Women IR - WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Amount Requested ($8,000 maximum): 8,000 Categories • Global Opportunities Clusters/Learning Communities • Education Abroad Training • Infusion of Global Content • Innovative Technologies Student Learning Outcome Intended v Goal 1: Develop globally competent knowledge: o Explain historical, political, scientific, cultural, or socioeconomic interconnections between the US and the rest of the world. o Describe some of the contested assumptions and intellectual debates across the globe that are relevant to their major. v Goal 2: Cultivate intercultural competencies: o Apply knowledge of other cultures and countries. v Goal 3: Foster globally competent citizenship: o Demonstrate a sense of global interconnections and interdependencies. o Describe a social problem requiring collective remedies that transcend national borders. Other Support Have you received any other grant support for this project?: yes Please specify: Thanks to this project, Appalachian State University will also become part of the We-BIND network, which will contribute to a part of the costs. We-Bind is an international research network hosted by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IPWR) in Washington, DC, and lead by Prof. Bindi in her capacity of Director of the Foreign Policy Initiative. In addition to the financial contribution by the We-BIND project, we have partnered with the Center for Global Studies at the University of Wyoming and the Colorado European Union Center of Excellence in Denver in order to make Lady Ashton’s visit financially viable. (cfr under budget) Have you received funding from the QEP before?: no What was the title of your project and what year was it funded?: Summary of the Project While women leaders are increasingly gaining momentum, their opportunities to become senior figures in International Relations-related jobs - be it in academia, diplomacy, international organizations, government or international business – are still limited in comparison with their mail counterparts. For a long time, foreign policy and diplomacy remained a mainly (rich) male-only business until very recent times. In 1922, Lucile Atcherson was the first woman to pass the Diplomatic Service examination in the US and to be appointed a secretary in the Diplomatic Service. However, in 1927 she resigned in order to get married. The first woman to get appointed to a major diplomatic post was Congresswoman Ruth Bryan Owen Rohde who was appointed minister to Denmark in 1933. The first woman to hold the rank of Ambassador was Helen Eugenie Moore Anderson, named in 1949 to Denmark, while the first woman to achieve the rank of Ambassador was Frances Elisabeth Willis in 1962. In 1979, Alison Palmer brought a class-action discrimination suit against the State Department because she was tired of being passed over for jobs as a Foreign Service officer. President Ronald Reagan’s Foreign Policy advisor and US Ambassador to the UN, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, once remarked how she felt out of place in foreign policy meetings, such as those held in the “Situation Room”: “I do not think there had ever been a woman in the room before because the male monopoly of foreign policy has been so complete” (Jeffrey-Jones, 1995). Things have slowly but steadily improved since then. During her tenure, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to improve gender equality in the State Department. She promoted women in many positions at State and, among other things, Melanne Verveer was named as the first US Ambassador-at-Large for Women’s Global Issues, thus giving birth to a number of programs and actions promoting gender parity. In the UK, it was only after 1946 that women were given the opportunity to become career diplomats. In 2012, Mari Skare was appointed first NATO Representative for Women, Peace and Security. The European Commission includes a Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality Commissioner (Vera Jourová), and Mara Marinaki has been appointed by the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini as special advisor on Gender. There are virtuous cases and exceptions, of course. In 2013, for the first time ever, Norway’s foreign ministry has named more women than men to head the country’s embassies and general consulates around the world . Today, in the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, only 2 members out of 18 are women, while in the House of Representative they are 5 out of 46. In the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee there were 20 women out of 73 in the 2009-14 legislature and they are today 13 out of 71. In the European Commission, between 1957 and nowadays, the ratio is even lower: 10 to 1 ; in the current Commission there are only 9 women. Only 29% of the chiefs of mission at the State Department and of senior foreign positions at USAID are held by women; 29% of the staff at the EEAS headquarters are women and 19% of the EU head of Delegation are women . In academia, women specializing in International Relations are still a minority to achieve senior positions such as Full Chair . The Washington Post showed how only seldom women are invited to speak in panels about the Middle East , but the same can be said about virtually any other issue in IR. In international business, women only hold 21 percent of senior management positions globally. In studying abroad or in pursuing an international education, female students may also face some of the same biases and flaws, something that study-abroad programs usually define as “cultural shock”. As statistically there are now more female students studying IR than men, there is a need to prepare and train our female students for the difficulties they are likely to face in studying or working internationally, but also to provide positive examples to inspire them and prove to them that women can successfully make it. The proposed project aims to contribute to doing exactly that. For these reasons the project shall be of potential interest and support not only to IR students and students who plan to work in an IR-related field, but also to students planning to study abroad. The project intends to bring to campus a number of prominent women who are international leaders to inspire our students and discuss with them the challenges, but also the beauty, of being global citizens. Specifically, we plan to bring to campus the first European Union High Representative Lady Cathy Ashton, the Deputy Chancellor and Deputy Foreign Minister of Columbia Patti London, Vice President Joe Biden’s sister and advisor Valerie Biden Owens. In addition, we will interview Queen Rania of Jordan. Lady Cathy Ashton will share her experience as the first European High Representative (the equivalent of the Secretary of State in the US), and what it meant to preside over the making of the European Diplomatic Corp(known as European External Service), mediating among different national and political interests. Ashton’s major achievements were the Kosovo-Serbia Agreement and the launch of the Iran negotiations, both of which were possible working tightly with her US counterparts, first Hillary Clinton and then John Kerry. She will also discuss her personal challenges, as well as advantages of being a woman leader in International Relations and Foreign Policy. Lady Ashton has collaborated in the past with Prof. Bindi, when they both were both working in Brussels and afterwards. Dr. Patti Londono, Deputy Chancellor and Deputy Foreign Minister of Colombia, will discuss her career progress from being an international student to a scholar and then to a practitioner, first as a diplomat and then in a leading political role. Insofar as possible she will also share how she was able to contribute to the agreement with the FARC to end the violence and insurgency in Colombia and how that will affect relationships with the US. Dr. Londono is a personal friend and former colleague of Pro. Cary Fraser. VP Joe Biden’s sister and main advisor Valerie Biden Owens – who currently works at the US Mission at the UN -will discuss her international work with NGOs and International Organization, as well with Vice President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden, with whom she has travelled extensively to promote girls and women rights. In addition, as an expert on communication, she will offer a training workshop focused on Communication Techniques in International Relations and on Leadership Styles and Skills for Women in International Relations. Mrs Valerie Biden has been working with Professor Bindi on issues related to Women and Leadership since 2009. Queen Rania of Jordan will be interviewed in Jordan by Prof. Curtis Ryan. In December 2012, Prof. Curtis Ryan was the only scholar to ever be admitted to a “royal audience", one day after meeting with HRH King Abdullah II. The king and queen have occasionally given interviews to journalists, but not to scholars, except for Dr. Ryan. At the time, Dr. Ryan and the queen talked at length about issues such as educational outreach and combatting Islamophobia. This time, Dr. Ryan will ask her about her work with the issues in international affairs she most cares about: refugees, education, women's rights, and the rights of children. For each event and interview, we will videotape and edit a video that will remain as an IT pedagogical and didactic tool for current and future ASU students. We will work with the Center of Academic Excellence in preparing and editing the videos: with the Center’s technical and pedagogical support, we will make sure other instructors and students will be able to use them effectively. Possible challenges The speakers that will be invited to campus have all been contacted already and confirmed their willingness to come. the challenge will be therefore only securing the grant and organizing at best such high level visit.