Kathy Gilsinan

Sweden’s feminist foreign policy is about systematically and holistically implementing policies that increase gender equality and the full enjoyment of human rights of all women and girls. It is based on knowledge and reality. And overwhelming evidence tells us that a feminist foreign policy is the only way forward. A McKinsey Global Institute report estimates that $12 trillion could be added to global growth by advancing women’s equality. Increasing gender equality has positive effects on food security, extremism, health, education and numerous other key global concerns that are of national and global interest. Existing facts show this and we are working closely with Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security in order to further develop world gains from applying a feminist perspective to national as well as international affairs.  

Gilsinan writes that two years after the [Swedish Foreign Ministry] launched it, it is still not clear what Sweden’s feminist foreign policy means. But the fact is that we have not only produced tangible results but also started a process of changing the way the whole Foreign Service operates. Our feminist foreign policy is not a thematic issue, it’s an integrated part of daily operations guiding the work of more than one hundred embassies, delegations, representations and departments. As part of this broad effort a Swedish and a Nordic mediators’ network of women have been founded, several initiatives have been taken to support women’s participation in peace processes (e.g., in Syria and Colombia), and the Swedish government has successfully lobbied for the installment of a gender advisor in the EEAS, EU’s diplomatic service.

Sweden’s feminist foreign policy is modern, pragmatic, and clear. In practice, it means Sweden is assuming a leading role internationally in allocating development funds to projects contributing to gender equality, and in advocating for sexual and reproductive health and rights for women. It also means promoting a gender perspective in all negotiations, including the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and various trade agreements negotiated by the EU.  Yet another priority is to fight sexual and gender-based violence in conflicts and other emergencies. Efforts in this vein should be a key concern when addressing collective security issues and peace building. Sweden works hard to end impunity, help survivors and address the root causes of these sickening acts of violence that tear societies apart.

Sweden is not alone in the efforts to put gender equality on the global agenda. On countless occasions in her role as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton asserted that promoting the rights of women and girls is integral to the achievement of every U.S. foreign policy goal. In 2015, John Kerry stated that fighting gender-based and sexual violence is not just a moral issue, but a question of collective security. Feminism is a component of a modern view on global politics, not an idealistic departure from it. It is about smart politics which includes whole populations, uses all potential and leaves no one behind.

And a hearty amen to that. I think there’s actually very little Wallstrom and I disagree on here. Almost as soon as I started looking into the question of whether women lead countries differently than men do within the global arena, I was confronted with two problems. First, not enough women have done it for us to be able to draw firm conclusions one way or the other. Second, it’s not at all clear how stereotypically “feminine” traits (empathy, for example, or disinclination toward violence) might be translated from an individual woman to the behavior of an entire foreign-policy bureaucracy she might run. What if she herself doesn’t exhibit those traits? What if she does, but the bureaucracy in charge of implementing the policy remains overwhelmingly male-dominated? Or what if organizational behavior is pretty much insensitive to gender stereotypes one way or the other? (To the extent men are stereotypically aggressive and dominant, there are plenty of foreign policies run by men that are perfectly empathetic and pacifist. The pope is a man, for God’s sake!)

Indeed, that’s why I called the piece “The Myth of the ‘Female’ Foreign Policy.” I wouldn’t ask what a “male” foreign policy would look like. As Wallstrom points out, “men have been in charge of politics for hundreds of years,” and it’s clear that there are all kinds of “male” foreign policies—some of them great, some of them terrible. There’s no reason to expect that a “female” foreign policy wouldn’t exhibit to the same variety, given the chance to be better tested in the world. What’s likeliest, I concluded, is that women conduct foreign policy like human beings.

But there’s a deeper issue here that Wallstrom is right to point out. Even if we could answer these questions, so what? As she writes: “Political representation is about rights … [n]ot about gendered characteristics ... but about exercising your democratic right to participate in decision-making that affects you and your society.” A hearty amen to that, too.

I don’t remember much from the Taliban years, having been a kid then—I remember there was a picture in the calendar in which a Talib was shooting a woman in a stadium, and I remember when my father buried his library’s books in the village to hide them from the Taliban. But the post-2001 period was when I started opening my eyes to the world. Afghanistan was a ravaged land, but our hopes and determination to rebuild it then seemed unmatched by any obstacle. Afghan and Indian music was everywhere (the Taliban had banned music), and postcards of Bollywood movie stars decorated the windows of music shops and the back covers of school notebooks. Families ran into markets to buy second-hand Western clothing, and that was, to me, a testimony of how much people had disliked the Taliban; how easily they gave up on their supposedly “Afghan” uniforms.

Fifteen years later, the legacy of the bombs that were supposed to bring voice and light is mixed for me. International money and blood has helped millions of students like me get an education, allowed millions of women like my sister pursue their dreams and raise their voices. It brought a free media and a vibrant civil society to keep the government accountable. Afghanistan has one of the most liberal constitutions in the region and a political structure that has the potential to be democratic and transparent.

But the other side of this “shining city” is a hell. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, and the bloodshed doesn’t look set to end anytime soon. The Taliban, who were supposed to be part of a dark history, are now the solid reality of our present and the imminent threat to our future. Survival is still the primary concern for Afghans. This summer, after I survived a critical injury in an ISIS attack in Kabul, my father told me he was happy I was returning to the U.S., where I’m getting my master’s degree. His foremost concern was not that I get a quality education at an elite institution, but that I stat alive and safe so that his life invested in me wouldn’t vanish in despair.

In one afternoon, after a short day at university, I prepared a meal of leftovers and sat to watch TV, happy to have made it home before sunset. Then and there, in live broadcast, like watching an asteroid descend on Earth, I saw the second plane smash into the second tower.

Disbelief was not an option. Anger was not enough. I remember well that one question burned in my mind: If the USA is not safe, where will I be safe? How was I to believe that one or a few could injure the mighty USA? It was like that scene from Indiana Jones, when a tribesman unwillingly and by mistake injured the King and caused him to bleed, so the myth of God-King vanished and the bleeding king became fair game and unworthy of worship. The mighty USA just lost the cap and became a man wearing tights. Who was to save us then? Where would we go? What life were we to build?

Downsizing was the next life strategy: Don’t dream big, don’t expect much, don’t fight long, don’t resist much … be a good boy and play along.

Jennifer Tope, an American reader who was traveling in Botswana, knew that 9/11/01 was going to be significant—because it was the date of her master’s graduation. She didn’t find out about the attacks until a day later and didn’t get more details until a day after that:

On September 13, I was finally able to catch a little of the news coverage at a bar in Zimbabwe, mostly filled with locals. Everyone laughed when the reporter said that southern Manhattan still did not have hot water. We had no water at all that morning in Zimbabwe so this did not seem to us the catastrophe the American reporter seemed to think it was.

I rarely saw the news in the next few weeks so never learned very much about the attack, and as a result, I feel embarrassingly ignorant about what happened. I also got an outsiders view of the events and did not understand why people suddenly seemed to love Bush and were buying so many American flags. Why were they singing “God Bless America” at baseball games?

One more reader, Lisa Woerly, was on a plane on 9/11, heading from Paris to Omaha. Hers was one of 38 flights diverted to Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, Canada, when the U.S. closed its airspace in response to the attacks:

I remember being about 3 hours into our flight when I felt the plane change directions. Then the plane changed directions again. I remember looking at the person across the aisle from me, and we both had a look of confusion on our faces. Soon, the pilot came on the intercom, telling us only that there was a problem and we were going to land in Gander. I’d never even heard of Gander.

Once we finally landed, we still didn’t know what was going on, just that we had attempted to fly back to Paris and were denied. Then we had headed to Greenland but were denied that entry as well. That explained the different directions we kept going in.

We spent all of Tuesday on the plane, surrounded by dozens of other planes on the tarmac. By then, the pilot had told us what had happened. We were all oddly silent for the rest of the day and night on the plane. I remember just trying to figure out where our world would now be headed.

On Wednesday morning, we were finally allowed off. Then we were bused to the Masonic Lodge. I slept on the floor that night. Cots were provided for the next night. The people of Gander rallied, feeding us three meals a day and opening their homes for us to shower.

I walked constantly, unable to sit still. I walked to and from Wal-Mart numerous times each day for something to do. I was alone, with no way to call anyone in the States to let them know I was alive. The local phone company got banks of phones together on Thursday morning, and I stood in line for my turn to make a five-minute call to my mother. Forty-eight hours had gone by before she knew I was alive.

There is rarely a day that goes by that I don’t think of the people of Gander. They dropped their lives to take care of thousands of us who landed in their backyard that week.

This reader, from Pennsylvania, was in second grade at the time of the attacks, and confused about being dismissed from school and taken to church on a Tuesday morning:

When my father got home, he announced we were going to church, but never explained the reason why. When we arrived at church, no one went inside. Instead, the adults gathered around the flag pole that stood out front, and began to pray. I wondered why they were praying to a flag, why were we at church on a Tuesday, and why they were so solemn. The image of those adults circled around the flag will forever be in my memory.

As it turns out, September 11 ended up playing a large role in my life. I was always interested in geography, other cultures, and languages as a child. I grew up in the post-9/11 world, and I was constantly told that learning Arabic would guarantee you a job, so I signed up for Arabic 101 my freshman year at college. Along the way, I fell in love with the Middle East and was afforded the opportunity to live there in 2013, which cemented my interest and direction of study. I recently finished my master's in Islamic Studies, which on the surface seems an odd occupation for a man from Amish Country, Pennsylvania.

This reader, who was 12 on 9/11, cites the attacks’ “profound effect on my outlook on life”:

For the longest time, I couldn't wrap my head around it. I couldn't swallow the fact that four 767s had been hijacked and nearly 3,000 people died. It wasn’t denial, but shock that it actually happened, that I suddenly lived in a world where people I’d never even met wished me and the rest of my country a grisly death.

It informed my childhood. I became intensely interested in politics. I came to adopt a strongly liberal political stance in reaction to the blunders, corporatism, and increasing xenophobia of the Republican party. Eventually, I became an atheist too, partly because I couldn't partake in an institution, Christian, Muslim, or otherwise, that advocated mass death and the repression of women, homosexuals, and other minorities.

For a long time, I was distrustful of Muslims, until I realized the majority of the Islamic world despises extremists as much as the Western world does. It led me to want to understand. That's been the driving force of 9/11 in my life. To understand why, and to communicate in such a way that the divides that caused this attack can, someday, be bridged.

Nobody deserved to die. But it wasn't a random, pointless act of mass slaughter. It had motivations rooted in decades of Western foreign policy and the rise of extremism in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Central Asia. I just hope that someday, we can all put our guns down, step away from the bullhorns and microphones, and sit down and actually talk to each other.

Finally, the recollections of a reader from rural Pennsylvania, whose family was near where Flight 93 crashed:  

I was living in Texas, at home for the day, because I was starting a new job the following day. It was a lazy morning and I was still in my pajamas when my ex-husband called. He’s laid-back to the point of dullness and he was as close to hysteria as I’ve ever heard him. I had trouble processing what he was saying: “America’s under attack,” “plane crash in Indian Lake,” “call your mom.”

He and I were from the same rural Pennsylvania county—Somerset—and I thought he was crazy. Who would attack a little borough near Shanksville? But I turned on the television with the phone pressed to my ear, trying to call home. As I watched the towers fall over and over on replay, I called again and again and couldn’t get through.

The next day I started my job, working with kids in a Gulf Coast chemical town that was also home to part of the US Strategic Oil Reserve. The roar of fighter jets—the only planes in the air—frightened the children. We did art projects and I encouraged them to talk about their feelings. It felt surreal; the threat where I was living, along with the reality that my family and friends had gone through so far away. And here we were, doing homework and planning Halloween parties.

I later learned what everyone now knows about Flight 93 and the attack on the Towers and Pentagon. Finally reconnected with my family; my mother said she had been tending my brother (who had a broken leg) when they heard a loud rumble on Route 30 outside. They assumed it was a particularly loud truck going by, never dreaming that five miles away, that low-flying plane would crash. The lights flickered at my aunt's house. The debris field was wide and ugly. Friends of mine who were first responders are particularly infuriated by those who doubt the crash.

I visited New York when the towers were still craters, and the Pennsylvania field when the memorial was no more than white crosses and benches. I live just a few miles from the Flight 93 memorial now, but I have a hard time visiting, though it is beautiful there. The pain of the families of those who were lost is beyond comprehension. No one should have to suffer this way. I won’t visit the memorial in 9/11. That’s really for the families. But I’ll fly my flag and remember.

Another reader was an intern on Capitol Hill:

I stood in my congressman’s office and watched the TV as the plane hit the second tower and then shortly after, out the window, I saw the thick black smoke billowing out of the Pentagon. It dawned on me in ever-worsening waves, the severity of the situation.

I evacuated the city on foot, to the sound of scrambling fighter jets and loud booms, which some said were the fuel tanks of the plane exploding, and others said were the sonic booms of the jets reaching the speed of sound. I never found out what they were for sure.

I picked up the Metro, the yellow line into VA, once I was past the Pentagon and we rolled silently by Reagan Int’l Airport, which was by that time, an evacuated ghost town. It was a jarring sight.

By the time I got to my apartment, both towers had fallen. …

It wasn't until many days later that it occurred to me that the heroes who brought down Flight 93 may have saved my life. It's likely that plane was headed right for us on Capitol Hill and I think of them often and thank them for their unbelievable courage and ultimate sacrifice.

Sonali Nigam, a student from India, had just arrived in the United States for the first time on September 9, 2001, and was visiting relatives in D.C. before starting college on the West coast. Today, she lives in New York City, “for a woman … the best city in the world to live”:

On the morning of September 11, my aunt and uncle planned to take me to visit the Washington Monument and the National Mall. A bit jet lagged, I was up early and by 8:30 am we were ready to go. As we got our things together someone turned on the TV to catch a bit of news. We were stunned.

I had grown up in New Delhi so terrorism was not an unknown. But this was a growing up moment that defined my coming to America. It’s hard to forget the pain and confusion I saw in the faces of my relatives and their neighbors, and I remember my aunt hugging a stranger who suddenly burst into tears at the grocery store the next day.

Reader Tish Wells has one more recollection from the District, where “it had started as such a lovely day”:

[On the street] it was beautiful and empty of debris. Steam rose from the grates into the sunlight. There were lines of people for the phones because no one could use a cell—the wireless was overwhelmed. An elderly man and his wife sat on a park bench, he clutching his chest. They told us to move on when we tried to help. A man went by, crossing himself, then disappeared around a corner. The federal workers’ childcares were closed, and the attendants and the kids were out near the Mall in wooden carts, puzzled as to what to do next. The kids thought it was a grand way to spend the day.

My other main memory of 2001 was that the Feds tried to cancel Halloween. Fear, you know. People in masks roaming around.

I went out after dark and met one couple coming out of a restaurant, both of them wearing the smallest of Mardi Gras masks. We exchanged knowing smiles, then went our ways.

Reaching Lafayette Square, I saw, in the light of a street lamp in front of the White House, a group of costumed Rollerbladers gliding back and forth. Later, as I walked up Connecticut Ave to the metro, I looked around and saw them gliding up the street, a snake of colorful reflective costumes and masks, through the green lights, then away.

Washingtonians don’t give up Halloween easily.

My older daughter was away at college, and my younger daughter was a senior in high school. When the news reports started circulating, the high school administration determined which students had parents who worked at the WTC, gathered them together, and gave them the news. My daughter had seen me at home when she left for school, so she was pretty confident that I was okay. However, my older daughter didn’t know, and she was desperately trying to get in contact with me. The cell phone system was overwhelmed with the demand, and she was unable to get through for hours. But she ultimately did, much to her relief. Since there was still a fear that there might be further attacks, she said that she wanted to come home from school so she could die with us.

We were scheduled to take my younger daughter on some college visits at the end of the week. It was a great relief for all of us to get out of the New York area. It was difficult for me to talk with anyone about what happened, both because it could have been much different for me, and also because of the friends I lost.

It’s gotten easier over the years, although I can still become emotional about it, whether talking about it or writing this e-mail.

Another reader, Kate Achille, recalls chaos in her high school in suburban New Jersey, in a “commuter town” where many of the residents worked in the city. “As a family, we were lucky,” she writes. “Many in our area were not. I can still remember passing by train-station parking lots full of cars whose drivers weren't coming back.”

Kids were desperately trying to reach their parents. The phone lines were jammed. The school kept telling us to stay inside and keep calm. I couldn't get through to either parent. At this point I made the decision to go home as quickly as I could, walking next door to pull my sister from the middle school. The school administrators had tried to set up a barricade to keep us on the school grounds.

A neighbor came to take us home. After it rained that night, a friend of mine told me her family of first responders were in need of socks and supplies. We spent the next week collecting anything and everything we could from all over the country. Socks, head lamps, respirators, flashlights. I visited the city a few days later but didn’t dare to go downtown. I saw the posters of the missing, breathed the dust still lingering in the air.

Even 15 years later I can remember every minute of that week. Fully aware of what was happening in the world, my childhood privilege was gone and everything became much more apparent. Even now, it feels that to some extent the attacks created a dividing line in my brain of before and after, as if the whole structure of my world changed that day.

A reader in Kansas City relays his Uncle Todd’s experience of sitting at on a plane at New York’s La Guardia airport, waiting to take off on the morning of September 11th. Todd, he writes, passed away last year. The reader’s own memories of the day include:

1. Watching the Today Show live when the second plane hit. (Watching from our home here in Kansas City)

2. Driving to work and seeing an airplane’s U-turn-contrail. (All the planes were being forced to land ASAP.)

3. After the second building fell, calling my Mom (in Lincoln, NE). I started crying when I heard her voice. But she knew why I was calling, and said, “Toddy’s OK. We heard from him.” (My Uncle Todd had lived in NYC for over 50 years.)

4. Later, hearing Uncle Todd’s story: He was in a plane on a LaGuardia tarmac. The pilot came over the PA and said something like: “Uh, we’re all being told to move back to the gate. Apparently there was an incident … uh … (pause) … Whoa!” Todd had to walk all the way from LaGuardia to the Upper West Side.

Finally, the recollections of Agnieszka Lech-Nunenkamp, a reader who grew up in Jersey City, right across the Hudson River from where the towers once stood.* “I still see the Towers in my mind's eye when I look at lower Manhattan,” she writes. “They used to be my guide whenever I was lost in New York and needed to orient myself.” On that day, Agnieszka was on the Rutgers University campus, but her mother was in Manhattan:

My mom ran to work from Christopher Street, and opened the restaurant where she worked. Soon, groups of people in shock came from way downtown. The restaurant gave away free alcohol to everyone.

The rest of the day was shock; clear, silent skies; and trying to donate blood for what we assumed would be many survivors. The Turnpike was closed, as was NJ Transit. People couldn’t get home. My mom waited hours to get on a ferry back to Jersey, and then walked from Weehawken to downtown Jersey City. A professor stayed in my studio, she couldn’t get home to her husband in Manhattan. We sat in an Indian restaurant, and then in a Dunkin Donuts in Highland Park for hours, with several friends of mine, too stunned to talk.

I couldn’t get to my parents until Wednesday, the day after. We went to the waterfront at Exchange Place, a walk of maybe 10 minutes. The ruins were still burning, and the smell hit us from across the river.

* This post originally stated that Jersey City is across the East River from Manhattan. We regret the error.