Entrepreneurship, Empowerment, and Development: Unraveling Economic Rationales in Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy

Abstract

Between 2014 and 2022 Sweden operated the world’s first feminist foreign policy (FFP), which has drawn strong reactions from academics and activists alike. The overarching aim of this article is to analyze how economic objectives within Sweden’s deployment of FFP were framed and rationalized in policy programming, which has to this point received little scholarly attention. Drawing from empirical data, including government texts, published interviews, and a public-facing embassy exhibit, this article argues that the economic programming within FFP was strongly influenced by market feminism. The supporting evidence thematically covers the strong rhetorical focus in FFP documents on investing in impoverished women as a driver of global economic growth, the promotion of specific policies that focused on uplifting women’s entrepreneurship, and the significant role that public–private partnerships played in the enactment of a number of policy initiatives. The insights of this article highlight how foreign policy programs, gender equality, and neoliberalism are increasingly shaping one another.

Entre 2014 y 2022, Suecia implementó la primera Política Exterior Feminista (PEF) del mundo, lo cual generó fuertes reacciones tanto por parte de académicos como de activistas. El objetivo general de este artículo consiste en analizar cómo se formularon y racionalizaron los objetivos económicos del programa de la PEF en Suecia en la programación de políticas, lo cual, hasta el momento ha recibido poca atención académica. El artículo argumenta, a partir de datos empíricos que incluyen textos gubernamentales, entrevistas publicadas y una exposición pública en una embajada, que la programación económica dentro de la PEF estuvo fuertemente influenciada por el feminismo existente en el mercado. Las pruebas que apoyan esta hipótesis cubren, a nivel temático, el fuerte enfoque retórico de los documentos de la PEF en materia de la inversión para ayudar a las mujeres empobrecidas como motor del crecimiento económico global, la promoción de políticas específicas enfocadas a impulsar el emprendimiento femenino y el papel significativo que desempeñaron las asociaciones público-privadas con relación a la implementación de una serie de iniciativas políticas. Las ideas generadas en este artículo resaltan cómo los programas de política exterior, así como la igualdad de género y el neoliberalismo se condicionan cada vez más entre ellos.

Entre 2014 et 2022, la Suède a mis en œuvre la première politique étrangère féministe (PEF) au monde, qui a suscité de fortes réactions tant de la part des chercheurs que des militants. L'objectif fondamental de cet article est d'analyser quels ont été le cadrage et la rationalisation des objectifs économiques du déploiement de la PEF de la Suède dans l'agenda politique, un élément qui a jusqu'ici peu intéressé les chercheurs. Se fondant sur des données empiriques, dont des textes gouvernementaux, des entretiens publiés et une exposition d'ambassade ouverte au public, cet article affirme que la planification économique au sein de la PEF a été fortement influencée par le féminisme de marché. Sur le plan thématique, les éléments probants couvrent la forte focalisation rhétorique des documents PEF sur l'investissement dans les femmes démunies comme moteur de croissance économique mondiale, la promotion de politiques spécifiques qui se concentrent sur le fait d'encourager l'entrepreneuriat féminin ainsi que le rôle important joué par les partenariats public-privé dans la mise en œuvre d'un certain nombre d'initiatives politiques. Les conclusions de cet article mettent en évidence que les programmes de politique étrangère, l’égalité des genres et le néolibéralisme se façonnent de plus en plus mutuellement.

In 2014, the newly elected Swedish Social Democratic/Green coalition made waves internationally when it announced that it would utilize feminism as a grounding point in its foreign policy agenda, thus launching the world’s first feminist foreign policy (FFP; Government Offices of Sweden 2014). This trailblazing policy orientation aimed to explicitly connect a feminist analysis to all aspects of Sweden’s foreign engagements, including in development cooperation arrangements and in its trade agreements. Since being launched in 2014, Sweden’s development of FFP has inspired other states to also integrate gender considerations into their own foreign policy programs, signaling that feminism is an emerging theoretical grounding point in an increasing set of foreign policy contexts (Thompson, Ahmed, and Khokar 2021). During its tenure and since being suspended in 2022, a wealth of scholarship has analyzed the contours of Sweden’s FFP, in particular how it tied into broader efforts to include women in peacemaking processes (Agius 2018; Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019), its ethical underpinning (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2016), and its successes and failures in achieving transformational outcomes on the ground (Aggestam, Bergman Rosamond, and Kronsell 2018; Towns, Bjarnegård, and Jezierska 2023).

One key element in Sweden’s operationalization of FFP was specific programming that aimed to connect gender equality considerations into economic development policies that were initiated and promoted by the Swedish Foreign Ministry. Yet no scholarship to date has specifically unpacked the underlying rationales that informed the economic dimensions of Sweden’s FFP, and in particular how a focus on entrepreneurship and the empowerment of women and girls in the Global South served as guiding pillars in the economic programming of FFP. Given that feminist scholars have increasingly highlighted the ways in which political economy, gender equality, and development are progressively shaping one another transnationally (Rai 2003; Haussman and Sauer 2007; Fraser 2009; Kantola and Squires 2012; Calkin 2017; Halley et al. 2018; Moeller 2018; Parashar, Tickner, and True 2018), the lack of scholarship on the economic programming within FFP invites a consideration of how Sweden structured economic policies and initiatives, including development and trade policy, within its operationalization of feminism as part of its foreign policy between 2014 and 2022.

This article aims to analyze the rationales that informed the economic dimensions of Sweden’s FFP, providing a vital contribution to scholarship on FFP that has received little attention up to this point. As I argue, the rationales that guided economic policy within Sweden’s FFP can be considered as an example of what Kantola and Squires (2012) have described as “market feminism,” given that the mechanisms of the market figured as a significant structuring factor in the rhetoric and implementation of FFP’s economic policy. This was seen primarily through the thematic focus on gender mainstreaming in global financial institutions, uplifting women’s entrepreneurship, and through the strong presence of public–private partnerships throughout economic initiatives embedded in Sweden’s FFP.

Sweden serves as a generative case study in better understanding the formation and enactment of economic policy under the banner of FPP. As the pioneer of utilizing a feminist approach to foreign policy, Sweden’s use of economic directives as a component of achieving global gender equality sets the tone for future FPP engagements across an increasing set of national contexts, meriting a deeper scholarly analysis into the influences, rationales, and outcomes of economic policy articulations within Sweden’s deployment of FFP. The contextual insights offered by the Swedish case study contribute a much-needed starting point to the development of future research that can examine economic rationales embedded across FFP programs from a more comparative point of view. Beyond the scope of FFP, this article also adds further depth to scholarship that traces how the politics around gender equality, development, and market economies are becoming increasingly intertwined, and particularly how discourses around gender equality are being absorbed into the calculus of neoliberal market rationales transnationally.

The diverse arrangement of empirical data that informs the analysis of this article consists of three policy documents released by the Swedish foreign ministry that describe the guiding rationale of policy choices and the auditing of specific economic initiatives that were invested in during FFP, published interviews with foreign ministers and other government officials who were involved with developing FFP programming, and a public-facing educational exhibit that was displayed in multiple Swedish embassies, which served as a measure of soft power that outlined the economic logics embedded in the policy approaches of FFP. Together, the data provide both an opportunity to unpack the discursive rationales that structured economic programming within FFP while also tracking how these rationales were operationalized in programming initiatives on the ground. The analysis of these materials focuses on tracing how gendered economic disparities are problematized across government texts and in interviews with officials, and relatedly how economic policies operationalized under the scope of FFP are understood to address the identified problems. This method of analysis thus accounts for the underlying rationale behind the choice to include economic programming in FFP while also understanding how policy solutions were put into practice.

The article will proceed as follows: First I will provide a basic overview of the development and trajectory of Swedish state feminism. I will then move to contextualize Sweden’s deployment of FFP, while also weaving in insights from previous scholarship that has evaluated varying elements of the policy program. I will also survey scholarship that has traced how gender equality and neoliberalism are increasingly influencing each other, especially in the context of development politics. I will then move to my analysis of the economic dimensions that structured FFP. This analysis will be divided into three thematic sections, where I will first begin by describing how economic inequality is problematized in gendered terms across government texts and interviews. The second theme will explore how specific measures were set in motion to address these problems, particularly through an emphasis on gender mainstreaming processes in global financial institutions, uplifting women’s entrepreneurship in the Global South, and through the usage of public–private partnerships involving Swedish corporations. The final theme will focus on public-facing efforts that were incorporated in FFP, centering on an analysis of a public exhibit titled Her Rights! Money, Power, Autonomy that was displayed in multiple Swedish embassies between 2022 and 2023. Finally, I will provide concluding reflections on the economic elements that shaped FFP programming, where I will argue that Sweden’s feminist internationalism between 2014 and 2022 was significantly influenced by market feminism, given that the global financial market served as a significant structuring factor of the underlying rationale and enactment of policy initiatives. Ultimately, my analysis suggests that while aspects of FFP were demonstrably pathbreaking in their politicization of gendered issues on the global stage, the economic programming in FFP failed to stray beyond mainstream currents that are increasingly locating gender equality within neoliberal market logics. These analytical insights contribute important context to better understanding the shifting dynamics and relationships between enactments of state feminism, foreign policy, and corporatized development.

Situating Swedish State Feminism and FFP

Sweden and the Nordic countries more broadly have frequently been cited as prominent examples of nations that have been able to consistently deliver policies that benefit women, owing to what Helga Hernes first described as “women-friendly” political cultures (Hernes 1987). Broadly, state feminism has typically been achieved via women’s policy agencies that have served as institutions that engage with a broad range of political stakeholders and forward specific policy demands of the state (Lovenduski and Baudino 2005). In the Nordic context, state feminist policy has typically consisted of welfare provisions related to family policy such as universal daycare, generous paid parental leave programs, and other benefits aimed at providing women with the opportunity to balance family and career roles (Borchorst and Siim 2008). In the Swedish context, a main driver of state feminist policy has been the Social Democratic Party, which has been the dominant party in Swedish politics, being in power for much of the last 90 years. Women party members within the Swedish social democratic political movement have been able to strategically position gender equality as a pillar within the overall framework of Swedish social democracy, which has traditionally focused on equal distribution of resources and power across society (Sainsbury 2005). As Sainsbury, Bergqvist, and Olsson Blandy have described (2007, 231), Social Democratic gender mainstreaming initiatives were already being implemented in the 1990s, spurred on as feminism was seeing a resurgence in Swedish society. Social Democratic women and their allies have frequently pushed for the party to reflect a radical feminist perspective, which has continued to bring organizational attention to gender equality as a political paradigm (Sainsbury, Bergqvist, and Olsson Blandy 2007, 231). This strategic work from women within the Social Democratic Party culminated in the most recent Social Democratic-led coalition government, active between 2014 and 2022, proclaiming itself as officially feminist in its overall orientation (Government Offices of Sweden 2015). In essence, all government ministries and services were encouraged to reflect their work through a feminist grounding. Notably, this was the first time that a government had officially framed itself as feminist, signaling a further commitment from the Swedish state to utilize feminism as an ideological grounding point in statecraft.

The announcement that Sweden would operate an explicitly FPP built upon both these long-standing domestic commitments toward advancing gender equality and a tradition of extending solidarity to marginalized populations in its foreign engagements (Bergman Rosamond 2016; Bergman Rosamond 2020). The programming that made up FFP was grounded in working to advance what were described as the three R’s: Rights, Representation, and Resources. These R’s were promoted using seven objective focus areas, which included full enjoyment of human rights, freedom from physical, psychological, and sexual violence, participation in preventing and resolving conflicts, and post-conflict peacebuilding, political participation and influence in all areas of society, economic rights and empowerment, and sexual and reproductive health and rights (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018a). FFP was also described as building upon and weaving into established international rights frameworks, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1,325 on women, peace, and security (WPS), and the EU action plan for gender equality and women’s empowerment in EU’s external relations (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018a). The policy program was thus well anchored into international human rights foundations, while also working to advance a progressive and redistributive agenda across a broad range of political policy areas.

The scholarship that has analyzed FFP has primarily been located in assessing how it engages with international treaties on peaceful conflict settlement, such as the WPS agenda (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019). Previous research has also touched on the role FFP has had in influencing other countries to adopt FFP programs, while scholars have also worked to theorize the ethical underpinning of the policy program (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2016; Bergman Rosamond 2020). Across the scholarship, FFP is largely characterized as drawing on Sweden’s activist reputation, and its domestic legacy of state feminism, which have contributed to Sweden’s efforts to re-politicize gendered issues on the global stage. In particular, this can be seen with the UN-based WPS agenda (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019). One of the key focus areas outlined within FFP was ensuring the participation of women in preventing and resolving conflicts and post-conflict peacebuilding, which is explicitly connected with the goal of the WPS agenda. As Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond argue, Sweden’s FFP has been successfully able to forward the incorporation of women as integral stakeholders in conflict resolution processes (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019). This has largely been achieved by countering the increasingly depoliticized and technocratic discourses that permeate UN policy implementation processes with an explicit appeal to feminist logics that undergirded the initial adoption of the WPS, with FFP serving as a platform to encourage this re-politicization process. The scholarly focus on the way that FFP has contributed to the re-politicization of institutionalized gender equality initiatives has led to the theoretical characterization of FFP as a first-of-its-kind policy program that is able to push feminist perspectives on statecraft and global activism in new directions (Aggestam and Bergman-Rosamond 2019).

This focus on politicizing and centering gender equality in global institutions has provided some scholars with the rationale to characterize FFP as an ethical endeavor (Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2016). In considering FFP’s ethical intentions through the theoretical lens of care ethics, Karin Aggestam, Annika Bergman Rosamond and Annika Kronsell (2018, 24) contend that FFP is ethically sound, given that “It places at the centre of the analysis such things as gendered discrimination, inequalities and violence as well as the lack of inclusion and representation of women and other marginalised groups.” There are, however, limits to this ethical characterization, as the authors also note that there are clear tensions that can be identified when it comes to the tradeoff that can occur between FFP ideals and the realities of Sweden’s security policy. Feminist activists have, for example, criticized FFP for what they characterize as a hypocritical stance on peaceful conflict resolution given that Sweden has a large domestic weapons export industry that the foreign ministry has also promoted in bilateral discussions (Aggestam, Bergman Rosamond, and Kronsell 2018). Adding complexity to the tensions within FFP, some scholars have also started to unpack how postcolonial discourses informed the operationalization of policy within Sweden’s feminist internationalism (Nylund, Håkansson, and Bjarnegård 2023; Zhukova 2023). Nylund, Håkansson, and Bjarnegård (2023, 269) have, for example, argued that the discourse present across FFP texts constructs Sweden as morally superior, which reproduces “unequal relationships of power interlinked with postcoloniality, and situates the problem of gender inequalities in the global south.” The scope of FFP as a transformative policy agenda is thus framed as complex and contradictory, as evidenced by the wealth of scholarship that has unpacked varying elements and tensions within its implementation.

Recent scholarship has also labored to provide an overarching posthumous evaluation on the effectiveness of the diverse set of programming that encompassed FFP. In a report titled More Than a Label, Less Than a Revolution: Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy,Ann Towns, Elin Bjarnegård, and Katarzyna Jezierska (2023) have comprehensively analyzed the bilateral engagements and administrative procedures that made up a key aspect of FFP. Via qualitative and quantitative methods, the authors establish that while the feminist label helped drive more concerted efforts to incorporate gender equality and feminism in various aspects of Sweden’s foreign engagement, there was a broad spectrum of interpretation, and the overall implementation of FFP was variable and uneven. Despite this, the authors conclude that FFP raised the ambition of Sweden’s foreign ministry, and that the sustained and intentional focus on gender equality will leave lasting impacts (Towns, Bjarnegård, and Jezierska 2023). Previous scholarship on FFP has thus been structured around evaluating its influence on global arrangements on conflict resolution, such as the WPS agenda, its ethical merits, its relationship to post-colonial discourses, and posthumous assessments of its overall effectiveness. FFP has been characterized as an ambitious, first-of-its-kind policy program that has, in part, been effective at re-politicizing certain issues on the global stage. Despite this characterization, scholarship has also highlighted its limits, in particular how it has been interpreted and implemented in contradictory and uneven ways. Yet, the economic policy elements of FFP have received little to no specific scholarly attention, which leaves a significant gap in the evaluation of FFP that this article seeks to address. Before delving into the analysis of FFP’s economic policy dimensions, there will be a brief overview of scholarship that has highlighted the emergent ways that gender equality, development, and the global economy are shaping one another.

Gender, Development, and the Global Economy

In order to effectively describe the economic logics embedded in FFP, it is important to touch on scholarship that has traced how neoliberal economic policy and gender equality considerations are becoming more intertwined transnationally. Theoretical descriptions of neoliberalism highlight its tendency to encourage privatization, individualism, and the deregulation of economic markets in ways that reconfigure how states manage their affairs. Neoliberalism has been characterized as a complex and contradictory process that, despite its thematic focus on curbing state influences on the economic sphere, often relies on state intervention to impose market rule on varying aspects of social, political, and economic life (Kantola and Squires 2012). Wendy Brown (2006, 38) asserts that neoliberalism can be considered to be a political rationality that works to entrench market rationales into the framework of the liberal democratic state, which serves as a departure point for the analysis throughout this article. Consequently, scholars have highlighted how states are increasingly relying on the market as a mediator in the enactment of public policy agendas (Hansen and Jansson 2022). Rather than the traditional usage of state-funded welfare services, public–private partnerships have now replaced state-centric models of economic governance that have increasingly brought corporate actors and market dynamics into liberal-democratic forms of statecraft. The expansion of neoliberalism has thus shifted how the state administers services and rationalizes economic policy, which has a subsequent impact on domestic and foreign populations.

In the Swedish context, the turbulent economic conditions of the early 1990s saw a rapid neoliberalization of policy and institutions. While Sweden had traditionally balanced the economic models of East and West to sustain the development of robust welfare state institutions, the adoption of neoliberal reforms was seen as a way for social democracy to adapt to the pressures of an increasingly globalizing world (Ryner 1999; Kuisma and Ryner 2012). The lasting effects of these policy shifts across various sectors of Swedish society have been widely studied and analyzed, not least with respect to the formation and enactment of Swedish state feminism (Fahlgren, Johansson, and Mulinari 2012; Ahl et al. 2014; Rönnblom and Olivius 2019; Hansen and Jansson 2022). As Hansen and Jansson (2022) summarize, the implementation of neoliberalism has resulted in Swedish state feminism transitioning from being a policy process focused on collective action to being one that focuses on self-preservation through opportunity. Writing about entrepreneurial discourse and Nordic state feminism, Ahl et al. (2014, 19) add that “The politics of recognition (as revealed in, for example, recognition as a ‘woman entrepreneur’) has become more important than the politics of redistribution, while gender equality has been re-formulated as equal opportunities instead of equal results.” As Sweden has continued to maintain a high profile transnationally relating to feminist governance and policy, scholars have identified domestic shifts in the way that Swedish state feminism is articulated and enacted. This incremental incorporation of market-based logic with an emphasis on entrepreneurialism in gender equality initiatives, influenced by neoliberal reforms, is an important element to consider in assessing the relationship between gender equality, economic policy, and statecraft in the Swedish context.

In a transnational context, one trend connected to the neoliberalization of state policy has been the discursive framing of women and girls as an untapped economic resource that both governments and businesses should aim to explicitly target in development programs (Eisenstein 2009; Calkin 2017; Moeller 2018). As Sydney Calkin highlights, women have become highly visible subjects of global development governance, and she argues that impoverished groups of women and girls in the Global South have in essence become poster girls for neoliberal reforms (Calkin 2017). As gender equality has been politically mainstreamed in global institutions, it has also become useful as a way of spurring gendered discourses related to development governance politics in the Global South (Calkin 2017; Moeller 2018). These discourses often frame women as inherently entrepreneurial and economically savvy, who are simply in need of economic investment to unlock their full potential as economic actors for the benefit of the global economy. In Calkin’s words, these discourses “imagine poverty eradication as contiguous with innovation and entrepreneurship, and female consumers as untapped markets in which innovative technologies can flourish” (Calkin 2017, 86). In essence, the incorporation of gender equality rhetoric into development discourses has encouraged the idea that investing in socioeconomically disadvantaged women in the Global South is economic common sense, which furthers the expansion of market logic into development politics as they increasingly utilize gender equality as a guiding rationale.

Scholars tracing the growing influence of neoliberalism on the state have further argued that traditional articulations of state feminism have been shifted by the introduction of neoliberalism into the management of the state (Sainsbury, Bergqvist, and Olsson Blandy 2007; Kantola and Squires 2012; Ahl et al. 2014). As Kantola and Squires argue, state feminist policy outcomes have traditionally relied upon state-based policy mechanisms such as women’s policy agencies that have worked with feminist activists to craft and enact policy (Kantola and Squires 2012). Under the changing conditions that structure state policy engagements, they have coined the term “market feminism” to capture the ways in which feminist policy pathways have shifted alongside the changes in the ways that states enact policy, influenced by neoliberal reforms. In their own words, they characterize market feminism as (Kantola and Squires 2012, 383),

The ways in which feminist engagements with public policy agendas are increasingly mediated via private sector organizations according to the logic of the market. This results in gender equality machineries in nation states becoming ever more embedded in neoliberal market reform.

In essence, the deployment of market feminism as a theoretical term aims to describe how gender equality becomes dependent on “the mechanisms offered by the market” (Kantola and Squires 2012, 390), and further how gender equality is rhetorically instrumentalized in neoliberal economic policy. Market feminism is thus a term that highlights “the emergence of a different type of disciplinary discourse” (Kantola and Squires 2012, 390) that is separate from, but related to, traditional forms of state feminism. The term is thus useful in helping to contextualize the ways that the blurring of public and private forms of governance under neoliberal reforms has resulted in gender equality policy being increasingly reliant upon market dynamics, which have become institutionalized within feminist-influenced public policy agendas.

As the surveyed scholarship on neoliberalism, state feminism, and development politics has emphasized, there is a growing intersection between gender equality, neoliberalism, and development policy that has brought about a number of dynamics that are important for the analysis of the economic dimensions of Sweden’s FFP. The steady introduction of neoliberalism as a guiding rationality into the fabric of liberal democratic states has resulted in policy initiatives that rely on market logics that have increased the role of corporate actors in the landscape of statecraft. This dynamic has been influential as gender equality considerations have been simultaneously mainstreamed into the core of development politics and global institutions, resulting in discourses that highlight the need to invest in women and girls, particularly in the Global South, as a means of boosting the global economy. Public–private partnerships have played a key role in legitimizing these discourses, and terms such as “market feminism” have been coined to explain the intersection of neoliberalism, public policy, and gender equality, and the impact that this intersection has on statecraft (Kantola and Squires 2012). As I argue, the economic policy agenda within Sweden’s FFP was significantly shaped by these developments. I will now begin my analysis by unraveling the discursive rationales of FFP’s economic policy agenda.

Problematizing Economic Gender Inequality

As previous scholarship has demonstrated, FFP primarily aimed to problematize and re-politicize gendered disparities on the global stage. By tracing the ways that the Swedish Foreign Ministry rhetorically conceptualized gendered economic disparities in documents that steered FFP, one is able to better understand how the feminist policy solutions were subsequently set in motion to address the identified disparities. One key document that is important to providing context to the economic discourses enmeshed within FFP is the official Handbook of Feminist Foreign Policy released by the Swedish Foreign Ministry in 2018 (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018a). Within its 111 pages, it provided an in-depth examination of how Sweden problematized global issues in gendered terms, paying particular attention to the seven objective areas, while also describing how FFP programming aimed to tackle the identified issues alongside justifications for why such interventions were needed, often basing their reasoning on empirical research.

Beginning with the rationales that problematized economic gender disparities, the Swedish foreign ministry made a number of distinctive claims about the prevailing economic conditions that women face transnationally. In the introduction of the section within the handbook titled “Economic Rights and Empowerment,” the Swedish foreign ministry provided the following statement identifying the overarching issues facing women with regard to economic empowerment (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018a, 27),

When women participate in the labour market their economic empowerment increases, and a society’s economic growth increases. Society also develops, since women, more than men, invest their income in local society and in children’s health and education. It is therefore not only right but also socially smart to invest in women’s economic empowerment. Despite this, many women lack economic rights and thus the opportunity to inherit, own and use land and natural resources, be in paid employment and get access to information and communication technology, financial services and effective markets.

As stated by the Swedish foreign ministry, the underlying problem(s) that influence the lack of economic gender equality are primarily rooted in the fact that women lack fundamental economic rights such as the right to inherit, access information, and to be in paid employment, which they link to a diminished level of economic development in the broader communities that are governed by these social conditions. As they argue in their statement, it is thus “socially smart” to invest in women since their tendency to reinvest in their communities leads to societal economic growth. In a sidebar that conveys Sweden’s main messages on economic inequality, the handbook further identifies women’s poverty as being rooted in the lack of access to economic resources, with the last bullet point reading, “Women’s participation in the labour market and access to markets for trading lead to stronger economic growth and higher GNP per capita” (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018a, 28). The discourses articulated in the underlying rationale guiding FFP’s economic programming are reminiscent of what Sylvia Chant (2006) has characterized as the “feminization of responsibility and obligation” in development rhetoric. As Kathryn Moeller (2018, 36) argues, the centering of women as the responsible subjects of economic development renders them as instruments for “purposes beyond those girls and women,” which can include the alleviation of poverty and the generation of economic growth, which are predicated on an assumption that investing in women will yield a high rate of return for the global economy. Moeller (2018, 36) further adds, “The return is framed not only by the girls and women as human beings with intrinsic value, but in terms of what investing in them will do for poverty, the economy, population growth, health, or the environment.” The framing of FFP’s focus on economic questions as both a matter of moral correctness and as a smart investment thus builds upon the essentializing instrumentalization of women as responsible economic agents, who will provide a high rate of return for the benefit of their communities and the global economy.

Further into the handbook, an additional section details FFP’s conceptualization of the gendered issues relating to trade policy that thematically builds upon the instrumentalizing discourses established in the main economic section of the document. The section opens with a quote from Ann Linde, who at the time was Sweden’s EU and Trade Minister, which reads (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018a, 85),

Investing in equality is smart. Excluding women from economic opportunities is probably the biggest waste in the world. […] As well as being smart and right, gender equality is also good for the economy. When women participate in the labour market as employees or entrepreneurs, their power over their own lives increases and the whole of society is strengthened.

In this quote, the exclusion of women from the economic market is described as wasteful and inefficient, both from a moral and economic point of view. The investment in gender equality is once again constructed in essentializing terms as a societal benefit given that women’s autonomy increases, and their elevation as economic actors creates a positive lasting impact both economically and socially. The section also describes the challenges that women entrepreneurs face as they navigate the market, including the fact that women often work in small-scale operations with limited access to technical training, resources, and the marketing expertise necessary to compete with other actors. As with the opening economic section, women are instrumentalized as the potential drivers of economic growth who will yield beneficial societal and economic returns.

As the selected passages from one of the primary texts detailing the theoretical grounding of FFP illustrate, the Swedish foreign ministry structured its analytical problematization of the economic dimensions of gender inequality around the lack of access that women have to labor and trade markets globally. Underlying issues that influence the lack of market access are identified as both rooted in traditional socio-cultural values, and also the lack of awareness around gender inequality in the economic sphere. To remedy this, the handbook outlines that policies need to be implemented that decrease the structural and cultural barriers that women face as economic actors, particularly as laborers and entrepreneurs. Access to the market is thus the principal problem that FFP is seeking to change via its economic programming, with the underlying argument being that once women are able to access the market as equals, their own autonomy will be strengthened, which will by extension strengthen their communities. Consequently, gender equality is connected to discourses that tie women’s economic autonomy with the broader trajectory of development. Interwoven throughout the analysis is the rhetorical focus on making the “business case” for gender equality, as evidenced by multiple references to gender equality as a “smart” investment that is morally sound while also driving global economic growth. As I contend, drawing from Moeller (2018), these references instrumentalize women in the Global South on moral grounds, and for the purposes of societal and economic growth. The rhetorical significance given to the global market as a structuring factor in framing the Swedish Foreign Ministry’s emphasis on economic programming as part of FFP lends credence to my assertion that economic policies were strongly influenced by market feminism. As we will see, the translation of this rhetoric into the operation of policy on the ground also builds upon market feminist logics.

Operationalizing the Economic Policy of FFP

Three central Foreign Ministry documents provide a glimpse into how FFP’s economic policies were operationalized on the ground, namely, the official Handbook of Feminist Foreign Policy (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018a), a publicly available document titled, Sweden’s feminist foreign policy: Examples from three years of implementation (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018b), and SKR 2019:17 (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2019), an official foreign policy report that the Swedish government presented to the Swedish parliament in 2019 that accounted for the progress of FFP. As these documents underscore, the manifestation of the policies that were operationalized as part of FFP’s efforts to address the gendered implications of economic inequality were multifaceted, and were largely structured around three primary approaches, which at times overlapped with one another. The first approach revolved around the Swedish Foreign Ministry advocating for the mainstreaming of gender equality considerations into decision-making processes within global financial bodies and in multilateral engagements. Beyond gender mainstreaming, there were also a significant number of references to the Swedish foreign ministry funding and participating in public–private partnerships under the scope of FFP, involving both Swedish and multinational corporations, who were tasked with facilitating a diverse range of initiatives. Third, throughout FFP’s economic programming, there was a consistent focus on uplifting women’s entrepreneurship through both gender mainstreaming efforts and public–private initiatives. As I argue, these approaches were based on utilizing the global market as a site of activism with corporate actors functioning as key stakeholders in supporting the Swedish Foreign Ministry in executing the economic policies articulated across FFP documents.

Beginning with FFP’s use of gender mainstreaming in economic policy, there were a number of organizational actors that FFP directed its activism toward in working to ensure that gender equality considerations were made in decision-making processes. Across both the Handbook and the Examples of Implementation document, a number of common examples are listed that relate to actions that the Swedish Foreign Ministry engaged into mainstream gender mainstreaming efforts in multilateral organizations. In the Handbook, for example, (2018a, 27), the Swedish foreign ministry describes how it, “Contributed to central recommendations from leading economic forums, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, emphasizing the importance of including growth and women’s participation in the labour market.” Other listed mainstreaming initiatives were launched in partnership with the World Trade Organization, the European Union (EU), and the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and ranged from including gender considerations in emerging trade policy to the establishment of a gender mainstreamed entrepreneurship program available for women in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In the Examples of Implementation document, the Swedish Foreign Ministry also reports that it has “Taken action to ensure that the gender perspective has been highlighted in the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), which led to the first ASEM high-level conference on women’s economic empowerment” (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018b, 13). These examples evidence that a significant element of FFP’s economic policy efforts was focused on mainstreaming gender considerations in multilateral settings, ranging from global financial bodies to multilateral exchanges such as ASEM.

It is worth noting that the descriptions of mainstreaming initiatives across the analyzed texts are relatively vague, often being framed by action verbs that describe how Sweden has “contributed,” “supported,” and “pushed” for a gender equality perspective to be incorporated into decision-making processes but seldom elaborating on what this exactly entails in practice. The documents do, however, describe a few initiatives in more detail. One such concrete action taken under the auspices of FFP relates to the funding and development of a Trade and Gender Toolbox alongside the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. As described in the handbook, the toolbox (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018a, 88)

aims to help governments, officials and other actors to predict and assess the effects of trade policy initiatives for women and gender equality. In this way, the toolbox can contribute to trade playing a greater role for inclusive development and for women’s economic empowerment.

The development of the toolbox, which includes several methods that the Swedish Foreign Ministry has developed that can be used to assess the gendered effects of trade policy, is one concrete deliverable related to gender mainstreaming that emerged from FFP’s economic policy work. Another concrete deliverable described in the Examples of Implementation document also cites that Sweden has helped fund the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) Women in Business program, which has given Sweden the opportunity to assist women entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans with advisory services and capacity development, including the securing of concessional loans from local financiers (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018b, 13).

As these listed examples demonstrate, the activism that Sweden engaged in as part of FFP was largely directed at mainstreaming gender considerations into international financial bodies and multilateral institutions. These mainstreaming efforts centered around creating consciousness around the need to encourage women’s participation in the labor market, and including these considerations in trade agreements and in the overall decision-making processes within these institutional settings. The development of a gender and trade toolbox is one key deliverable that is listed prominently throughout Foreign Ministry documents that aim to assist governments and organizations to factor the gendered impacts of trade policy. Another key feature of Sweden’s mainstreaming efforts was an explicit focus on elevating women entrepreneurs, through mainstreaming efforts for entrepreneurs in the MENA region and through the funding of the Women in Business program through the EBRD’s efforts in Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans. Thematically, the mainstreaming efforts of the Swedish Foreign Ministry as part of FFP were significantly focused on ensuring that women would be able to benefit from developments in the global economy, and facilitating the conditions to foster success for women entrepreneurs in several regions. These efforts are, I claim, influenced by market feminism, granted that their scope is centered around inserting a gender perspective into the decision-making processes that drive the global financial market.

Another core element that is made clear in the analyzed documents was the significant level of involvement that public–private partnerships played in the operationalization of FFP’s economic policy. These partnerships varied both in terms of their overall scope and in the national contexts that they were implemented in, as is shown in Table 1. The public–private partnerships range from large cross-national efforts with a large number of corporate and state funders, such as #SheTrades, to smaller country-specific initiatives that were driven by Swedish actors exclusively such as the Kraftsamla initiative.

The role that companies, particularly those based in Sweden, played in the public–private partnerships that FFP engaged in is noteworthy. Two significant public–private partnerships saw Swedish corporations take a leading role, including Team Sweden and the Global Deal. Team Sweden is mentioned in association with Sweden’s efforts to promote gender consciousness in corporate social responsibility efforts. The partnership itself is a collaboration between the Swedish state and the Swedish business sector with the goal of helping Swedish companies expand globally (Business Sweden n.d.). In the Examples of Implementation document, Team Sweden is described as being a core facilitator in bilateral negotiations in six countries (see Table 1), where the goal is for Swedish companies, labor unions, and government agencies to push for “strengthening the role and rights of women in labour markets” (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018b, 13). It is thus made clear that Team Sweden is utilized as a framework in bilateral negotiations where corporate, labor, and government actors are able to engage one another in strengthening the corporate conditions for women as laborers in these contexts. Another similar public–private partnership that also deployed a similar bilateral framework is the Global Deal, launched by Sweden in partnership with the OECD and the International Labor Organization (ILO). In FFP documents, including in the Handbook and in SKR 2019:17, a recurrent example of FFP’s involvement with the Global Deal relates to a bilateral agreement that Sweden signed with Bangladesh to help foster better dialogue between employers and employees in the country’s “female dominated” textile industry (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018a, 90; Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2019, 30). Swedish clothing giant H&M is listed as being an active participant in the process, alongside Swedish trade union IF Metall. As with Team Sweden, the Global Deal is utilized as a framework for bilateral negotiations where corporate actors and organized labor function as integral stakeholders in driving negotiations that aim to improve working conditions for women. These two examples are emblematic of the central role that corporations played in some aspects of the implementation of FFP’s economic policy, where they were incorporated as negotiating partners via public–private partnerships in bilateral relations.

Another feature of the public–private partnerships that are mentioned across FFP documents is the thematic focus on promoting women’s entrepreneurship and facilitating conditions for women to be independent economic actors. Take, for example, #SheTrades, a program initiated by the International Trade Centre with a large list of national and corporate funders that had the stated aim of connecting over one million women entrepreneurs to the market by 2020 (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018a, 89). Active in over thirty-nine countries across the Global South, #SheTrades fashioned itself as a driver of gender equality by aiming to mainstream gender in the realm of trade policy to spur economic and social change that would unlock the economic potential of millions of women (Erogbogbo 2021). In Skr 2019:17, the Swedish Foreign Ministry adds that #SheTrades is an important effort that aims to remove barriers for women-owned businesses, particularly in the Global South (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2019, 27), and that Sweden’s involvement in the initiative allows it to maintain a strong profile in transnational efforts to support women entrepreneurs. An additional example of a public–private partnership that was referenced in documents that were strongly tied to promoting women’s economic autonomy is Kraftsamla, which was an active collaboration between the Swedish Foreign Ministry and the Swedish Chamber of Commerce India branch. As Skr2019:17 details (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2019, 52),

The project aims to strengthen women’s rights and social and economic standing in Indian society. Kraftsamla engages the private sector for an increased focus on gender equality among the participating companies’ organizations, value chains, and codes of conduct. The initiative has even contributed towards developing a course that allows women to become trained in non-traditional industrial jobs.

Kraftsamla thus works to mainstream gender considerations, in line with other aspects of FFP’s programming, into private sector organizations in India with a connection to Sweden while also driving efforts to encourage women to enter nontraditional job fields through educational initiatives. One integral aspect of FFP programming was an explicit focus on encouraging entrepreneurship and women’s employment in public–private collaborations both transnationally via #SheTrades and on a bilateral scale with Kraftsamla. Alongside initiatives such as the Global Deal and Team Sweden, the public–private partnerships embedded throughout FFP’s economic policy agenda largely engage the private sector as collaborators in bilateral negotiations on working conditions, while also working with private entities to promote women as entrepreneurs and laborers, often with a focus in the Global South. Returning to the claim that these initiatives can be described as a form of market feminism, one of Kantola and Squires’ (2012, 383) main contentions is that it describes the phenomena of “public policy agendas [being] increasingly mediated via private sector organizations according to the logic of the market.” The significant presence of public–private partnerships embedded within the fabric of FFP’s economic policy agenda, and the thematic focus on creating opportunities for women to benefit from the development of the global economy through entrepreneurship and mobilized capital further evidence the ways that FFP’s economic policymaking was mediated through private stakeholders with a focus on the global market.

One final element of the economic programming articulated within FFP revolves around a public-facing exhibit that appeared in select Swedish embassies across the globe,¹ titled Her Rights! Money, Power, Autonomy (House of Sweden 2022). The exhibit serves as a complementary empirical site to further analyze how previously established themes that have informed the economic programming in FFP manifested in public-facing efforts that the Swedish Foreign Ministry concurrently implemented as part of its feminist internationalism. The exhibit can be framed as an act of soft power, where Sweden was able to brand itself as progressive on gender issues while also describing to embassy audiences how its efforts on working toward gender equality as part of FFP incorporated economic inequality. Analyzing the relationship between the rhetoric within the exhibit and the broader discourses that inform the economic policies communicated in FFP documents provides further ground to consider how the Swedish Foreign Ministry defined and addressed economic gender inequality, and also how this messaging was conveyed toward a public audience.

Upon visiting the Washington, DC version of the exhibit during the spring of 2023, I was struck by the first sentence that greeted each visitor as they entered the first floor of the Swedish embassy, “Women’s economic empowerment is necessary for global sustainable development.” This statement matches the instrumentalizing rhetoric present across government documents that describe the impetus behind the economic dimensions of FFP policy, which explicitly connect addressing gender inequality with spurring global economic growth. In an online version of the exhibit a quote from Madeleine Sjöstedt, the Director General for the Swedish Institute, emphasizes that the exhibit “reminds us that female entrepreneurs and inventors, not least in fields such as science and technology, are needed to achieve a more sustainable future, to boost the global economy and to decrease the gender pay gap” (House of Sweden 2022). The quote further mirrors the logic that underpins Sweden’s efforts to advance economic aspects of gender equality as part of FFP, connecting women’s economic empowerment with the success of the global economy. Once they have entered the exhibit, visitors are guided to look through the brightly colored displays, where they will learn about the contributions of women pioneers, business leaders, and entrepreneurs while also gaining an understanding of how Sweden has historically driven gender equality policies. Thematically, the six displays aim to show the interconnectedness between women’s economic autonomy with other aspects of women’s rights, such as political influence, sexual autonomy, and education. One bright pink display is titled “Gender-Equal Labour Market,” which invites visitors to consider the disproportionate amount of care work that women take on in the private sphere, a profile on a rural grape farmer in North Macedonia, and a long list of policy reforms that Sweden has made with respect to women’s rights. One panel in the display that summarizes the importance of gender in trade policy reads (House of Sweden 2022),

Women need to be able to participate equally in existing markets and gain access to and control over productive and financial resources. Economic gender gaps are also bad for society. Countries that create conditions for a gender-equal labour market gain competitive advantages and have a higher and more sustainable growth. Inclusive and sustainable trade offers great potential for strengthening women’s economic empowerment, bringing higher living standards and reduced poverty. However, trade policies and agreements of today lack gender perspectives. Women are still far from reaching the full benefits that trade could bring.

As with discourses present throughout FFP documents, women’s economic autonomy is rhetorically linked with its overall benefits for the global economy, including competitive advantage, sustainable growth, and poverty reduction.

Another panel, located in a display that focuses on the connection between sexual rights and economic autonomy, tells the story of a Rwandan woman who went from being a teenage mother to being a successful entrepreneur. The panel describes how she was ostracized from her community due to her pregnancy, but also how her involvement with a Swedish Development Cooperation (SIDA)-funded NGO provided her with the tools and guidance to begin making more informed economic decisions that resulted in the establishment of a successful mushroom business alongside other disadvantaged teenage mothers. This business is credited with creating access for the women to influence local decision-making processes. The panel ends by describing how some of the women are now seeking to go back to school to further their business management skills. This short yet descriptive story provides an exemplary tale that connects the life outcome of a disadvantaged woman to the transformative potential that can come with increased economic autonomy she secured through her entrepreneurial spirit, which also led to greater decision-making power in her own community. The central location of this transformative narrative in the overall exhibit makes it a case in point for the idealized outcome that FFP imagines through its economic policy agenda. The storytelling that Her Rights! engages in centers around the transformative potential that the inclusion of women in economic processes can have on the global economy and the lives of individual women themselves. The mixture of personal narratives with language around economic policy makes the exhibit an effective soft power advocate for the feminist-influenced economic vision that FFP imagines through its policy agenda. The exhibit is also reminiscent of Calkin’s (2017, 86) assertion that neoliberal development discourses around gender equality “imagine poverty eradication as contiguous with innovation and entrepreneurship.” Ultimately, the recurrent themes around uplifting women’s entrepreneurship and the importance of gender equality in boosting the global economy connect the storytelling in the exhibit with market feminist logics that have been unpacked throughout this article.

Discussion

The analysis in this article has provided a glimpse into the underlying rationales guiding the implementation of economic policies embedded in Sweden’s FFP. As I argue, the Swedish Foreign Ministry’s approach to conceptualizing and tackling the gendered aspects of economic inequality can be considered to be an expression of market feminism. As Kantola and Squires argue, market feminism describes the process whereby a state “seeks to promote gender equality by turning to the channels and mechanisms offered by the market” (Kantola and Squires 2012, 390). The analysis in this article has shown how Sweden’s FFP drew upon market feminism as a guiding rationale given that the economic policies of FFP as a public policy agenda were significantly mediated via private sector organizations according to the logic of the market. Rhetorically, this was demonstrated by the strong discursive focus in both government texts and a public-facing embassy exhibit that highlighted the importance of investing in women as economic actors and entrepreneurs, which was consistently argued as being an important driver of global economic growth. In practice, this was evidenced primarily by the strong emphasis in policy solutions that aimed to facilitate women’s entrepreneurship, and the significant usage of public–private partnerships in implementing a number of FFP initiatives, which involved corporate actors as stakeholders in the implementation of Sweden’s feminist internationalism. These initiatives were often operationalized in developing contexts across the Global South.

One critical point to consider is how these insights relate to previous scholarship on FFP, and how they can add to the overall assessment of FFP’s impact during its 8-year tenure. A cynical interpretation of my analysis might suggest that FFP’s economic policy agenda ensures, in Nancy Fraser’s words (2009, 111), that “the dream of women’s emancipation is harnessed to the engine of capitalist accumulation.” While this is in many ways a fair and poignant criticism, I would suggest that it does not fully map onto the entire scope of FFP’s economic initiatives. As other scholars of FFP have highlighted, the policy program was often marked by tensions and contradictions (Aggestam, Bergman Rosamond, and Kronsell 2018; Aggestam and Bergman Rosamond 2019; Nylund, Håkansson, and Bjarnegård 2023). I contend that this element of the scholarly analysis of FFP also applies to the economic aspects of Sweden’s FFP. While the tensions around FFP’s security policy, to name one example, are located in balancing Sweden’s weapons export industry with processes around peaceful conflict resolution, I argue that the tensions in FFP’s economic policy are located in balancing the relentless push of the global market economy with the pressing needs of impoverished women across the Global South. This further shows how the enactment of foreign policy can be contradictory and counterintuitive, especially when a feminist label frames it. As an export-oriented market economy, there is a very legitimate realist analysis that can be applied toward the market feminism embedded in Sweden’s FFP, where an argument can be made that it figures into the self-interest of Sweden to involve its multinational corporations in its feminist internationalism. The analysis in this article contributes further evidence to the inherent tensions that accompany the usage of feminism to frame foreign policy programming, evidencing just how difficult it is to enact feminist statecraft that lives up to feminist calls for the redistribution of power and resources in a way that is congruent with traditionally conceived state interests.

It should be stated that Sweden’s choice to center the gendered aspects of economic inequality in the formation of its foreign policy was an important step toward driving important conversations in bilateral and multilateral settings that highlight the role that socio-economic factors play in shaping the life outcomes of women transnationally. However, the focus on directing these conversations toward initiatives that were embedded in neoliberal market reform stunted the transformative potential that FFP’s economic programming could have brought with it to the contexts it was deployed in. In other words, I contend, much like Towns, Bjarnegård, and Jezierska (2023) argue in their overall evaluation of FFP, that while the feminist framing of the economic policies within FFP was more than a label given the explicit focus on gendered disadvantages that women face transnationally as economic actors, the transformative potential of the policy program was lost in its reliance on harnessing the global market as a solution to gender inequality.

This article has drawn significantly upon scholarship that has focused both on the ways that state feminist engagements have shifted under the influence of neoliberal reforms and the ways that multinational corporations have drawn upon gender equality as a rhetorical pillar that has structured development engagements in the Global South. My analysis suggests that Sweden’s FFP was shaped and influenced by both of these phenomena. The strong rhetorical focus on forwarding a “business case” for investing in women’s economic empowerment, in addition to the emphasis on uplifting women’s entrepreneurship indicates that corporate approaches to development as highlighted in Calkin (2017) and Moeller’s (2018) respective scholarship have influenced state-centric approaches to development, which, in the case of Sweden’s FFP, utilize gender equality as an instrument to drive global economic growth. Critically, this contributes further evidence to the increased blurriness between public policy, foreign engagement, private interests, and the role that feminism is playing as a rhetorical tool in framing the confluence of these forces.

The framing of market feminism as a driving rationale behind the economic dimensions of Sweden’s FFP further illuminates the aftereffects of the neoliberalization of Swedish institutions and policy from the 1990s onward. Scholars of Swedish state feminism have consistently underscored the way that neoliberal rationales have shifted the orientation of domestic policy channels, with critiques largely centering around how gender equality policy has transitioned from a collectivist and redistributive reform agenda to one centered around self-preservation and individualism. The insights of my analysis highlight how aspects of these dynamics have accompanied Sweden’s efforts at internationalizing its feminist statecraft through economic policy, providing a vital contribution to scholarship on state feminism and FFP by accounting for the linkages between domestic policy shifts and foreign policy enactments under the scope of state feminist engagements. FFP’s emphasis on uplifting the entrepreneurism of women across the Global South through public–private partnerships and policy initiatives in particular adheres to previous analyses of contemporary Swedish state feminism as rooted in ensuring individualistic self-preservation rather than tackling structural barriers. While this is not a complete picture, given that other policy areas of FFP centered around a more redistributive agenda when it came to, for example, political power and influence, it does suggest a clear connection between the rationales that govern domestic and foreign policy approaches under the scope of Swedish state feminism.

As a center-right coalition took power in the fall of 2022, the incoming Foreign Minister Tobias Billström announced that FFP would not be continued under the new government, ending FFP’s 8-year tenure as the guiding point of Sweden’s international engagements. In his reasoning, Billström declared, “Gender equality is a core value for Sweden and this government, but we will not advance a FPP. That label has not served a good purpose and has obscured the fact that Swedish foreign policy must be grounded on the question of what Swedish interests and values are” (Granlund 2022). This reasoning evidences an ideological rather than an economic underpinning to the decision. Strikingly, his commentary frames feminist policy considerations as incompatible with Sweden’s national interests. The analysis of the economic rationales within FFP throughout this article suggests otherwise. Granted the recent invasion of Ukraine, Swedish foreign policy shifted primarily to the process of joining NATO, which had already begun during FFP’s tenure, eventually occurring in March of 2024. It is unclear if Sweden will return to framing its foreign policy in feminist terms in the future. Looking forward, if this does occur, I assert that Sweden’s recent ascension into the security alliance does present potential avenues for feminist policy collaboration, including on development and economic policy, between NATO members who have made commitments to advancing an FFP, including Canada, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Norway, Finland, and Slovenia. How states that operate FFP agendas collaborate around gender equality policy issues within and outside of the alliance is an emerging area of interest that merits future scholarly engagement.

While this article has focused on the contours of Sweden’s FFP, the analysis opens for further exploration of how various liberal democratic states rationalize economic policy within their own respective FFP programs. My analysis points to a particular deployment of feminism within the economic dimensions of FFP that ultimately blurs the lines between state and corporate power by turning to the global market as a driver of women’s empowerment, which is further imagined to spur economic growth. Moving forward, there is ample room for researchers, activists, and policymakers to further consider the contours of feminist-influenced foreign policy, and the economic discourses enmeshed within them. As the Swedish context has shown, FFP has the potential to serve as a site of corporate expansion into the enactment policy, which merits further scholarly attention that considers how feminism, neoliberalism, development, and foreign policy are becoming further intertwined, and the lasting consequences of these entanglements. This article contributes a starting point to this much-needed area of research.

Author Biography

Lukas Bullock is a PhD candidate in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at the University of Kentucky. His research centers around state feminism, feminist foreign policy, knowledge politics, and grassroots social movements.

Notes

Author’s note: The author would like to thank Karen Tice for her comments on an earlier version of this manuscript, which helped shape its subsequent direction. The author also would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their critical engagement and helpful feedback.

Footnotes

References