Sylvia
Bashevkin
AUTHOR | RESEARCHER | ADVOCATE
How do we trace the consequences of women’s participation in politics? What do we know about the engagement of diverse women in politics? In what ways do commentators assess the contributions of female decision-makers to public life?
Sylvia Bashevkin has studied these questions closely. She presents her latest findings in Women as Foreign Policy Leaders, a comparative study of four American decision-makers published in fall 2018 in the Oxford University Press series called Studies in Gender and International Relations.
Women as Foreign Policy Leaders examines four high-profile appointees in the United States since 1980: Jeane Kirkpatrick during the Reagan years, Madeleine Albright in the Clinton era, Condoleezza Rice during the George W. Bush
presidency, and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the first Obama mandate.
Women as Foreign Policy Leaders documents the difference women made in a domain long dominated by men. In probing the actions taken by four appointees on matters of political conflict and gender equality, the book demonstrates female decision-makers made varied and transformative contributions to Republican as well as Democratic administrations.
The track records of these four women reveal not just a consistent willingness to pursue muscular, aggressive approaches to international relations, but also widely divergent views about feminism. Women as Foreign Policy Leaders shows how Kirkpatrick, Albright, Rice, and Clinton staked out their presence on the international scene and provided a crucial antidote to the silencing of women’s voices in global politics.
