“We try to be nuanced everywhere all the time”: Sweden’s feminist foreign policy and discursive closure in public diplomacy

This study examines how public diplomacy practitioners deal with gender dynamics as a form of ideological issue in foreign
policy. Informed by the theory of discursive closure, this study focuses on understanding how Swedish public diplomacy
practitioners make sense of the country’s feminist foreign policy in their daily work and what consequences this has for the
communication of it. Based on semi-structured interviews and policy documents, the research fnds that the practitioners
discursively enact certain meanings of the feminist foreign policy. This is illustrated as downplaying and packaging feminism
as entertainment, associating feminism with male practices and the terminology of “gender equality,” and subordinating
feminism to an economic growth paradigm. Thus, the tension created by the issues raised in the feminist foreign policy is
neutralized in Sweden's public diplomacy while a diferent meaning of these issues is created. The research contributes to a
more practitioner-focused view on public diplomacy.