should be relaxedly authoritative, hair should be short and slightly pomaded, the shirt should be white and rich in cotton, to be worn with a tie or a bow-tie, the shoes should be black and shining, the suit should be dark, with optional pin-stripes’ (Neumann, 2008: 682). Neumann concludes that this is a hegemonic form of masculinity. He identifies two other masculinities within the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: a subordinate working-class but upwardly mobile masculinity, and the intellectualist masculinity of the rebellious generation of 1968. He ascribes particular styles of dress and behaviour to each of these masculinities.

The habitus of female diplomats is particularly fraught. Early modern European female diplomats were usually noblewomen. As such, they had the bearing, dress and privileges of aristocrats, such as literacy and access to kinship networks of other nobles (Sluga and James, 2016). Their diplomatic efforts often took place in the private sphere, which meant that their femininity could facilitate political effectiveness. Contra Bourdieu, femininity could be considered valuable diplomatic capital in its own right when united with other kinds of privilege, such as nobility (Skeggs, 2004). Conversely, contemporary female diplomats must navigate the ambiguity of their place as women in a masculinized field. This illustrates the validity of the feminist claim that there is significant slippage between gendered habitus and structure, which women must self-consciously navigate (McCall, 1992). This conflict is expressed through dress, behaviour and the decision of individuals regarding the cultivation of relationships with men and women.

Female diplomats may adopt different ways of dealing with the capital associated with femininity. As an example, Neumann identifies three femininities among Norwegian diplomats: ‘woman-first-diplomat-next,’ ‘diplomat-first-woman-next’ and ‘new femininity,’ which attempts to use the category ‘woman’ tactically (2008: 688). Of these, the ‘woman-first’ femininity is most conflict-ridden. A woman embodying this femininity (e.g. by dressing in feminine clothing like skirts) may alienate women who attempt to subsume their gender beneath their identities as diplomats (‘diplomat-first-woman-next’). Neumann argues that this may be professionally counterproductive because it relies upon building relationships with others who identify as ‘women-first’ (e.g. secretaries, diplomatic wives) who have little influence over career success. Niklasson (2020) builds on Neumann’s work by examining how gender affects how Swedish diplomats network with local contacts at posting. She finds that female diplomats adopt a dual burden in networking by using their femininity to engage with other women and gather information that male diplomats may ignore, while also emphasizing a non-threatening feminine charm that allows them access to male-dominated networks. In this role, female diplomats approximate the traditional gender-stereotyped behaviors of diplomatic wives.

Habitus is also important when considering diplomatic spouses, particularly wives, as it appears to have changed over time. Bourdieu argues that feminine beauty and charm are the primary elements of women’s symbolic capital, ‘imposed for the most part through an unremitting discipline that concerns every part of the body and is continuously recalled through the constraints of clothing or hairstyle’ (2001: 27). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, foreign services in the US and UK harnessed this capital. A diplomatic wife’s role was to represent a hegemonic ideal of femininity to the target audience. Like the masculinity of male diplomats discussed previously, foreign services were concerned with the dress and comportment of wives. In particular, they valued wives who were beautiful, charming and blessed with excellent social skills (Wood, 2007: 510). Wives were aware that they and their husbands were being evaluated on their performance and spent commensurate time and money ensuring they were properly attired.

Representing one’s home country remains a big part of the spouse’s role, although the degree of formal expectation from ministries has diminished due to the activism of diplomatic spouses (Enloe, 2014). However, these practices are surprisingly durable. Spouses—wives, mainly – still consciously perform roles as representatives of their culture:

As the wife of the Philippine ambassador, I am in the unique position to help promote my country’s cultural highlights, most notably, our national dress, cuisine, music, literature and the visual arts. The events I organize and attend with my husband are essentially opportunities for interaction. People can get to know more about the Philippines and we in turn have the chance to appreciate better the Dutch and other cultures. (Gina Ledda, quoted in Diplomat Magazine, 2016)

Wives also find this role forced on them simply by being present and embodying difference. Contemporary spouses in the foreign service do representational work informally through their contacts with local communities. For example, Donna Sacramastra Gorman, a spouse posted in Beijing, writes about how being an American mother of four children in a state with a one-child policy at the time entails representational work (Dorman, 2011). She sees this work not as a choice, but a function of the status she holds in the eyes of Chinese people she meets, and the differences she sees between them and herself.

Spouses’ habitus may entail embodiment of hegemonic, nationally situated ideals of femininity (as well as, potentially, race and ethnicity), although these practices among contemporary spouses are understudied. Further research could be done on whether wives and male spouses are reformulating other aspects of habitus, such as decorum, discretion or forms of dress, and whether this is having any effect on diplomatic practice.

Gender and the ‘feel for the game’

The next important element of habitus is that it results in a ‘feel for the game.’ This is most evident among those whose habitus has developed in close proximity to a field and who are privileged within it, allowing them to practice competently. Neumann (2002) draws attention to the importance of metis in diplomacy. de Certeau develops this idea, which is very closely related to Bourdieu’s practical reason – the dispositions that an individuals’ habitus gives rise to. Metis refers to the use of everyday tactics, including ‘know-how’ or ‘trickiness,’ to gain the maximum impact with minimum effort (de Certeau, 1984). Metis is deployed in situations that:

. . . are similar but never precisely identical, [that] require quick and practiced adaptation that becomes almost ‘second nature’ to the practitioner, [where] skill typically is acquired through practice (often apprenticeship) and a developed ‘feel’ or ‘knack’ for strategy; . . . [metis] resist[s] simplification to deductive principles which can successfully be conveyed through book-learning, and . . . the environments in which [it is] practiced are so complex and non-repeatable that formal procedures of rational decision-making are impossible to apply. (Scott, 1996: 75–76)

Metis is a temporal practice, in that it requires the practitioner to have a good sense of timing (de Certeau, 1984: 82). de Certeau argues that metis is largely invisible; that is, it remains at the level of instinct or common sense. Similarly, Bourdieu underscores that habitus gives actors a ‘symbolic mastery’ over ‘infinitely diversified tasks,’ allowing them to solve ‘similarly shaped problems’ in response to objective events (Bourdieu, 1977).

Diplomacy is a ‘metis-laden’ field (Scott, 1996). Diplomacy is often represented as an art that resists simplification to procedure. An early guide to diplomacy emphasizes this point:

The attempt to reduce to rules the art of negotiating is as vain and futile as the attempt to teach the art of social intercourse. In addition to knowledge of affairs in general and comprehension of the interests of his own country in particular, the distinguishing characteristic of a successful negotiator, such as knowledge of men, which enables one to interpret looks and glances, an elasticity of demeanour which overcomes the weak man by earnestness and the strong man by gentleness, readiness to understand the opponent's point of view and skill in refuting his objections—all these are qualities which can be acquired only by natural disposition, social intercourse and practical acquaintance with affairs; but they can never be gained from booklearning. (Schmalz, quoted in Satow, 1922: 202; Satow's translation)

The improvisational, social nature of diplomacy strongly resembles the definition of metis discussed above. Diplomatic virtuosity emerges when a diplomat not only knows rules intuitively but understands how to improvise and which tactics to deploy at what time (Cornut, 2017). Diplomatic skill develops through apprenticeship, rather than formal training (although this does exist). Amateurs are more likely to follow rules rigidly and are less able to further their political ends (Cornut, 2017). For example, Special Envoys of the United Nations often describe their work in terms of an ‘art’ in managing relationships with conflict parties. They draw upon skills like listening and empathy that allow them to identify opportunities for progress in negotiations (Peck, 2010).

Diplomatic competence comes through being properly socialized into the field of diplomacy. Kuus (2015) analyses symbolic capital at the European Union in Brussels, focusing on dress and comportment. Although there is no unified dress code, diplomats seek to cultivate a certain urbaneness and sophistication. Some come by this more easily than others through their exposure to privileged fields of education and class:

EU professionals need to have what a commission official calls ‘an urbane, subtle approach’ in their work . . . This smooth style is facilitated by an individual’s strong structural position, such as rank or membership in powerful networks, and it helps their ascent in these structures. It both requires and advances a discernible worldliness: a mixture of elite career paths and the confidence that comes with them. There is a feedback loop between structural conditions and personal dispositions. The resource in question does not come quickly or cheaply; it requires what one of the interviewees calls ‘deep socialization’: a social familiarity that is achieved best through specific educational pedigrees, professional training, and habitual consumption patterns. The embodiment of symbolic capital costs time, which must be invested personally by the investor. (2015: 374)

Kuus notes that diplomats are able to place each other in hierarchical frameworks of class and nationality by paying attention not only to what diplomats wear (e.g. the tailoring or cost of a suit) but to the confidence with which they carry themselves. As she describes, the development of this style comes through the investment of significant resources and structural advantage. Similarly, Cornut (2017: 725) recognizes that structures affect the acquisition of practical knowledge.

We should expect that gender has much to do with the development of diplomats’ habitus, as women are often structurally disadvantaged in political settings. Neither Kuus nor Cornut tell us whether female diplomats are seen as urbane or sophisticated. Perhaps they are, but it is open for empirical examination. Existing studies indicate that women’s diplomatic skill is both formed and perceived differently. For instance, in the South African peace process, women’s lack of negotiating experience and access to informal male networks hindered their ability to have a substantive impact on negotiations (Waylen, 2014). Given that male networks structure access to experience and knowledge, and that women have difficulty accessing these networks, we can also expect that they must rely upon other methods to acquire the requisite practical mastery. Cook’s (2018) account of feminist activists at the Security Council show that they have acquired a deep knowledge of the Council’s informal procedures and have learnt how to tactically exploit them. Moreover, there is some room for personality to make up the shortfall in socialization (Bode, 2018). However, this is open to further study.

Lastly, an overlooked aspect of diplomatic habitus is its curiously feminine aspect. In my own work on United Nations mediators, they consistently name ‘soft skills’ like listening and empathy as proof of effectiveness in negotiation (e.g. Peck, 2010; Standfield, 2020). Moreover, an urbane smoothness and close attention to dress is at odds with aggressive versions of masculinity. These attributes have connotations of manipulation as well as empathy, both of which are typically associated with femininity. Women cultivate these ‘weapons of the weak’ in order to subvert masculine domination (Bourdieu, 2001). In diplomacy such skills are not only proof of competence, but virtuosity (Cornut, 2017; Kuus, 2015). Skeggs’ (2004) reformulation of Bourdieu’s notion of gendered capital helps parse this: she argues that typically feminine practices may be endowed with symbolic power when they are legitimated through more dominant structures. Here we see how the association of public politics with the masculine can transmogrify typically feminine attributes, conferring status on those who wield them. At the same time, as Ann Towns (2020) argues, these aspects of diplomacy may contribute to the feminization and thus devaluation of diplomacy as a whole in hypermasculine, militarized contexts, such as US foreign policy post-2001. Examining gendered habitus in diplomacy among male and female diplomats, as well as spouses, therefore reveals interesting areas for further research into how diplomats develop competence and what is recognized as virtuosity.

Incorporation

Feminist sociologists have studied incorporation, through which a woman is incorporated into a man’s career. This is common in professional occupations and usually takes the form of the woman doing unpaid domestic labour to support her husband’s career (Finch, 1983). I examine it here in the context of diplomacy from the early 20th century to the present. Callan and Ardener (1984) have written extensively on how ‘the incorporated wife’ has provided foreign services with a valuable source of free labour. As noted earlier, diplomatic wives have also served a crucial representative function, projecting hegemonic ideals of femininity to host populations. Foreign services consciously promoted marriage, and the roles of diplomatic spouses have remained remarkably stable despite the influx of female diplomats with male spouses in recent decades.

Foreign services recognized the value of husband-and-wife teams. Married diplomats were seen as more effective than bachelors, either because of the independent influence their wife could bring, or the wife’s role in facilitating relationships. Satow recommended marriage where the ‘character, religion, past history, or original nationality’ of the woman could enhance an ambassador’s effectiveness (1922: 197). In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Western foreign services encouraged diplomats to marry as a matter of policy. The US State Department would discuss wives’ merits when evaluating male diplomats (Wood, 2005). McCarthy notes that this practice persisted in the United Kingdom until the 1980s. The marriage bar in the British Foreign Service, introduced as the service began to allow women to serve as diplomats, served to preserve diplomacy as a family affair. The marriage bar meant that female employees would have to resign upon marriage. A material effect of the bar was that female employees, who often married male diplomats, became incorporated into the Foreign Service as unpaid wives (McCarthy, 2014). While not recognizing the necessity of paying women for their work, diplomatic officials understood their efficacy.

The idea of a husband-and-wife diplomatic team evolved to the extent that some diplomatic wives referred to ‘our career’ when speaking of their husband’s work. A New Zealand diplomatic wife of an older generation reflects on her career in similar terms:

I have enjoyed all our postings, made lots of friends all over the world and by default, but gladly, furthered New Zealand’s interests in a ‘backroom’ sort of way. I try and help my husband whichever way I can as I feel that we are a team . . . Though I can’t say that I have set the world alight and changed the course of global politics, I think I can say that I have contributed a little bit to the advancement of New Zealand in the world by just being a support to my husband. (anonymous female respondent quoted in Domett, 2005: 301)

This wife explicitly states that she feels part of a team, along with her husband. The incorporation of wives into their husbands’ work allowed foreign services to benefit from the official efforts of diplomatic men, and the unpaid but equally important contributions of their wives.

Changes in gender relations disturbed foreign services’ practice of incorporation. Diplomatic spouses in Europe and North America in the 1960s and 1970s revolted against the expectation of unpaid labour (Enloe, 2014). They called for recognition of their roles, as well as compensation for what they had to sacrifice as trailing spouses. As Biltekin argues, ‘today, wives are not prepared to carry out unpaid work in the residences and do not necessarily identify themselves as being part of their husbands’ profession’ (2015: 255). Moreover, the US foreign service has come to see single diplomats as logistically easier to deal with than families (Dorman, 2011). This is perhaps as a result of the demands expressed by spouses, although this is open to inquiry.

Despite these changes, incorporation persists. Although wives may no longer fill the role of gracious hostess, their incorporation into their husbands’ diplomatic work involves important representational functions, specifically through reproduction and homemaking. Feminist scholars have long noted that women’s bodies, through childbearing, are sites for the formulation of national identity (Yuval-Davis, 1997). For early American diplomatic wives, producing children and rearing them properly were signals of health and prosperity (Wood, 2005). Today, there is more nuance and subtlety around the role of reproduction. However, some contemporary wives still speak in terms of a combined career. For many diplomatic wives, they find themselves leaving lucrative professional careers to follow their husbands. For example, Yasmin Balajadia-Cortes, the partner of the Consul General for the Philippines in the UAE, describes the dynamic:

Our husband’s career does not simply become his but ours as a family. Diplomatic spouses should review their goals in life and priorities, and make sure that they are willing to plan their lives within the parameters of a diplomatic life. A diplomat’s career becomes his family’s career since they are the support system that will make sure that he represents and serves his country well. (quoted in Balita-Centeno, 2016)

In another case, Norzelah Zakariah was a human resources professional at Malaysia’s state oil company, Petronas, before quitting her job to follow her husband on postings: ‘It was certainly a big change—from waking up to go to work to waking up to do wifely [domestic] duties’ (quoted in Balita-Centeno, 2016). As Tatsiana Barysevich, spouse of the Ambassador of Belarus, defines it: ‘The role of the spouse is simple—provide support to your husband and family, make new homes many times in life and get involved in country promotion whenever possible’ (quoted in Diplomat Magazine, 2016). Becoming a full-time housewife entails the considerable emotional and physical labour of re-establishing ‘home’ in every posting. The reproductive labour of homemaking, although unpaid and often unrecognized, is essential to sustaining the ability of male diplomats to travel from posting to posting, and therefore to the practice of diplomacy itself.

Intimacy

The next practice I focus on is that of intimacy. Lois McNay (1999) argues for disrupting the public-private divide in feminist theorizing by considering the ‘domestic’ and the ‘intimate’ (pertaining to familial relationships and struggles over emotional capital) as separate fields that often overlap in the private space of the home, but are increasingly fluid in their boundaries. I depart somewhat here to consider intimacy (in the sense of warm informality) a core diplomatic practice – one that is often practised in the home. It is therefore inextricable from the practice of incorporation. I have deliberately chosen to use the term ‘intimacy’ as it immediately connotes sexuality and makes visible the difficulties diplomats may have in practicing intimacy where the fit between habitus and field is awkward, such as for female diplomats.

Diplomacy transcends the usual boundary of public-private politics. Diplomats often use the private space of the home to foster relationships with contacts (Domett, 2005). Effective diplomats leverage their social skills to create useful contacts, represent their positions persuasively and gather information (Cornut, 2015, 2017). The line between a social event and a political meeting, between private and public life, is therefore often fuzzy in the diplomatic context. Hospitality still plays a central role in diplomatic life: the shared meal is a powerful and ubiquitous feature of diplomacy (Neumann, 2013). The US State Department’s Protocol for the Modern Diplomat (Foreign Service Institute, 2013) provides extensive guidance on how to entertain at formal and informal social events. Janet Blanchard, the wife of the US ambassador to Italy, describes the responsibility of constant entertaining: ‘We entertained, I think, at least once a day and sometimes twice a day, for three and a half years’ (Luxner, 2014). Despite the emergence of new forms of diplomacy, intimate encounters remain central.

Diplomatic intimacy has strongly homosocial elements. Homosociality refers to the tendency of people to prefer the company of their own gender (Bjarnegård and Kenny, 2016). Despite the influx of women into diplomatic corps, homosociality is still key. Homosociality relies upon a dichotomous construction of gender, in which people clearly embody masculine or feminine habitus. With the way it organizes bodies in space and regulates access to knowledge and socializing experiences, it is an obstacle that female diplomats—who transgress the gender binaries of traditional diplomacy – continue to face.

Neumann, in his study of the Norwegian foreign service, terms the backlash to the entry of women the ‘rearguard action of the homosocial diplomat’ (2012: 681). As more women became diplomats, male diplomats responded by creating more male spaces and informal networks. Informal networks are important sources of diplomatic capital: they provide opportunities for bonding and trust, mentoring among junior and senior diplomats, professional advancement, apprenticeship and information. In the South African peace process, Waylen demonstrates how homosocial networks among male negotiators on both sides facilitated a peace agreement, but also excluded women. Several delegates who were male human rights lawyers had good rapport with one another, ‘having played sports and partied together since the 1970s and frequently drinking together during the negotiations’ (Waylen, 2014: 510). These networks formed spaces that female delegates to the negotiations could not access, and as a result they found it more difficult to have input into the process.

Intimacy among male diplomats often takes place in spaces or at times that are not accessible to women. This reinforces barriers to women’s participation in diplomacy. For instance, female negotiators in the Cyprus peace process were often unable to attend meetings at coffee houses because they took place late at night when they had caring responsibilities, and because coffee houses are traditionally male spaces (Yirmibeşoğlu, 2008). Svedberg (2018) discusses the homosocial environment of the East-West negotiations as an explicit barrier to female negotiators. She argues that Western diplomats invoked the patriarchal culture of the Soviets to justify the exclusion of women. Negotiators in the East-West talks claimed that women would not be able to participate in heavy drinking sessions and may even be in danger in such situations. This preserved the masculinized character of the process.

Intimacy is a particularly difficult practice for the female diplomat to encounter, as she embodies a transgressive habitus. She is neither a diplomatic wife nor the cosmopolitan, refined male diplomat; rather she embodies the gendered dichotomy of diplomacy and must consciously navigate this in her work. For instance, socializing around sporting events is common, and female diplomats recount being excluded from such invitations. Irish female diplomats reported that after-work drinks, an important venue for building relationships, posed two different quandaries. They might end up being the only woman in an uncomfortably male-dominated environment, and/or they might not be able to attend in the first place due to responsibilities at home (Barrington, 2017). At posting, especially in countries that practice gender segregation, female diplomats face the problem of whether to sit with their male colleagues or their wives after dinner (Marriot, 2017). Female diplomats cite homosocial networks and spaces as a barrier to their effectiveness because it prevents them from cultivating useful relationships.

On the other hand, diplomatic women appear to practice intimacy. They may exploit their femininity to create homosocial networks among wives and local women that facilitate their country’s diplomatic work. Wood argues that diplomatic wives in pre-World War II American diplomacy used their roles in private life to facilitate ‘the exchange of information and messages, official and unofficial, overt and subtle’ (2005: 145). One way this can occur is through gossip. As it is often concerned with family and community, gossip is trivialized as feminine. However, gossip is a primary means of gathering political information and a practice where women have been able to act effectively. In the court of Elizabeth I, aristocratic women close to the Queen played an important role in not only mediating access to the monarch, but also trading information. Here the lines between private and public were unclear, as women exchanged letters with male and female kin on matters of family and politics. In turn, these letters served to maintain kinship networks that could come in useful for political reasons (Daybell, 2011). In contemporary diplomatic practice, wives can serve as ‘go-betweens’ for their husbands at social events and are often more tied into the local community through children’s schooling and charitable work than the diplomats themselves (Wood, 2005).

Incorporation and intimacy are two practices that help sustain diplomacy, and that potentially help explain the large degree of continuity in women’s roles despite feminist organizing and changes in gender relations in broader society. Taking an interest in the private sphere, the informal work of spouses, and the sited and highly social nature of diplomatic practice could reveal much about how diplomacy has (not) changed over time.

Continuity and change

Pouliot and Cornut are interested in how innovations in diplomacy often coexist alongside and even reinforce traditional practices. I have made the case for examining how changes in gender relations affect diplomatic practices, and how shifts in diplomacy affect gendered practices. The case of marriage diplomacy illustrated this dynamic: the changing nature of political authority reworked the role of marriage in diplomacy in Europe. Further research is needed to examine the scope of these changes. Moreover, how have practices undermined or reinforced the private/public dichotomy in diplomacy?

One important area of future research is the intersection of gender with race, sexuality, and other markers of identity (Crenshaw, 1991). Aggestam and Towns (2018b) have raised the question of how queer and nonbinary diplomats may practice diplomacy. Future studies could examine whether diplomatic husbands and same-gender partnerships have queered the practice of incorporation. Moreover, decolonial feminists have shown that the modern gender system was produced through colonial practices of racial and sexual differentiation (Lugones, 2007). Nisancioglu (this issue) shows that race continues to constitute sovereignty, while Weber and Weber (this issue) argue that the foundational myths of IR depend on assumptions of European supremacy that legitimated colonialism. Diplomacy, as a foundational practice of the sovereign state system, is therefore not only gendered, but gendered and racialized. As such, analyses of gendered diplomatic practices should be attentive to how they reinscribe racial and gender difference. For instance, changing attitudes toward gender and intersecting identities may lead to changes in diplomatic capital. We could think of Meghan Markle’s marriage to Prince Harry as a form of public diplomacy and examine how her Black womanhood marked her as an ‘other,’ while serving as capital that the British aristocracy could extract to justify the continued existence of hereditary monarchy.

A significant gap in research on gender and diplomacy is cross-national and cross-temporal research (Aggestam and Towns, 2018b). Many case studies focus on Europe and North America from the 19th century onward. However, changing gender relations are highly contingent on context. A particular question of interest is whether changes in spousal roles have been consistent across different cases. Moreover, Wiseman (2007) argues that diplomatic corps have distinct cultures, which may affect how diplomats and their spouses enact gendered representational practices. Going forward, potential research questions might be: How tight are the contemporary linkages between nation, gender and diplomatic habitus? How have these changed over time? How do expectations of this ‘fit’ constrain non-traditional diplomats or diplomatic spouses?

Rationality and practicality

By this, Pouliot and Cornut refer to how the ‘feel for the game’ allows diplomats to pursue strategic, conscious goals. As I have argued, the development of symbolic capital and virtuosity in diplomacy is gendered. Further research could examine whether the influx of women into diplomacy—as well as new diplomatic actors like transnational women’s NGOs – has changed what is considered virtuosity. Do other diplomatic actors recognize these actors as competent and seek to emulate their practices, or do female diplomats tend to be constrained by existing practices? We could also examine whether their navigation of the internalized contradiction of masculine/feminine enables different practices to emerge. For instance, do they change the use of diplomatic space and political justification? For Cook’s (2018) feminist activists at the Security Council, they learnt that relatability was of central importance in persuading diplomats. Meanwhile, female peace activists often use the trope of woman-as-peacemaker, which relies upon essentialized feminine traits like nurturing, to gain access to security decision-making. Bringing a postcolonial lens to the analysis, we could interrogate how diplomats who are racialized and gendered face issues in developing a feel for the game. McConnell’s (2018) recent work points to the constraints that practices like diplomatic decorum place on Indigenous diplomats, who are expected to refrain from anger or nationalist language in their speeches.

Social versus technical practices

Pouliot and Cornut separate relational (as in social, informal) and technical aspects of practices; however, all practices are inherently relational. Technical practices (re-)constitute habitus and field as much as practices like listening and empathy do (Bigo, 2011). Technical competence often helps to construe one as an expert – a highly political category (Kratochwil, 2014). As diplomats learn to negotiate over gender issues and develop technical expertise on gender, does that reconstitute the habitus of diplomats, or revalue particular knowledge and experience? As discussed earlier, changes in gender relations have redefined some of the political stakes to include things like women’s rights. How do diplomats develop a feel for this particular ‘game’? How do diplomats learn to negotiate over gender as national interest (Basu, 2016a, b)? Have Ministries of Foreign Affairs developed new practices in response to gender equality being a policy priority? Have they created new units or developed new expertise on gender? Does the emergence of the WPS Agenda empower female diplomats, or traditionally feminine identities and modes of discourse? For the most part, these remain open questions.

Moreover, the informal representative practices of diplomatic spouses are understudied. Scholarship on diplomatic wives points to the 1970s as a moment of rupture in gender relations: wives in Europe and North America contested the exploitation of their unpaid labour for the national interest. However, it appears, at least anecdotally, that this representational work continues in other ways. I have argued here that contemporary spouses are conscious of their roles as promoters of national culture and are aware of how just being at a posting sends messages about their country’s culture. These informal representational practices – homemaking, raising children, engaging in local schooling—have not yet been taken seriously as diplomatic practice. However, they could be considered a form of public diplomacy. Doing so may also provide insights on how informal practices sustain unequal gender relations, even as formal rules change.

Methodology

The practice turn in IR is often implicitly associated with ethnography as method, sometimes conducted in teams (e.g. Adler-Nissen and Drieschova, 2019; Pouliot, 2013). The conception that practice theory requires ethnography poses problems for the accessibility of data and methods in IR. Junior and marginalized scholars have fewer financial opportunities or structural incentives to do ethnographic fieldwork. Moreover, access to diplomatic spaces is highly constrained because of concerns around secrecy.

While ethnography is very valuable, it is not the only method capable of analyzing practices or describing a field. Practice theorists like Bourdieu use a variety of methods, including descriptive statistics. Memoirs, life history interviewing, visual artefacts and archival research can reveal much about the stakes-at-stake, the habitus of individuals, and the kinds of social capital that count (Bueger and Gadinger, 2014). For example, Goetze (2017) uses prosopography, which maps the common characteristics of a group of people, to describe the structure of the field of peacebuilding. She uses data collected from surveys of peacebuilding personnel, memoirs and biographies of key peacebuilding figures, as well as resumés posted on LinkedIn. These provide information on individuals’ characteristics like nationality, gender and class, their educations, and career trajectories. These kinds of data allow Goetze to trace how peacebuilding has emerged as a distinct field that places value on certain kinds of capital. Potential applications in studying diplomatic practices could be to examine homosocial networks, the social capital of female diplomats and more.

Such methods can be paired with discursive and historical approaches. Feminist historians have contributed enormously to our understanding of the role of women and gendered norms in diplomacy by examining women’s memoirs, diaries and letters (e.g. Erlandsson, 2019). Feminist IR scholars have engaged deeply with other disciplines like sociology and literary criticism to develop methods of analyzing the gendered discursive practices of international institutions (Shepherd, 2008; Wibben, 2011). Applying these methods to diplomatic texts (broadly construed) allows us to map authorizing stories that constrain the boundaries of fields and allow practices to emerge (Neumann, 2002). Here, I have examined how the WPS Agenda has emerged as a new form of ‘authorizing story’ – more could be done to examine the implications for diplomatic practice.

I have not exhaustively catalogued all the ways gender and diplomacy are enmeshed, but this brief survey indicates many areas for future inquiry. These have been left unexplored in mainstream diplomatic studies partly due to the nature of the practice turn in diplomacy, which has lopped off many of the feminist insights that could motivate such research. By revisiting the feminist work of Bourdieu and feminist scholars like Beverley Skeggs, Lois McNay and more, I have shown that gender is germane to understanding power and oppression – the analytical core of practice theory. My hope is that this also serves as a warning for future attempts at interdisciplinarity: unless we proceed with reflexive attention to our use of new (to us) ideas, we risk silencing whole literatures and reinforcing structures of domination in IR.