Guest editors’ introduction: Contending with gendered contradictions and blind spots in Canadian foreign policy

Abstract

Despite the extensive and multisectoral scholarship on Canada's approaches to gender equity in its foreign policy, over two decades have passed since the publication of the last volume on the subject. Mindful of this gap and of retrenched state commitments to gender equity amid a return to more “traditional” diplomatic and security concerns and intransigent antagonism to justice and equity-driven agendas, contributors to this special issue analyze feminist foreign policy in Canada to assess who the policies and rhetoric benefit, how they are conceptualized, and where they are located. The contributions speak to the paradoxes of Canada's feminist foreign policy through the themes of contradictions and blind spots. Canada's renewed commitments to militarism, the instrumentalization of women's representation in the Canadian Armed Forces, and the strategic absence of feminist rhetoric in relation to the war in Ukraine demonstrate the many contradictions of Canada's approach, while explorations of disability, migration, and post-secondary education showcase its blind spots. By emphasizing these contradictions and blind spots, the scholarship in this special issue critiques the contemporary gendered realities of Canada's global policies and actions to imagine alternatives to the status quo and the potential of emancipatory and wholistic feminist foreign policies.