From Hillary to Trump: What happens to gender equality in foreign policy under radical right-wing governments?

It is a broadly accepted norm that ‘good’ states promote gender equality, both within their domestic politics but also, increasingly, in their foreign policy. In recent decades, gender equality has become more institutionalised within national and international policy making. As the visibility of gender in foreign and international policy has grown however, there has been a concurrent rise in the populist radical right (PRR). The discourse around these political parties and their related social movements are often very hostile to feminist ideas and equality policies writ large. Many reject the concept of gender as a social structure and instead talk of the idea of ‘gender ideology’, often as being forced on them by outside, elite forces. In countries where these states have seen electoral success, we might therefore expect them to be resistant to work on gender equality within their foreign policy. Despite the centrality of gender to PRR ideology, there has been little discussion of gender in PRR foreign policy. This is surprising given the ways in which gender is often coded in PRR discourse as being imposed on the ‘pure’ nation by unaccountable, external others. Furthermore, developing literature on PRR and foreign policy does not suggest that there is a straightforward link between PRR actors’ rhetoric and foreign policy reality. When in power PRR foreign policy may not be markedly different from previous, more centrist, iterations of government. How then do PRR governments approach the issue of gender within their foreign policy? We consider this question in relation to contemporary US politics from the Obama to the Biden administrations. Under Obama, and with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, there was a wealth of architecture and policies around gender equality in foreign relations created. When politics lurged to the nationalist, right-wing, anti-gender Trump, what happened to gender equality in foreign policy? Did it disappear? And with the successive Biden administration, did gender equality return to the fore? Was there a return to ‘normality’ with gender equality once again assuming a fairly central position within foreign policy discourse and practice?