The new right-wing Swedish government announced on Tuesday that it would put an end to the “feminist diplomacy” which the Nordic country had pioneered in 2014, judging the “label” counterproductive.
On the very day of the formation of the first government to be based on a majority including the extreme right, the new Swedish Foreign Minister announced the burial of this concept, which had been copied by several countries, but caused estrangements diplomacy, particularly in the Middle East.
“Gender equality is a core value in Sweden and also a core value for this government,” Billström said in an interview with Swedish news agency TT.
“But we’re not going to use the term ‘feminist foreign policy’ because labels have had a tendency to prevail over substance,” the new minister said shortly after taking office.
The various online publications on the subject began to be removed from the ministry’s website on Tuesday afternoon.
Member of the conservative party of the Moderates of the new Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, Tobias Billström, former Minister of Immigration (2006-2014) assured that he would lead the other diplomatic files in continuity, in particular on the accession to NATO .
“Feminist diplomacy” was launched in 2014 by Sweden’s social democratic government and then foreign minister Margot Wallström.
The official policy was “a response to the systematic discrimination and subordination that characterizes the daily lives of countless girls and women around the world”.
In 2015, critical statements by Ms Wallström on women’s rights in Saudi Arabia led to the recall of the Saudi ambassador to Stockholm.
The balance sheet of the policy remains difficult to establish. In a document published in 2018, Stockholm cited the adoption of a law in Moldova on the minimum representation of women inspired by Swedish law, or the inclusion of the principles of equality between men and women in the signed peace agreement in 2016 in Colombia.
Since 2019 and the departure of Mrs. Wallström from the ministry, Sweden had already greatly reduced the display of this concept.
The new Swedish government presented on Tuesday by Ulf Kristersson is no longer equal, with 13 men and 11 women.
In the country of Greta Thunberg, a 26-year-old climate minister has become the youngest holder of a ministry in the history of the Nordic country.
Romina Pourmokhtari, born in November 1995, is a member of the centre-right Liberal Party whose youth branch she led until recently. She had proposed in 2020 a tax on meat for the climate.
His portfolio, however, loses its rank as a full-fledged ministry and finds itself placed under the supervision of the leader of the Christian-Democratic party Ebba Busch, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Energy.
Main innovation of the new government, in a context of strong tensions with Russia: the creation of a ministry of “civil defence”, in addition to the traditional defense portfolio.
The executive mixes posts from the conservative party of the Moderates (12 ministries, plus that of prime minister), the Christian Democrats (6) and the Liberals (5).
But not Jimmie Åkesson’s SDs, who are only part of the majority in Parliament. The anti-immigration party will, however, have cabinet members in the general secretariat of the government to coordinate policy.