The German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock usually wears dresses instead of pantsuits when on duty – unlike Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU Commission, or the former Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Is that in itself a symbol of the “feminist foreign policy” that Baerbock has declared it is committed to?

In any case, the minister consciously works with images and impressions in order to pursue political goals, so she may not only want to be publicly perceived in her official function, but also consciously as a woman.

Johannes Leithauser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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The group photo for the annual ambassadors' conference at the Federal Foreign Office, which was taken on the steps of their official residence, shows Baerbock surrounded by the career diplomats who represent Germany in many countries around the world.

They dominated the first row of the figure, although just under a third of the ambassadorships (59 posts) are occupied by women;

the male majority of the ambassadors stood in the ranks behind.

The term “feminist foreign policy”, which the minister rarely omits in any of her speeches, is fraught with stereotypes and is very unclear.

The stereotype refers to the fact that the composition of feminism and politics can be meant and understood as a combat concept directed against a ruling (white) patriarchal imperialism and thus leads to the conclusion that women are better able to create and keep peace.

One of the representatives of this approach is Kristina Lunz, who has so far spelled out the restructuring of foreign policy in accordance with feminist maxims most thoroughly, and whose catalog of proposals includes, among other things, that it is

On the one hand, women active in the military could be used against such theses, such as the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who, as commander-in-chief of her armed forces, led the war for the Falkland Islands forty years ago and, among other things, had the outdated Argentine battlecruiser General Belgrano sunk - what more than 300 victims.

On the other hand, the Federal Foreign Office has definitely found that attempts at regional stabilization in some African conflicts are more successful if women play a key role.

Rights, Representation and Resources

The fuzziness in the perspective of feminist foreign policy also arises from the positive interpretation that has been propagated in the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs for almost a decade and has meanwhile also been taken up by the United Nations - that it is basically a question of female equality - among the actors of Foreign policy itself, but also among the addressees of foreign policy and development aid, i.e. among women in all societies in the world.

That is the view of feminist foreign policy as it is now being formulated in the Federal Foreign Office.

Baerbock herself said in spring at the opening of the first "summit for feminist foreign policy" at the Federal Foreign Office that she wanted to "follow the Swedish example" and "pay attention to the three 'R's': rights,

However, a “superior D” should be added to this triad – for diversity.

With her policy, she not only wants to “promote women”, explained the minister, she rather wants to achieve “equal rights, equal representation and appropriate resources for all people who are marginalized”, “be it because of their gender, their origin, their religion or their sexual orientation”.

Feminist foreign policy is therefore "not a women's issue".

And in front of the German ambassadors, who gathered in Berlin at the beginning of September, Baerbock drew the circle of those meant even further.

Now it included everyone who could sit around a negotiating table or find political solutions.

It is the core of a feminist foreign policy "that we learn and benefit from it when we engage in the perspectives of others".

This Monday, a second congress at the Federal Foreign Office is to prepare guidelines for a future feminist-oriented foreign policy.