Intersectional feminism, capitalism, and feminist foreign policy

Marissa Conway Transcript

Kassia Binkowski
Hey Sabrina,

Sabrina Merage Naim
Hey, hey!

Kassia Binkowski
Today's guest is none other than Marissa Conway. Marissa Conway is originally from California, she moved to London 2015 ish and she is an expert on feminist foreign policy.

Sabrina Merage Naim
What does that mean?

Kassia Binkowski
It is a political framework that is centered around marginalized people, and how those people's gender, race, sexuality, class, physical ability, how those are key determinants in that person's ability to access power. So it goes way beyond women, although that's where it started. The future of feminist foreign policy is looking at how all people access power and how those people's race, gender, class, how that influences whether or not they can access it. Super fascinating, and something I knew very, very little about, and something that I'm really interested to hear a bunch of old white political leaders actually consider.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, I mean, right now, we're dealing with our, you know, reproductive rights being overturned in this country, and the majority of the people are old white men who are dealing with that, not considering domestic policy.

Kassia Binkowski
Exactly. But what was really interesting about Marissa's work, so she is the founder of the Center for Feminist foreign policy. She was the executive director for six years who just stepped out of that position this year. But the conversation took a really interesting turn, because we started talking about intersectionality, and what it means to be an intersectional feminist, and what her definition of feminism was at large, which really, really challenged me. So before I even reveal that I want to know from you, what is your definition of feminism?

Sabrina Merage Naim
It's so fundamentally the belief that access, that rights, should be the same, right? That that no one gender should be more powerful, or viewed as holier than the other. That even though I recognize that this is the argument that a lot of people who fight against feminism hand me, I recognize that men and women, and gender non binary people are different. Yes, that's a beautiful thing. We're not saying that we're all the same. We're saying that we all deserve the same rights and respect.

Kassia Binkowski
And I don't think my definition is that much different. I mean, we get into it in today's episode. But what was really fascinating to me was my definition and reflection on feminism was very similar, and that it was grounded in gender, it came back to equal rights for different genders. And Marissa really challenged me to say like, this isn't about gender at all, maybe it started there. But this is about inclusivity at large. This is about making sure that your gender, and your race, and your class, and your ability, that none of that influences your access to power, that we all have access to the power that we want.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I love that. Because in my mind for decades, now, I've had different buckets of social activism in my head. And it's been, you know, here's where feminism lives. And here's where racial equity lives. And here's where LGBTQ rights live, and et cetera, et cetera. And the fact that there's a place to merge all of those is super refreshing. And it makes so much sense.

Kassia Binkowski
It's really, really helpful framework. And that's the idea of intersectional feminism. And we dive into all of that today. And we dive into the question of whether or not it can really show up in foreign policy. And she's a little bit skeptical. Take a listen.

Kassia Binkowski
Marissa, thank you so, so much for joining us.

Marissa Conway
Hello, thank you. I'm very excited to be chatting with you today.

Kassia Binkowski
And it's evening for you in the UK. It's obviously morning here in Colorado, but we're excited to have this conversation and really appreciate you taking the time. This conversation today is going to be about all things feminism, truly, and we're going to be looking at feminism in foreign policy, we're going to be looking at your career, your views. But we can't start the conversation without first better understanding what feminism means to you. So start at the beginning. How do you define this?

Marissa Conway
Oh, great question. And I think it's important to recognize that this means something different to each person. I think I take quite an academic approach, actually, to how I understand feminism. And I use it as an analytical tool to understand power dynamics. And so much of my work revolves around rebalancing these power inequalities. And yes, a lot of it is focused on gender equality, but also just kind of broader structures of power that include gender, but also look at, you know, race, disability, ethnicity, taking quite an intersectional approach to this. So for me, feminism is very much a lens, like a pair of glasses that you put on that allows you to see things a little bit differently. It allows you to see who has power, who doesn't have power, why this is the case in the first place? Are people being silenced? Are they being actively excluded? Why is this happening? Who is maintaining power because of this? It poses a lot of questions, but you then have to kind of get into the details to figure out what the context is. So I think it's this process of revealing what is hidden, and what is taken as the norm, what's taken as objective. And then the second part of it, that I really love is it's not a passive activity, the purpose of feminism is specifically to create change, and rebalance these power and equality. So the first act is looking at it, analyzing it, figuring out what's going on. And then the second part is taking that action and figuring out what you can do, what you can motivate other people to do to start to shift things into better alignment, better equality, I suppose.

Kassia Binkowski
I love that second piece of this. And I don't think it comes up often enough. I think what you're saying about feminism is not passive, feminism cannot be passive, is so, so, so important, and really resonates. I think, I look at my career and my work in global health and social impact and certainly gender equity has been a part of that. But I don't think it was ever my driving passion, right? This was never the thing that I was working to solve or address. And yet, the deeper you get into these spaces, the more influence you see gender equity has on everything, and the greater role it plays in all of these power dynamics and all of these social systems and structures. And to not take action on that issue is in direct conflict with any of the bigger goals you have, whether you're trying to change healthcare, or education, or political reform, gender plays a role in all of that. Has this been the thing that was always of interest to you? Where did your interest in gender equity and power dynamics stem from, was that in your household? Was that something that you grew up with? When did it strike a chord?

Marissa Conway
It's not, it's only something I discovered, I would say, after university. So growing up in California, there was definitely a tendency to think we were in a more progressive society than we actually were. And I think this kind of falls into quite a neoliberal idea of what equality means. So it's still through this capitalist funnel, which I understand capitalism as an inherently very sexist, racist, power hierarchy in its own way. So I was kind of going through my teens just thinking this is great. We have equality. And oddly enough, it was a documentary called Misrepresentation that I watched when I was in my early 20s and it was a kind of a very basic overview of sort of sexism in the media, sexism that women politicians face, in particular. And it was the first time I had ever come across something like it. It was the first time I had ever stopped to think about, wait a minute, why do women wear makeup and men don't? And it seems so silly. But things had been so deeply normalized for me, and I just never ever thought to question it. I think this is also a product of the American educational system, where we are not taught to be critical. We are not taught to question what is objective and what is normal, rather, just to accept it. So this sort of kicked off a whole awakening. I got involved in anti-human trafficking advocacy, and started to kind of figure out the different ways that gender inequality manifests and the way that power imbalances manifest. And so it sort of started to crack open my understanding of what exploitation means, what systemic violence looks like, both physical violence, emotional violence, economic violence, all these different manifestations of violence, and how this plays out in our society. And I was working in a safe house for survivors of human trafficking, and doing kind of one on one more direct care once they had left their their situation. And around that same time, California passed a couple of laws that made it easier to hold traffickers to account and bring charges against them. And so we went through the court process with one of the residents. And it was just this massive penny drop moment for me of Oh, my gosh, this policy change thing, this has a massive ripple effect that extends beyond just, you know, helping one person receive a form of justice, but can actually really impact a huge range of people. And so that's when I decided, okay, I want to get into policy advocacy, I want to continue down this feminism path and learn more. So I went back to school, got my master's degree, and then shortly after that, launched the Center for Feminist foreign policy, and have just continued down the feminist road since then.

Kassia Binkowski
We're going to talk all about that center and the work that you've been doing. But before we do, you've mentioned a couple of times, you mentioned it right up front in your definition of feminism, this notion of intersectionality, you just talked about kind of the ripple effect in the very many ways that policy can affect many different types of people. And that equity is much, you know, much broader reaching than to look at any given one issue. To look, just look at racial equity, or just look at gender equity is a little bit short sighted. So back up for just one second, and for the benefit of our audience, define intersectionality for us.

Marissa Conway
So intersectionality is a term that was coined by Kimberly Crenshaw, late 80s, early 90s, I can't remember exactly when. But she used this term to describe the systemic racism that she was experiencing in the American legal system, both as a woman and as a black person, and how these two aspects of her identity couldn't be separated out, in describing the kind of oppression she was experiencing. You couldn't neatly compartmentalize them into two separate things with these two separate categories of her identity. These were inherently tied together in how she was experiencing the judicial system. And so this has kind of kicked off a whole sub genre of feminist thought, feminist thinking, and people have taken this and run with it. And it's evolved since this original paper that Kimberly Crenshaw wrote. And I would now kind of define it as another lens to understand how a person social categories, their many, many social categories all interact, in order to place them on the power hierarchy of society. So your race, your gender, your sexuality, all of these things influence whether you have access to power, or whether you're actively prevented from accessing that power. And I think it can be very useful to kind of disaggregate these different pieces, and understand gender in a specific context, understand ethnicity in a specific context. But ultimately, we need to look at this broader picture and how all these pieces fit together because I think we're missing a lot of context and a lot of nuance without it, and it gives us an incomplete picture of whatever situation you're trying to understand.

Kassia Binkowski
I want to dive deeper into this notion of foreign feminist policy. Let's start with a definition. How do you define it? And why is what we have right now not good enough?

Marissa Conway
So I think I need to give two definitions. One is how it exists currently, the way state governments are implementing feminist foreign policy as a framework. And this revolves around the rights of women and girls very specifically. It looks at representation, it looks at funding quality initiatives. So it's a little more surface level than how I, personally, would define what a feminist foreign policy should be.

Kassia Binkowski
Which is what?

Marissa Conway
For me personally, I would like to see a feminist foreign policy that, like I said, puts on these glasses, looks at systemic change. And the difference I see between what feminist foreign policy currently is, and where I want to see it go, is that where it currently is, is very short term focused. So it's more about inclusion in existing systems, and doesn't really have that systems change piece. That's the long term vision that for me is missing. And this brings about really difficult conversations, this starts looking at Colonial legacies and ongoing colonial violence, this looks at imperialism, this looks at militarism, and why we always resort to violence as an answer for conflict, which, in a world and especially within the foreign policy world, where defense and military is just kind of at the core of all foreign policy, these are not easy conversations to have. And it's very understandable that people in power want to keep their power. So if you start talking about systems change, and what it means to actually give up that power and share it, it's difficult to say the least. You can have a lot of people on the inside who are really trying to do good. And the way foreign policy has been set up and structured, is so counter to letting any inkling of feminist change in. It is a patriarchal institution, through and through. And so pushing for this change is very difficult. And this is why it needs to be a marathon, not a sprint.

Kassia Binkowski
Tell us more about that. I mean, for those of us who don't work in this space, pull back the curtains a little bit break down that patriarchy in the ways that shows up in foreign policy development and implementation.

So historically, politics has been a male dominated sphere, sector. And it's only been very recently that women have started to get more involved in politics, in policy, and in these institutions. A lot of how foreign policy has been set up, because it's been set up by men, for men, it means that in order to gain access into these institutions, you kind of have to play by these very gendered rules of what it means to operate in this space. So this is where you see a lot of these gendered characteristics come in. So this idea of, you know, what a typical masculine person is good at making certain kinds of policies, these stereotypes. So typically voters, a lot of studies have shown that voters tend to prefer male politicians when it comes to issues of national security or more, quote unquote, hard security issues, and tend to prefer more feminine policymakers when it comes to quote unquote, softer issues like education, etc. So I think because of this history of it being so male dominated for so long, it's very difficult now, we're seeing the first iteration, really, the first few generations of women being heavily involved in government institutions. And I think there's still this expectation that in order to gain access to these spaces, you still have to kind of play by the rules. And so much analysis after Hillary Clinton ran for president was around this, around can she even get this far without having been the way she was, without having presented herself as this very heavily masculinized kind of persona? Would she have gotten this far if she had presented herself with a bit of softer femininity? So you can see even though it's so easy to criticize and get frustrated at these gendered stereotypes, they are so real, and they still so heavily dictate who is allowed into these spaces. So when I say foreign policy is just patriarchal, through and through, it's kind of in reference to these kind of organizing mechanisms of who is even accepted into this space in the first place.

Kassia Binkowski
What I want to know is what does it look like when a woman gets to the table and still gets to act like a woman, and think like a woman, and problem self like a woman? What does that look like? And who can you point to, in terms of real success in that space?

All of the examples I can think of, are not high profile people in the public eye. It is the every day activist who is working at a grassroots level, who is doing a fabulous job kind of building relationships with parliamentarians and government officials to discuss what needs to happen. And I could list names, no one would know who they are, and I think there's so much value in that, because I don't think we need these kind of very high profile politicians to be the ones to implement change. I firmly believe that this needs to come at a much more localized level. So I know that doesn't exactly answer your question.

Kassia Binkowski
No, but that's fascinating, because I hear you that the change needs to bubble up at this local level. But if we don't ever have that resounding success, if we can't ever point to, she did it and it worked, is there any hope? That's so deflating.

I am hesitant to emphasize the person behind the change, because I don't ultimately think that change ever comes from one person. And I think we can be very inspired by particular people. AOC, I think is a great example of that, where she strikes me as somebody who's very authentic in herself, and stays true to herself. I don't know her the extent to which-

Kassia Binkowski
But she does seem like that, I agree.

And has very publicly, you know, she has a No BS kind of persona, which I really appreciate. But I think the true kind of changemaking potential behind feminism is this recognition that it is just fundamentally this community movement. And it's not necessarily something that can be pinned on an individual.

Kassia Binkowski
You're right, it gets right back to this idea of inclusivity.

Yeah, and it makes it difficult sometimes, I think to operate in a capitalist world where there is this over-emphasis on individual success, selling people on the idea that feminist success comes from movements of people and not individual people, I think can be very difficult, because of the capitalist system we live in and because of this very individualistic focus. But I think the "Girlboss" is a manifestation of this hyper-individualistic female success story, which ultimately, to me, is just sort of capitalism dressed up in feminist clothing, if you will, where we've taken female empowerment, but just kind of boiled it down to the branding, and any of the potency is just out the window.

Kassia Binkowski
I love that you just suddenly were like, "that's some really capitalist thinking of you to try and find one person to pin success on," that is inherently a flawed way of thinking when a truly feminist system, you know, is about all of the players at the table and not trying to find one person at the top.

I think so, I think so. And I understand the importance of having inspirational figures, this is very necessary. And there are people that spend their lives dedicating themselves to activism, or to feminist academia, to really dive deep into this kind of thinking, and we can look to them for leadership and inspiration. But yeah, I think ultimately, success is going to come from the whole, not the singular.

Kassia Binkowski
So let's talk about said success. Where has feminist foreign policy been really successful? Where has it been embraced? I know you say that, right now, it feels really focused on short term gains but where are kind of the best case scenarios that you can point to?

Marissa Conway
I do really admire what Sweden has done. So they were the first country to launch feminist foreign policy, as we understand it today, as this policy framework. And why I really appreciate what they did has to do with the way they rolled it out internally within their government. So they had this mandate come from Margot Wallstrom. And she said, Well, we have this feminist foreign policy, but she left it up to each team in each department to figure out what that actually meant in practice. So that gave ownership to everybody. And that gave flexibility so that people could figure out what that meant in their own context. They didn't have this kind of high level mandate come down, telling them exactly what to do, but rather giving them space to explore. And I think that was a really clever way. I also from what I understand, that's just sort of how The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sweden works anyways. But I also think it was a brilliant way of helping truly integrate this and make each person in the MFA think about what feminism actually means in the context of their work, and then give them the liberty and the freedom to figure that out and take that action for themselves. So I think that was a really fabulous way of rolling out feminist foreign policy. I will tell you, at the beginning of my kind of activism career, I would always advocate for: we need a feminist foreign policy, countries should be adopting a feminist foreign policy. And now I'm afraid to say I'm much more cynical about it. And I feel like I'm protective about a feminist foreign policy.

Kassia Binkowski
Why, what happened?

Marissa Conway
I think it's being used as a branding exercise. And a lot of countries are now saying they have a feminist foreign policy, and not actually doing anything, there's no policy change to back this up. So France is one great example, where, a couple years ago, they wrote this op eds on International Women's Day saying we have a feminist foreign policy, and absolutely nothing changed. Nothing changed in the government, there was no policy around this, nothing changed. They just started using this phrase to describe their foreign policy. So there's definitely this level of virtue signaling that is happening with the word feminism, and what that means when you tack it on to the phrase foreign policy. So I'm very skeptical about how this is actually being implemented. I am excited about the enthusiasm towards feminism, and the fact that we're losing this taboo around engaging with this concept. But oh, my goodness, I'm skeptical right now about how it's actually being used.

Kassia Binkowski
So what then? If we can't really trust that people or the governments, the entities that are that say they're implementing feminist foreign policy are in fact doing so? Where do you go with that? What do you do next? Is there like a new adjective we need to add a new thing to roll out? Or is it about accountability standards? What does it look like? From somebody who's in the in the inside of this space, what now?

Marissa Conway
I change my mind on this every day. I have to be honest. I have days where I feel very optimistic and I think all right, we just need stronger accountability, we need more transparency, more conversations, I have a lot of conversations with government officials who are working on feminist foreign policy and all of these things I'm saying to you, it's exactly what I say to them. I say, Listen, this is where the activists are super cynical. This is where you need to be paying attention to otherwise people will consider you a hypocritical government or hypocritical political party. And again, this is why I struggle with the enthusiasm is often there. And there are great feminists working in government today. But I do think there are just so many structural issues with how foreign policy is as an institution, that it makes it so hard to implement feminism, you know, it's being filtered through this patriarchal space, of course, the potency is gonna get lost along the way, this is inevitable. So on my good days, where I feel optimistic, I think, okay, baby steps, right, we're getting there, this is just a step in the right direction, we're going to keep taking steps in the right direction, and we're going to build on this. And then I have other days where I do get very frustrated. And I just want to go back to the grassroots, I just want to ignore the governments and focus on the feminist activists who are just so wonderful and inspirational and working so hard. And I just want to sort of cocoon myself in that space. But at the same time, that's not how change happens. Right?

Kassia Binkowski
What are the biggest barriers to governments embracing feminist foreign policy in its best form, you know, at its highest standard? Is it not having enough women at the table? Is it policymakers not being the same people who are on the ground, you know, living with the repercussions of set policies? Is it that disconnect? What are the barriers that you're seeing?

Marissa Conway
Yeah, definitely that. I would say a lot of what I hear is issues around buying from the top quote unquote, so sort of the ultimate decision makers with the most power, if they are not invested, it's very difficult to implement change at a systemic level.

Kassia Binkowski
This notion of the people at the top and it being top down and that being a critical flaw, right, and a real breakdown point in the effectiveness of foreign policy and its ability to be, you know, truly feminist and informed by community and this notion of inclusivity. I'm curious if you think that it would ever be possible to have truly feminist foreign policy without having women in those positions, women at the top? Or do you think that that's never going to be the case,

Marissa Conway
I'm going to take that a step further. And just say that until we can have a government that's really representative of all different people across society, it's just not going to be possible. So it's very much important to have more women involved in politics, but also more people with disabilities, also, you know, more people of color, oh, my god, foreign policy is such a wide field, especially feminist foreign policy. Very, very white. And so even that, in and of itself, begs the question of, we're pushing through this kind of specific framework for change, but that framework for change is still very replicative of some of the demographics, of foreign policy, which are problematic in the first place. And I think ultimately, a feminist foreign policy would dismantle foreign policy institutions as we know them, everything would look entirely different. And I think everyone would have their own idea of what this could be. Personally, I think it would mean a borderless world with a different kind of government structure altogether. And this is way long term thinking, right? This is like Utopia at its extreme. But I think if you really start to challenge what it means to invoke feminist thinking into foreign policy spaces, you just end up so far away from what we have today. And I think it's just that balance, right, between the baby steps we can take today and that massive, huge, utopian, long term picture that we're trying to work towards.

Kassia Binkowski
I love that.

Kassia Binkowski
In what ways is feminism Western centric? How has that done the movement a great disservice?

Marissa Conway
Well, first, I'd be really curious, I should have asked you this already. How would you define feminism?

Kassia Binkowski
Well, I think that I certainly unless academic description or definition than you gave, but I but I agree that my definition really is about inclusivity. And it's about having more people and more types of people at the table and influencing decisions, accessing the things, whether that's the systems or the power that they deserve to be able to access. But I have a hard time and I struggle with disentangling that from gender. And I think then that Western bias kind of kicks in a little bit of what, what gender equity looks like, and the ways it can and should show up. You know, I'm thinking about, like, I just had a conversation a few months ago with Dr. Deemah Salem, who's a sex education expert in Dubai in the Middle East. And she was saying how valued she felt as a woman in the Middle East, which like full stop made me stop in my tracks and be like, Oh, that's not what I would have expected you to say. And that's absolutely a result of the Western society that I've grown up in, I never ever in a million years would have started the conversation this way. And yet, she was saying, you know, they let me in the front of the line, like any line I show up in, and they men carry my groceries to my car for me. She was like, I feel valued in so many ways that I never felt living in the US. And that notion of what gender equity looks like, and the ways in which it shows up, I feel are so deeply entrenched in the culture in the societies that we were raised in, and I'm struggling with how to break out from that and broaden that. And what does feminism look like if we're all informed, like if the target is always moving, because we're all informed by these different lenses? Does that make sense? What gender equity means to me doesn't mean the same thing to her. And therefore, where are we moving to? What is the end goal if the goal looks so different, depending on the society that you grew up in, that you were raised in, and, you know, has shaped your lens and your worldview?

Marissa Conway
So one of the things I really appreciate about feminism is this connection between the global and the local, it really specifically draws attention to this the way that local actions impact the International and vice versa. And especially the way that seemingly everyday things, everyday occurrences, everyday interactions, have a bigger ripple effect on how we are shaped as a society. And I think in that there is a lot of space for these different versions of what feminism means and recognition that what it means for me, as a white American who now lives in the UK is going to be very different than, you know, even what it means for my sister. And we grew up together and had a very similar life. And she still has a different take on feminism that isn't wrong, and isn't better than mine, or worse than mine, it's just different because she's had a slightly different life. And I think this is a benefit, or something that should be seen as beneficial that we can hold space for all of these different ideas, because I think we're all headed in the same direction, which is equality, roughly, for hopefully, for everybody, I think that's kind of where I draw the line. If your feminism is used to exclude other people, then I don't know if it's feminism so much. But if we're all kind of headed in this direction, then I think it can be very complimentary, even if we're defining it in different ways. And I think having space for the possibility that it will manifest differently in different contexts is actually very important, and allows for each person in each community to take on these values and implement them in their own way. I don't think we're going to- feminism isn't going to lead us to some universal homogenized world, I think what it does is embrace how we are different and celebrate that, and see that as an absolute strength. And not something that is detrimental or scary or something we should be protected from.

Kassia Binkowski
Let's go back to- you spoke earlier about this notion of as much as feminism is about systems change, it's also about doing some really hard work internally. And that's what we're talking about, right? How doing that work, unpacking those biases that we carry in terms of what that equality looks like that we're all moving towards, and honoring the fact that it's going to look a little bit different everywhere. But if a feminist process can get us there, then that is worth pursuing. What has the internal work look like for you? What work have you done to reject your biases? What has your own internal struggle looked like? I mean, you've talked about how feminism has evolved for you, you've talked about how your relationship with feminist foreign policy specifically has evolved. Tell us a little bit more, pull back the curtains, what has the internal work look like?

Marissa Conway
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Marissa Conway
It's something I'm still learning about and will continue to learn about. And I will say, therapy, absolutely fundamentally important to doing this kind of work. And always looking for what I consider to be normal and then questioning this. And this is just the lifelong process. And for me, this has led me to recognize that white supremacy, as a system, organizes our world and to recognize that capitalism, as a system, organizes our world, and to figure out what I can do, what's in my control, to work on myself, and to change my environment around me, to actively kind of push back on these systems and structures. It's a lifelong journey. I'm gonna keep messing up. I'm very aware of this. And I'm working on holding space for that. And I also have wonderful people in my life who hold me accountable when I mess up, like my therapist, and now that I'm pregnant with a daughter, I'm even more hyper aware of the example that I want to set and the things that I want to normalize for her so she doesn't have to have as big a reckoning as I did and hopefully can get started with a little bit more knowledge than I have around being very intentional with how you craft your life, if you will, and not allowing these sexist systems to shape who you are or who you can be.