Aleksandra Wojtowycz

Abstract:

Diplomacy has been a man-ruled world since its inception. For centuries, many countries (i.e., the US, the UK, Sweden, Germany, France, etc.) had laws and formal/informal restrictions that kept the foreign service doors closed off for women. Changes in diplomatic laws, employment rules, and institutional practices only began in the 1950s – 1970s and, with the end of the Cold War and the rise of social media, the man-dominated rule of diplomacy began to shatter. Majority of studies examining women in diplomacy have exclusively focused on Western European and North American states, with just a handful of researchers who had explored women’s participation and representation in the post-communist Eastern European region. In fact, studies of women in foreign policy-making institutions in small and weak Eastern European states remains particularly scant as the region is often gets overlooked. This study is the first of its kind to present a newly collected data on gender in Ukraine’s diplomatic corps, focusing on country’s ambassadorial appointments around the world. Empirical data will reveal several significant findings: 1) the extent to which Ukraine’s ambassadorships remain gendered through out its history; 2) the first detailed mapping on where the women are located (or getting appointed) in Ukrainian diplomacy; and, 3) compare whether Ukrainian diplomatic corps share (or don’t) any similarities with other post-communist Eastern European countries. This project, with its newly collected data on Ukrainian top diplomats will make an important contribution to women and gender in diplomacy studies and also add to ongoing research and discourses on feminist foreign policy.