Page 44 - A Gender-Sensitive Indian Foreign Policy- Why? and How?

Indian Council
of World Affairs

So I agree with you Swarna, we can’t, foreign policy is not expected to do.
But I just have a tiny example from Australia where I spent a number of
years. They decided at one point of time that they are going to make violence
against women a national security priority. Lot of critic emerged and people
were concerned about how women security would be kind of securitized for
national interest. But I think it is a very successful model of how they did it.
And it was a conservative, liberal, nationalist party in power. Even then, they
invested hundreds and thousands of dollars to say that we have a problem.

We have a problem, not they. Australia has a problem and they dealt with it so
well, raising awareness, doing data collection, because data is also a big issue
and setting up advocacy centres, providing help to women, including migrant
women who were facing this problem. And then of course Australia then takes
the leadership, universities began to work on WPS agenda and so on and so
forth. I really think that is a good model to tie up. And one of the things we are
also saying here is that the domestic is international, national is international;
we are making those connections in feminist ideas of foreign policy.

And that is where we, I mean patriarchal cultures will not change because we
have a foreign policy top down. It will change because we link the everyday
issues to what is happening and how the state behaves. And as I already
indicated that we have some hope given the long genealogy at really looking
at power and peace more differently than more States would though. I think
pretty much that. Thank you for that.

Amb. Nirupama Rao Thank you. I think one of the take always that I could see from this discussion
(Chair and Moderator)
today is how we make the national international. Secondly, how we provide
a more holistic definition to foreign policy and our definitions of security to
include the gender dimension. And thirdly, this is the question that I would
like to ask each of our panelists to answer, just under a minute if you can
please. If there was one step that you deemed necessary for the creation of a
gender sensitive foreign policy for India, what would you define that step to
be? And I would like to begin with Swarna.

Dr. Swarna I think actually gender sensitization training for our highest executive offices,
Rajagopalan the people who make the decisions. And then that trickles down to a practice

of training. That is my under one minute answer.

Amb. Nirupama Rao Thank you. Soumita?
(Chair and Moderator)

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