• The debate on the participation and role of women in foreign affairs is being raised with increasing frequency at both national and international levels.
• There is growing attention to the imbalances in the representation of women in leadership and other key positions in the area of foreign policy.
• There has been evidence of the positive effect of including women in several key areas of foreign policy.

Female Centric Foreign Policy/ Feminist Foreign Policy

• Feminist foreign policy (FFP) is based on the recognition that women and men experience conflict and war differently.
• Different social roles and positions in society lead to different consequences from war, and each gender contributes differently to peacebuilding.
• Traditional approaches to foreign and security policy do not take into account the unique challenges faced by women, which can lead to significant disparities in outcomes.
• This imbalance leads to incomplete political analyses and continued gender inequalities.
• FFP takes a bottom-up approach to re-thinking traditional power structures to include a more intersectional ideology.
• The approach rests on two important pillars:
• Greater representation at the decision-making table.
• Policy outputs that consider the impact on women and the marginalised.

Gender lens in foreign policy is needed

• It will provide fresh perspective to foreign policy machinery and will strengthen outcomes for a sustainable future. 
• It will offer an opportunity for India to place some of its existing efforts in a wider strategy on gender mainstreaming with a stronger long-term impact.
• It will influence change in existing systems for the country.
• It will have a deep and positive impact on the fast-changing world order.

Efforts of Indian government

Climate Change and Disaster Management:

• For the very first time, solar business models developed by the International Solar Alliance (ISA) took into consideration gender equity, especially for the solar pumping program.
• India’s Solar Grandmother’s Programme, where non-literate older women from remote rural areas are trained in basic engineering to ensure proper functioning of solar panels in their communities.

Development Cooperation and Assistance:

• From 2015 to 2017, USAID (United States Agency for International Development) partnered with the Governments of India and Afghanistan to support the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA).
• It is an Indian women’s cooperative.
• The cooperation aimed to implement the Afghan Women’s Empowerment Program.

Multilateral Institutions:

• India has deployed the first-ever all female police unit to the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL).

International efforts

• The G20’s national gender equality plans and strategies are aimed at advancing the agenda of women at work.
• The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Gender Forum 2018 and BRICS Dialogue on the future of work: Towards a women-led growth framework, 2021 is also a progressive step.

Areas where India has an opportunity to adopt a feminist approach:

Emerging Non-Traditional Regional Challenges:

• Centralising the role of women in non-traditional security policies in India’s neighbourhood and South Asia should be given a priority.
• FFP should be applied to unpack the perceived demarcation between “hard” and “soft” issues and engage across issues and sectors from a position of equity and inclusion. 

Health Sector:

• Health diplomacy has been a prominent feature of India’s Foreign Policy.
• Many of India’s actions during the pandemic resonate with the core principles of inclusion of the FFP discourse.
• India should increase support for proposals dedicated to women’s empowerment and include gender as a criterion for the assessment of its High Impact Community Development Projects.

Regional and Global Trade:

• It is necessary to build allies among working within institutions, to include the gender lens within the overall agenda setting process.
• There has been increase in both the number of FTAs (Free Trade Agreement) signed and the number of gendered considerations in these agreements.
• But they are non-binding and non-mandatory, and require gender to be incorporated as a trade issue for women to reap the full benefits of free trade and open market access.

Economic cooperation

• Various studies have shown that when women gain access to better economic opportunities, the benefits multiply across society.
• South Asia is marred by cross-border trade barriers that render opportunities unequal for women and men.
• Thus, to facilitate the participation of women, there is a need to:
• Improve digitisation at India’s land ports,
• Increase transportation access to trade centres in remote areas, and
• Invest in border infrastructure

Invest in reviving the gender track in regional multilateralism

• South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is at stagnation point since 2016.
• Thus, mechanisms to prevent the trafficking of women, technical committees on women and children, and gender policy advisory group have all stalled.
• India should restart these initiatives through SAARC or other institutions such as the Bay of Bengal Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), or Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN).

Disaster and emergency response

• India’s regional role as the first responder for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief can be complemented with a strong gender policy component.
• This should include discussions with the host government on addressing the specific needs of women and children in crisis areas.
• This could include deployment of the Indian Army’s all-women corps, the Indian military nursing service.
• India also needs to place its asylum policies within a feminist framework.
• India can play a proactive role in the implementation process of the global compact on refugees, which it signed in 2018.
• Through this compact and other multilateral institutions, India could offer greater support to the women refugee community organisations based in India.

Centralizing women in foreign policy should not be a superficial attempt by Indian diplomats to look good in public or satisfy some arbitrary checklist. It should not be treated mere as a moral duty. India needs to look at three principles: “Getting more women to engage with foreign policy issues, reflect women’s interests in foreign policy, and bring in a feminist perspective to foreign policy.”