Brazilian Female Diplomats and the Struggle for Gender Equality

Do gender patterns in diplomacy disappear over time?

“…Gender scholarship has demonstrated that women tend to cluster in institutional positions considered less important, whereas men tend to be overrepresented in assignments of greater clout (see, for example, Bashevkin, 1993;Studlar and Moncrief, 1999;Connell, 2006). Such patterns have also been identified in prior diplomacy scholarship (Farias and do Carmo, 2017;Rumelili and Suleymanoglu-Kurum, 2018;Calin and Buterbaugh, 2019). For example, cross-sectional analyses of all ambassador postings made by the 50 largest national economies in 2014 reveal that female ambassadors are under-represented among postings to capitals with the highest economic clout (Towns and Niklasson, 2017).…”

“…Women in all kinds of professions have been found to advance at a slower pace than their male colleagues, even when they make up a significant share in a profession (see, for example, Wynen et al, 2015). Diplomatic career paths are sometimes described as 'leaky pipelines' for women (see, for example, Conley Tyler et al, 2014;Farias and do Carmo 2017), characterised by disproportionate attrition and blocked by glass ceilings (Cotter et al, 2001). The over-representation of men can thus be stable and slow to change.…”

Gender, Feminism and Diplomacy: Analysing the Institution through the Lenses of Feminist International Relations

“…The adoption of admission exams opened diplomacy up to all sectors of society, breaking with the traditional image of diplomacy as an activity developed primarily by members of the elites and nobility (Aggestam & Towns, 2018). Nevertheless, the admission of women to diplomacy was neither immediate nor irreversible: it had to be negotiated in face of social prejudices based on gender stereotypes, and it faced bans for certain periods (such as the Brazilian case, where women were prohibited from accessing the career from 1938 to 1954) (Farias & Carmo, 2018). National experiences are diverse, but when examined together they demonstrate that women's claim for accession to the diplomatic career is characterised by obstacles and setbacks.…”

“…Though the numbers of diplomats have been increasing in various countries and international negotiations, gender parity is still restricted to a few places (such as Sweden) (Aggestam & Towns, 2018;Niklasson & Robertson, 2018). In Brazil, approximately 25% of the national diplomatic staff is composed of women, a share that decreases the more one climbs the ladder of prestigious posts in the career (Farias & Carmo, 2018). To be sure, this is the qualitative dimension of gender and diplomacy: despite increasing numbers, an apparent glass ceiling still persists up to the point that only 15% of all embassies in the world are headed by female diplomats (Towns & Niklasson, 2018) and 10% of peace negotiation staff are composed of female negotiators (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, 2012).…”

“…The lack of received knowledge confirms that "diplomatic studies have long been the poor child in international relations theory" (Pouliot & Cornut, 2015, p. 297), which per se worsens the scarcity of analyses about gender and diplomacy, as well as gender and its intersectionalities (Standfield, 2020). In Brazil, few studies have been published, having been primarily conducted by members of the diplomatic corporation (Balbino, 2011;Friaça, 2018), but, in recent years, a new literature originated in academia has emerged (Balestero, 2017;Brandão, Amaral, Euzébio, & Gregório, 2017;Farias & Carmo, 2018;Lima & Oliveira, 2018). A similar trend has been observed in the international literature, which has focused on national case studies and international organisations.…”