More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Over the past few years, the Trump Administration has unleashed an onslaught of policies and regulations targeting immigrants fleeing persecution and torture who seek safety in the US.
Specifically, the administration has an obsession with attacking gender-based asylum claims which is further harming immigrant women seeking refuge from domestic violence.
The COVID-19 crisis has painfully demonstrated that foreign policy is not a high-minded consideration: America’s health, economy and security are linked to the world’s, and decisions about foreign affairs will determine whether and how we defeat dangers before they reach our shores. This November, women voters will choose the U.S. president, and by extension, will determine what the United States’ global role means for the American people.
Adopted in 1995, the U.N.’s Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action shaped aspirations for women’s equality in the 21st century—and no amount of resistance or repression since has been able to reverse its momentum.
In adopting a feminist foreign policy, Mexico joins conversations on gender equality that are usually monopolized by wealthy nations in Scandinavia and Western Europe. Yet Mexico’s track record of promoting women in politics domestically means it belongs in that rarefied club—and puts to shame the so-called advanced democracies that have fallen behind.
“Human history has been driven by the male drive for physical security.”
Ms. had the chance to speak with Valerie Hudson, director of the Program on Women, Peace and Security at Texas A&M University. In the new book The First Political Order, which she coauthored, Hudson makes a compelling argument for placing women’s rights and representation at the core of foreign policy and national security—because what happens to half the population is obviously going to affect the health, the wealth and the security of a nation.
As Mexico launches a feminist foreign policy, it’s worth considering what such an approach would look like in the U.S.
Many consider political polarization—the vast gap between Republicans and Democrats—to be a defining and ever-growing feature of American politics today. But an experiment called “America in One Room” set out to discover just how rigid and vast that gap is. Turns out: It’s not as solid or as wide as you may think.
It’s long past time for more diverse voices in the field of national security and nuclear policy—and that’s exactly why the Ploughshare Fund, a global security grant-making foundation that supports initiatives seeking to eliminate nuclear weapons and the threats they pose, has awarded $50,000 to groups and individuals working to diversify the field.
“Inclusivity means real representation: not just elites getting a seat at the table. Being at the table is a means, not the end.”
Notably absent from recent headlines about the potential withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan is talk of the dangerous consequences such a decision could have for women and girls in the region—and the lack of women’s representation in the ongoing “peace talks” between the Trump administration and leaders of the Taliban.
