Beliefs, Agency, And Feminist Perspectives: Rethinking Power In Global Affairs

Vaibhavi Dubey

Synopsis

This synopsis grows directly from the abstract’s central claim: global politics is shaped not
only by material power and institutions but also by belief systems, value frameworks, and
underlying assumptions about gender and agency. Rather than treating international relations
as a neutral technical arena, the study reads it as a space where convictions about whose lives
matter, what counts as “security,” and who is recognised as a legitimate political subject are
constantly reproduced and contested. Bringing feminist thought into this conversation makes
these hidden layers visible and suggests alternative ways of imagining power, responsibility,
and justice in global affairs [1].

The research is organised around a set of related questions. How do beliefs about gender,
autonomy, and responsibility shape foreign policy choices and diplomatic language? In what
ways do personal convictions and collective narratives, about nation, religion, or modernity,
influence what states present as rational strategic choices? The project aims to show that
international policy is never value-neutral: feminist perspectives help unpack the ethical and
emotional dimensions of decisions on conflict, aid, migration, and development that are often
framed as purely strategic [2].

The theoretical framework primarily draws on the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Bell Hooks,
Judith Butler, and Martha Nussbaum. Beauvoir’s exploration of subject formation helps us
understand how both individuals and states operate within gendered and ideological systems
rather than outside them. Bell Hooks’ critique of “imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist
patriarchy” highlights how global hierarchies of race, class, and gender are embedded in
international economic and security relations. Judith Butler’s concept of performativity
allows us to interpret diplomatic performances, summit speeches, peace negotiations, and
public statements as gendered acts that valorize toughness and often marginalize care or
vulnerability. Nussbaum’s capabilities approach then provides an evaluative standard:
policies should be judged by what they enable people to do and be, not solely by growth or
stability metrics [3][4][5].

These theoretical lenses are tested against concrete cases where belief and feminist ideas
visibly intersect with policy. A central example is Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP),
first declared in 2014. Sweden explicitly framed gender equality as integral to peace and
security, translating that belief into initiatives such as funding sexual and reproductive health programmes, supporting women’s participation in peace processes, and fostering dialogues
about care work in countries like Rwanda. At the same time, domestic critics and NGOs
pointed out contradictions. Sweden’s continued arms exports to states with poor women’s
rights records reveal how feminist branding can clash with entrenched economic and security
interests. This case illustrates how beliefs can create new policy priorities while also exposing
tensions between rhetoric and structural commitments [6][9].

The study then looks beyond Sweden to other states experimenting with gender-forward
foreign policy narratives, Canada, Mexico, and France among them. Canada’s Feminist
International Assistance Policy centres gender equality in development assistance,
emphasising human dignity and inclusive growth; yet activists and researchers debate
whether such frameworks actually redistribute power or risk instrumentalising women as
means to development ends. These debates show how feminist language can be both an
ethical commitment and, at times, what critics call “shiny feminism,” where progressive
vocabulary obscures continuity in underlying power relations [11][8][10].

Leadership narratives also serve as important sites for analysing belief and agency. The work
examines leaders like Jacinda Ardern, whose empathetic and relational governance, visible
during crises such as the Christchurch attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic, disrupted
masculinised norms of toughness. Reading Ardern through feminist theory suggests that
emotions, care, and embodiment are not private afterthoughts but political forces that
reconfigure how agency is recognised in international politics [12].

Methodologically, the project combines close readings of feminist texts with discourse
analysis of policy documents, speeches, and handbooks on feminist foreign policy and gender
mainstreaming. Primary materials include official foreign ministry statements, national action
plans, and evaluation reports; these are analysed alongside NGO commentaries and academic
critiques to trace how ethical language about rights, care, or equality moves from paper to
practice. The study also draws on intersectional and situated feminist research (for example,
work on Catalan nationalism and Black feminist activism) to emphasise that beliefs and
agency are always located and cannot be uncritically universalised [13][2][17].

Taken together, the study’s contribution is to consider belief systems, feminist ethics, and
agency as central to global politics. Feminist IR scholarship has already shown that taking
gender seriously changes who is visible in discussions of war, peace, and diplomacy. By
adding focused attention on beliefs and worldviews, this research argues that international
relations is also a struggle over which understandings of justice, security, and humanity
become normalised. The examples of feminist foreign policies, their successes and
contradictions, and leadership styles that emphasise care suggest that alternative visions of
power are possible, visions that value interdependence, responsibility, and dignity alongside
strategic calculation. Consistent with the abstract, this synopsis insists that meaningful
change requires both structural reforms and deeper shifts in how actors think about power,
agency, and their own ethical commitments [14][15].