The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare how patriarchal structures and the exclusion of women and marginalised groups from decision-making worsened disease transmission and policy failures. This project examines how feminist foreign policy (FFP)—an approach already adopted by countries like Canada—can be applied to global health governance to address those inequities. Despite growing interest from the UK and others, there is almost no analysis of how FFP has actually been used in health crises or pandemic preparedness. The researchers will synthesise existing literature, build a database of sources, and convene deliberative dialogues with key actors in Canada and the UK. If successful, the work could reshape how governments design health policies during emergencies—ensuring that resource distribution, decision-making, and response plans account for gender and other inequalities from the start. This is not about a single new tool or technology; it is about changing the governance framework that quietly determines who gets heard and who gets protected when the next pandemic hits.
View original technical description
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed inadequate preparations to deal with public health emergencies, which are predicted to increase. It further highlighted how patriarchal structures, gendered inequalities and the exclusion of marginalized populations in decision-making, as well as unequal resource distribution, contributed to disease transmission and negative policy impacts. This has stressed the need for more equitable global health governance, as well as integrating feminist thinking and international relations approaches to better address health crises and related gender inequities. Feminist foreign policy (FFP) is an international relations and policy approach to address gender inequities and patriarchal structures. While countries like Canada continue their commitment to FFP, other countries such as the UK have demonstrated interest, which signals the need to learn from past experiences to inform FFP going forward. Despite growing scholarly discourse around FFP, and its potential to inform gender transformative pandemic response, analyses of the application FFP in global health governance are scarce. This study will synthesize literature on FFP approaches to global health challenges. It will aim to address the following research questions: How, and to what effect, has FFP been applied to global health, including pandemic preparedness and response? What data exists and is needed to support evidence-based FFP responses to global health challenges, such as pandemics? How can FFP be scaled up to support global health diplomacy and cooperation? Objectives: 1.To assess the current state of knowledge and gaps in research on the application of FFP to global health challenges, particularly pandemic preparedness and response. 2.To identify gaps, and conceptualize data needs to apply evidence-based FFP to global health challenges. 3.To inform FFP approaches to global health challenges, particularly pandemic preparedness and response. Theoretical Approach and Methods: Guided by feminist global health security and political economy frameworks, we will conduct a critical literature review of the application of FFP to global health challenges, develop a database of sources to inform evidence informed FFP and convene deliberative dialogues with key actors in Canada and the UK. Expected Outcomes & Relevance to Funding call: Contributing to the funding programme's themes on involvement and inclusion in governance structure and health governance, this project will synthesize knowledge on the applications of FFP to global health challenges and facilitate evidence-based FFP development in Canada, the UK, and more broadly. Contributing to understandings of the potential of FFP to respond to global health threats, particularly pandemics, going forward, it aims to improve equity-based policy making to mitigate the gender inequities experienced during health crises, catalyze the transformations urgently needed within global health governance and guide public policy and research in Canada, the UK and globally in the immediate and long term. Research Expertise: The project will be led by Drs. Julia Smith of Simon Fraser University and Clare Wenham of the London School of Economics and Political Science, top researchers in the field of feminist global health security, feminist foreign policy and gender-based analysis of global health challenges.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know