Page 34 - A Gender-Sensitive Indian Foreign Policy- Why? and How?

Indian Council
of World Affairs
Swarna (the earlier speaker) already talked about and let me re-emphasize
this, an aggressive, hyper masculine ultra-national foreign policy will
not help us to re-imagine into an inclusive foreign policy. I also want to
emphasise that I do not use women as a homogenized category here. There
are layered hierarchies and due the peculiar nature of the work, women
domestic workers often come under the bottom of that hierarchy. However
within their situated context off vulnerability, women domestic workers are
finding ways to travel, to bypass the state order, and to navigate within the
globalized labour market, Let’s acknowledge that and a caring state should
acknowledge and facilitate a safe travel with dignity, instead of creating
regulations on their mobility.
When we talk about gender sensitive foreign policy, we usually begin with
gender as in a normative common sense. However, ‘gender’ merely as an
addendum into policy framework is not enough for us to re-imagine an
inclusive foreign policy for all stakeholders. We need to think about various
intersections of gendered articulation and a policy should be framed keeping
those intersectional possibilities.
A gender sensitive foreign policy also demands an overhauling of the state-
institutional nexus that is built through patriarchal power relations and
I can see that very clearly, in the context of this age ban. So I do consider
protectionism emerging from this ideology of patriarchy where women
symbolize and embody the nation state. So the patriarchal ideology of state-
institutional nexus will not articulate structural inequalities rather it will
speak in the language of protectionism.
What is a way out to re-imagine a gendered foreign policy? State-civil society
collaboration with other social movements is one of the ways in which we
can articulate a strong feminist foreign policy. We also need to take into
account the rich history of feminist movements in India. These movements
help us to understand the local gendered needs and specificities. We need to
build our policy framework based on relational care ethics which will help
us to think about strategies to combat gender based violence, not individual
centric rather embedded in local movements and collective solidities. So
strategies for combating gender based violence should come from this
relational ethics of care, not from hyper masculinist ideas of protectionism.
Most importantly we need to move away from a moral framework that
is trying to see women as sexualized gendered bodies. Methodological
Strategies for combating gender based violence should come from
this relational ethics of care, not from hyper masculinist ideas
34 of protectionism.
Indian Council of World Affairs An ICWA Conversation
articulation of migration requires an overhaul as well. Currently, when
we try to think about migration within the strict regimes of nation state
and state borders - transnational migration helps us to re-imagine this
methodological nationalism and help us to focus on life stories of migrants.
Feminist scholarship around migration helps us for this methodological
re-imagination. So let’s pay attention to the narratives of migrant women,
what they want and it should be a bottom-up approach instead of a top-
down approach. Clearly the existing age ban is coming from this top-down
approach of our policy makers.
All stakeholders need to be included in the decision making process. The
problem with existing policy making is that there is a huge binary between
who is considered as an expert and who is considered as merely a beneficiary.
For example, taking into account the narratives of women domestic workers
and their experiences of migration will help in reframing an inclusive policy.
A participatory approach taking into account the perspectives from the
margins is long overdue.
In fact the life stories of women with whom I interacted over a period of
time open up the possibilities to approach migration regime with a new
framework. Listening to women’s stories helps us to see how they navigate
through a system which makes their conditions precarious, they are not
always vulnerable victims but significant participants in the global migration
flow. Their migration trajectories need to be understood within their situated
contexts, not merely within the binaries of legality and illegality. I will stop
here and thank you for your time.
Amb. Nirupama Rao Thank you, thank you so much Dr Bindulakshmi for providing that micro
(Chair and Moderator) perspective that should inform our macro perspectives and the need for
sensitivity in using terms like illegal migrants, confusing trafficking with
migration and not really understanding what the aspirations of women at
the grassroots are when they seek avenues for migration. Thank you so much
for your comments