Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2009 The Role of U.S. Women Diplomats Between 1945 and 2004 Rachel Jane Beckett Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THE ROLE OF U.S. WOMEN DIPLOMATS BETWEEN 1945 AND 2004 BY RACHEL JANE BECKETT A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2009 The members of the Committee approve the Thesis of Rachel Beckett defended on December 10, 2008. ____________________________________ Suzanne Sinke Professor Directing Thesis ____________________________________ Charles Upchurch Committee Member ___________________________________ Michael Creswell Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables iv Abstract v INTRODUCTION 1 1. ACCOMPLISHED BUT STILL LAGGING BEHIND 13 2. “PERCEPTION” AS THE STANDARD 29 3. STRATEGICAL GATEKEEPERS 48 CONCLUSION 68 REFERENCES 74 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 83 iii LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Degree Type 17 Table 1.2 Degree Concentration 17 Table 1.3 Number of Foreign Languages Spoken 18 Table 1.4 Type of Languages Spoken 19 Table 1.5 Female Chiefs of Mission by Region, 1933-2004 27 Table 2.1 Where Female Ambassadors are Most Frequently Assigned 34 Table 2.2 Percent of Women in National Legislatures, by region, 1975-97 35 Table 2.3 Appointment of Women as Chiefs of Mission and to other Senior Posts by Administration, 1933-2004 44 iv ABSTRACT Though historical scholarship on gender and international relations has grown over the last few decades, there has been little work done on women in the Foreign Service. The main objective of this thesis is to examine the role of women diplomats within the Foreign Service since 1945 and to examine how gender differences related to the low numbers of women within the field during a time when women’s representation in other male-dominated fields increased substantially. The study is divided into three chapters that focus on determining how certain factors affected women’s marginalization within the field. The first chapter examines the basic statistics of the women diplomats. Chapter two explores the policies of other countries towards accepting female diplomats, and the last chapter investigates how women conducted foreign policy and carried out the goals of the administration. The conclusion provides an analysis of the findings of all three areas and how they relate to women’s access to fields both within and outside politics. v INTRODUCTION For well over a hundred and fifty years women in the United States participated in politics in various ways, sometimes in organizations devoted to promoting moral reform, sometimes as legislators within the system. The scholarship covering women’s political history runs the gamut from exploring the ways in which women played a part in the political process to investigating how gender constructs affected the political decision making process. Also, while the field expanded from looking only at women within the top levels of government to examining those at the grass-roots level, the widening of the field only led to more questions as scholars of women’s political history sorted through the discrepancies that existed between women of different social classes, races, and ethnicities. Today, many of the questions arising in the field of women’s political history do not stem from trying to find out where women carved out a place for themselves within the political arena, but in uncovering the ways in which gender stereotypes shaped politics. The purpose of this study is to build upon the work of scholars of women's political history by examining the way gender perceptions affected women in diplomacy. While the post World War II period ushered in new and exciting possibilities for women in the political arena, it was not until 2001 that the number of women achieving top level positions grew significantly. This thesis examines the roles of women in the Foreign Service since 1945 and examines how gender differences related to the low numbers of women within the field during a time when women’s representation in other male- dominated fields expanded substantially. In addition, it presents an overview of women's history in order to assess why the advancement of women into the political arena, specifically in the field of foreign relations and diplomacy, fell behind other male-dominated fields that saw significant increases in women’s representation. The investigation seeks to provide a general history of the role of women within the Foreign Service over the past sixty years, from the end of World War II to the beginning of the 21st century. One of the challenges in writing this type of history is where to place it in relation to other women’s political histories. This study of women’s diplomatic roles combines 1 more traditional feminist historical approaches with other methods stemming from the fields of international relations (IR) and political science. The literature in the field of women and politics largely ignored women in foreign relations. For much of the last three decades the scholarship written about women’s role in politics centered on the women’s movement or the “feminist” movement, activist groups such as those in or on broadening the definition of politics, or finding gender in political thought. While these works offered insights into the history of women’s access to political equality and helped publicize areas in which women and gender shaped politics, they did not delve into all areas of politics. Some provided insights for other areas of feminist/gender studies, and hence deserve study as a first step in examining the feminist political past. Many historians who studied women’s political activities during the nineteenth century noted that individuals tended to draw a distinction between the “public” and the “private," in fields such as formal politics and economics, the “public” defined as the domain of men, and the “private” defined as the domain of women. Linda K. Kerber, for example, in No Constitutional Right to be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship explored how the public/private division acted as an impediment to women's participation as full-fledged United States citizens.1 Kerber identified a key component as the legacy of "coverture" by which women's rights transferred to their husbands at marriage; therefore, husbands represented their wives politically and women "could make no claims of rights against the political community."2 Thus, it was harder for women to demand suffrage, protection, and other rights from the state, when their obligations lay with their husbands. Kerber pointed out, that even while new laws and traditions began to take shape during the late nineteenth century and onward, the old tradition of coverture still encouraged differential treatment between the sexes. Other scholars, such as Paula Baker and Ellen Carol DuBois, showed that while some maintained during the nineteenth century that the public was the purview of men and the private the purview of women, in reality this was not necessarily the case. In "The Domestication of Politics," Baker argued that women of the nineteenth century participated in the public by enforcing their ownership of the “private” through various 1 Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998). 2 Ibid, 305. 2 means such as the creation of organizations that focused upon maintaining standards of morality and the home, which sought to affect the behaviors of others.3 DuBois explained this idea further in relation to suffrage in her book Woman Suffrage and Women's Rights in which she posited that "the significance of the woman suffrage movement rested precisely on the fact that it bypassed woman's oppression within the family, or private sphere, and demanded instead her admission to citizenship, and through it admission to the public arena."4 Both Baker and DuBois noted that though there was segregation between the activities of men and women during the nineteenth century, women were able to "demolish the absolute"5 through organizations and the suffrage movement in order to carve out a place for themselves within political life. The blurring of lines between the public and the private increased in the early to mid-twentieth century. The historians Elisabeth Israels Perry and Susan Ware both showed this shift, but in two very different accounts of women's political participation during the early 1900s. Perry’s account of the life of Belle Moskowitz revealed how Moskowitz used her femininity and the ideal of womanly nuturehood to press her agenda on Al Smith.6 Unafraid to embrace her “softer” side, Moskowitz kept within traditional ideals of womanhood, but according to Perry still broke into the “public” sphere despite her gender. Susan Ware’s depiction of Molly Dewson offered juxtaposition to the life of Moskowitz because Dewson rejected traditional gender roles, and while she did not claim to be a politician, Dewson dedicated her life to advocating for both women’s issues and the ideals of the New Deal.7 Dewson’s lifestyle and partner choices became an important part of Ware’s narrative because they highlighted the choices that were opening up to women in the twentieth century, both politically, economically, and socially. 3 Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,” The American Historical Review, no. 3 (Jun. 1984), 647. 4 Ellen Carol DuBois, Woman Suffrage and Women's Rights, (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 31.