Women’s leadership is essential for their empowerment, human rights, peace and stability.
Women across the globe play a critical leadership role in resisting conflict and building peace. When women are involved in peace process, the resulting agreements are more likely to endure
Australian Council for International Development
The issues
Trump changes everything. The President-elect of the United States is notorious for trivialising and demeaning prominent and powerful women – a challenge for an Australian woman to hold the Foreign Affairs portfolio. Massive tariffs, the Paris Agreement on greenhouse emissions expected to go and drilling in the Arctic to start. The US support for Ukraine may stop and the reference to keeping the US out of wars may mean Australia’s deal on AUKUS is dead in the water.
There seems little prospect of ending Israel’s intense military operations in Gaza and West Bank. Gladly, an all-out war seems less likely now that a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon was negotiated in November 2024.
What Palestine and its people have experienced is suffering beyond imagining. With a long history of conflict, intransigence on all sides and the backing of the United States and Iran, the prospects are grim. As an ally of the US, Australia has been reluctant to back the UN calls for stronger measures or call out Israel’s obligations under international law to protect civilians, particularly women and children.
The conflicts in Yemen, the long war in Sudan and the resistance to the Military Junta in Myanmar all affect women and children who are typically traumatised and have no say in the violence.
The women of Afghanistan face a grim future at the hands of the Taliban which banned education beyond grade 6 three years ago and now medical training in midwifery and nursing is banned for women. Afghan women are asking the international community to help reverse the bans and for donor countries to insist on reopening schools for girls. Afghanistan has the world’s worst maternal mortality rates in the world.
Globally, there was hardly any increase in the percentage of women in peace negotiations and violence against female human rights defenders continues to rise. Women want to be equal partners in all decision-making. They want to see de-escalation, conflict prevention, mitigation and other processes in pursuit of peace and security.
At home we expect all parties, including of course the Australian Democrats, to nominate for preselection individuals who reflect the gender diversity of the general population. For parties with representation in parliament we should expect women, men and gender diverse individuals in the cabinet, in the shadow cabinet and as spokespersons of the smaller parties, to represent the gender diversity of the general community. Our expectation is therefore that women PMs will be leaders, at least as often as men.
Our plan
- an enduring ceasefire in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon
- granting Palestinian people the right to self-determination and sovereignty over their resources
- lifting economic restrictions imposed on Gaza and the West Bank
- allowing international aid, particularly food, water and medical aid, to flow into Gaza uninterrupted
- recognising the catastrophic impact on women and children in this crisis and that two thirds of the dead so far have been women and children
At home
- Ensure women are equally represented in important Australian diplomatic and intelligence roles, policy-shaping activities and senior positions
- Promote the participation of women in the workforce and close the gender pay gap
- Embed gender analyses in all decision-making
Globally
- Promote gender equality in parliaments
- Promote equal and meaningful participation of women and girls in peace processes globally
- Strengthen laws and protections for the human rights of women and children in conflict and crisis situations
- Protect children in exploitative environments and industries
- Support resilience, security, law and justice efforts to meet the needs and rights of all women and girls
- Support more regional women’s peace mediator networks such as the Southeast Asia Women Peace Mediators and the Pacific Women Peace Mediators Network.
- Call for/initiate a multinational UN Peacekeeping force made up of equal numbers of men and women to bring peace and security
- Focus most of Australia’s aid on:
- tackling poverty, education and economic barriers to women and girls’ success
- driving equalised access to agricultural resources in through aid/trade
- combatting gender-based violence
- women having agency in determining family size, roles, policy-shaping activities and senior positions
The evidence
Feminist foreign policy is a framework to understand and transform the global systems of power which uphold and perpetuate inequality – including patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, racism and others – in order to create peaceful and flourishing societies.
International Women’s Development Agency
Women are under-represented in seven of Australia’s nine parliaments, other than in the Australian Senate, and some state and territory parliaments, thanks to a voting system that is more representative. In 2024 the average number of women in the world’s parliaments was just 26%. Australia was ranked 24th out of 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index, an increase of two places since 2023. Australia ranks 46th for female heads of state. Federal Cabinetcurrently has 13 men and 10 women. However, progress has slowed in delivering equality globally. On current progress, it will take 134 years to reach full parity. See more on this here.
In just the last few years substantial progress has been made in bringing women into senior foreign affairs positions, and now 58% of Australian diplomats are female. However, there remains a bias against women in the defence and policing agencies and the more prestigious posts. Women of colour are under-represented. Australia’s first Indigenous female ambassador was only appointed in 2018.
Gender equality was a government foreign policy priority yet no new money was provided in the 2024-25 budget forgender equality programs. Australia will spend 11 times as much on defence ($55.69b) as it spends on international development cooperation.
The 2022 Global Gender Gap Report showed Asian countries have managed to narrow the gender gap in economic, education and health sectors. But when it comes to political participation, the gap persists. The proportion of women as ambassadors and permanent representatives in United Nations (UN) organisations is just 12%, far less than the global average of 20.54%. Right now, only 17 Asian nations that currently have ever had female foreign ministers.
Women want peace and security
The plight of women and children in Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has largely been disregarded by Australia. Australia provided $790 million worth of military assistance to Ukraine’s war effort while just $10 million went to the Ukraine Humanitarian Fund. The impact of the invasion disproportionately affects women through loss of livelihood, gender-based violence, increased care burden and lack of access to gender-specific healthcare. Only 21% of Ukraine’s parliamentarians are female.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine is more than 7 decades old. The Hamas attack on Israelis in October 2023 precipitated an epic humanitarian catastrophe bringing ongoing loss of life, widespread destruction, severe food insecurity and a scarcity of safe spaces. Education and health services are all but destroyed. Israeli restrictions are compounding the crisis. The World Health Organization warns that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.”
The November 2023 inquiry by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade recommended … strengthening laws and protections regarding the human rights of women and children in conflict and crisis situations. This should include an emphasis on developing and strengthening responses to issues such as sexual and gender-based violence, children in exploitative environments and industries, and modern slavery.
AusAid
Australia’s foreign aid funding overall was increased by 4% in the 2024 budget but with inflation factored in it is unchanged for the next decade and projected to fall.
On average, Australians think we invest 16% of the Federal Budget on overseas aid, and believe that we should be spending something closer to 12%. In reality, Australia spends $4.044 billion dollars on overseas aid – that’s just 0.21% of our gross national income, or 21 cents in every $100.
In comparison, the United Kingdom has enshrined a commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI in aid every year into law. We are lagging behind other wealthy countries such as Sweden, who contribute 1.1 per cent of GNI, the Netherlands at 0.65 per cent, and Germany at 0.41 per cent.
The big international challenges for Australia, according to the ANU, are great power contestation, environmental risks, governance challenges, and rapid technological disruption. Australia needs to strengthen ties with Asean nations, engage more with women, Pacific partners and small island states that are losing land to sea level rising.
References:
http://1325naps.peacewomen.org/index.php/2019-committments/australia-2019-commitments/
https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15503.doc.htm