Dismantling or Reinforcing Power Structures?: An Analysis of the Transformative Potential of Spain’s Feminist Foreign Policy

Abstract

In 2020, Arancha González Laya, the former Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, announced Spain’s adoption of a feminist foreign policy (FFP), following Sweden’s pioneering implementation of this strategy in 2014. This trend has continued, with thirteen other nations also adopting feminist approaches to foreign policy. Due to the undefined nature of FFP, previous research has mainly relied on cross-country analysis to create a theoretical framework grounded in feminist international relations theories and ethics of care. This research employs discourse analysis to examine Spain as a case study, using data from its FFP policy documents and supplementary materials such as news coverage, press releases, and official videos from the Spanish government. This thesis contributes to the scholarly literature on FFP by exploring its transformative potential, analysing both its feminist theoretical foundations and how its implementation impacts the reinforcement or disruption of dominant global hierarchies. My findings reveal that Spain’s FFP is primarily guided by liberal feminist principles and fails to incorporate a postcolonial feminist viewpoint, which ultimately perpetuates power imbalances. I also demonstrate that Spain uses its progress in domestic feminist policies to position itself as a norm entrepreneur for gender equality to enhance its relevance and leadership on the international stage. Finally, I show that Spain elevates its ranking in the temporal hierarchy of FFP to advance its preferred hegemonic feminisation, potentially undermining alternative feminist policymaking in the Global South and thus contributing to maintaining, reinforcing, and even creating structures of inequality.