Women and US Foreign Policy Oral History Project
Project updates
The Women and US Foreign Policy blog has been launched. The blog will keep you up-to-date on the people interviewed and the issues involved in interviewing them.
Rationale
The Women and US Foreign Policy Oral History Project at the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA), aims to create a large repository of interview data relating to the multidimensional relationship between US Foreign Policy (USFP) and women. It will be freely available to scholars, the public, governments and NGOs.
The role of women as both makers and recipients of US foreign policy has become more pronounced in recent years. However, there does not yet exist a repository of information on these issues that is accessible to researchers. From Jeane Kirkpatrick in the 1980s and Madeleine Albright in the 1990s to Condoleezza Rice in the 2000s and Hillary Clinton today, women have achieved significant foreign policy power in the United States. Many mainstream scholars however, continue to underrepresent these significant changes in USFP. Similarly, little attention is given to how their gender may or may not impact on their statecraft. This project seeks to reverse this trend by compiling a comprehensive resource for researchers to draw on, which includes interviews with significant players in USFP.
The increase in the number and rank of elite women in the US government is mirrored by an explicit gender agenda within US foreign policy, which aims to promote women’s rights. This resource will provide detail into this gender concerned foreign policy by questioning the people involved. To add a further dimension to the relationship between foreign policy and women this project also examines how USFP, and in particular regime change and democratisation, has directly impacted the lives of women in affected states. This examination is achieved by asking these women their experiences of USFP.
The four dimensions of women and USFP
The project will conduct interviews with four categories of people: Women involved in US foreign policy; People involved in promoting a gender concerned foreign policy; Women affected by US foreign policy; and experts that can talk about the different dimensions to this relationship between women and US foreign policy.
Women involved in US foreign policy – in order to understand the experiences of women within the infrastructure of US foreign policy this project interviews women that have been decision-makers, policy-makers, practitioners, and either theorists, academics or analysts.
People involved in promoting a gender concerned foreign policy – in interviewing people in this category the aim is to illuminate the process and content of policies, strategies, programmes and projects that make up a gender concerned foreign policy.
Women affected by US foreign policy – it is important to explore the attitudes and experiences of women that have been directly affected by the policies, strategies, programmes and projects implemented by the US.
Experts that can talk about the relationships between US foreign policy and women – this category contextualises US foreign policy and women by detailing the inter-connecting relationships between the three other categories.
To find out more information about the project please contact Matthew Hill.
