Keywords

5.1 Introduction

Visual communication is often considered more powerful than verbal communication because it invokes emotions and productively conveys perceived ‘truths’ about a range of pressing issues (Dan et al., 2021). Digitalisation processes and the rise of social media platforms have amplified the productive power inherent in visual communication. The timing of the launch of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy in 2014 and its trajectory through the ‘golden age’ of social media generated new and innovative strategies for visualising feminist foreign policy (Crilley et al., 2020).

In this chapter, we examine the visuality and visibility of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy and how the policy was curated by the Swedish Government and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) within the realm of digital diplomacy. We demonstrate how Sweden’s digital diplomacy gradually became more niched in its feminist outlook and image, sustained by visual narration and photographic storytelling (Aggestam et al., 2021; Bergman Rosamond & Hedling, 2022). The visual language gained specific performative effects in the context of feminist foreign policy, which emerged from its ability to connect to grassroots advocacy, family life and global feminist solidarity. The chapter analyses how and to what extent digital diplomacy was used to increase feminist visibility to produce visions of feminist foreign policy conducive to Sweden’s ambitions of creating a more gender-just global order. While visuality and visibility refer to different aspects of visual power in the contemporary information environment (Bleiker, 2018; Brighenti, 2010), Sweden’s feminist foreign policy was sensitive to both processes. First, we examine the role of visual language in articulating feminist foreign policy and how it evolved. Second, we analyse the success of the photographic exhibition “Swedish Dads”, emphasising the resonance it produced amongst various audiences in local settings around the world. Third, we assess how the WikiGap campaign became a lighthouse initiative for the transformative potential of feminist foreign policy by contesting gendered silences within dominant sites of knowledge production online.

5.2 Articulation: Feminist Foreign Policy as a Visual Practice

Digital diplomacy served the articulation of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy well by making it a partial visual practice. Here, a visual practice refers to the production of a set of symbols and visual language that gradually become representative and intuitively associated with the policy in question (cf. Boscarino, 2022). Adopting a carefully curated visual language and a selection of specific symbolic representations it became central to the distinct articulation of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy. An essential part of this process was to create continuity and coherence in the visual language employed in Sweden’s feminist foreign policy, with the former Swedish government and the MFA actively seeking to integrate and streamline the feminist agenda into their overall activities. The visual language that was employed to communicate the ambitions of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy can broadly be categorised into three strands: (1) a visual focus on leadership, in particular on Foreign Minister Margot Wallström (as discussed in Chap. 3); (2) a communicative strategy broadly aligned with feminist aesthetics; and (3) a set of distinct visual symbols in the digital communication of feminist foreign policy. These strands were somewhat overlapping while following distinct timelines. In the initial stage, there was an emphasis on visual leadership (2014–2017), followed by a period defined by the employment of feminist aesthetics (2017–2020). The last period was defined by far-reaching efforts to craft a visual identity by employing a range of political symbols and images (2019–2022).

While Sweden’s feminist foreign policy received praise suggesting that the digital communication of its core principles and ambitions worked, it was also critiqued by a range of domestic and global actors (Rosén Sundström & Elgström, 2020). For example, Sweden’s feminist foreign policy has been criticised for being an exercise in liberal interventionism (Achilleos-Sarll, 2018), which is rooted in neoliberal market logics (Robinson, 2021). Others have argued that Sweden’s feminist foreign policy was morally inconsistent with its longstanding internationalist traditions pertaining to international disarmament and peace. In contrast, others have pointed to its disconnection from grassroot feminist movements (CONCORD, Swedish and European CSOs for global development, 2017). The gradually more pronounced employment of visual language resting on feminist aesthetic methods (Korsmeyer & Weiser, 2004) could be seen as a way of addressing parts of this criticism.

Moreover, the adoption of visual imagery, which broadly rests on feminist aesthetics, can be seen as a way of broadening the scope of the feminist foreign policy agenda. For example, gradually there was more use of advocacy imagery and symbols as well as visual storytelling, (Bergman Rosamond & Hedling, 2022). The visual communication of feminist foreign policy could also be viewed as a response to and support for global feminist movements, such as the MeToo movement. Moreover, contents related to Sweden’s support for LGBTQ+ rights and advocacy for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), which were prioritised areas of the feminist foreign policy (Government Offices of Sweden, 2019b), often emulated the aesthetic online expression employed by global civil society. For instance, the Swedish government’s articulated support for the Stockholm Pride festival, with the advocacy banner and hashtag #loveislove. The background depicts many individuals holding up signs with messages of love, which is a popular form of activism in social media campaigns (Lee & Chau, 2018).

In addition to adopting the visual language of civil society advocacy groups, the MFA sought to connect the articulation of feminist foreign policy with Sweden’s policy impact. The digital communication of feminist foreign policy moved away from the use of photographic imagery of politicians in action, giving speeches or going about their business, to visual representations of the women who stood to benefit from Sweden’s reinforced commitment to feminist-informed international aid in the Global South (Bergman Rosamond & Hedling, 2022). However, portraying recipients of international aid is an ethically sensitive endeavour signalling ‘white saviourism’ (Lynch, 2019) and western superiority. While recognising the danger of such racialised and gendered representations we would argue here that Sweden’s adoption of aesthetics, though often used as a strategic tactic, enabled visual communication that highlighted the agency of women worldwide. For instance, one of the images posted on social media to advance feminist foreign policy pictured participants during the Somali Women’s Convention held in Mogadishu in March 2019. In the images, Somali women were constituted as agents of their own destinies through vibrant coloured veils, with men being in the (visual) minority. The use of feminist aesthetics then contributes to a more balanced depiction of women ‘over there’, with the former Swedish government seemingly wanting to avoid only assigning victimhood to women in the Global South.

Between 2019 and 2022, the MFA again sought to reinvent its visual identity by advancing its own symbolic language. As discussed in Chap. 4, the branding of feminist foreign policy was in part an exercise in visuality, connecting the past to the present to project Sweden’s longstanding commitment to gender equality at home and abroad. Thus, the constitution of feminist foreign policy as a visual practice relied on appropriating long-established symbols of state feminism, portraying them as icons of foreign policy visions and central to Sweden’s feminist awakening. The image pictured in Fig. 5.1 of Agda Rössel (9010–2001) was circulated by the Swedish MFA on social media (Instagram) multiple times.

Fig. 5.1
A screenshot of an Instagram post with a sketch of Agd Rossel on the left with the caption below reads Sweden's and the world's first woman ambassador to the U N 1958 to 1964. The text post on the right explains Sweden's history with U N. A reply from humanium metal is below the post.

Instagram post @SwedishMFA, 29 September 2020

Full size image

Rössel was the first women ambassador to the UN between 1958 and 1965 and a fitting symbol of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy, a social democrat from a humble background and one of the first senior woman diplomats in the world. At the time of her appointment as UN ambassador, she was a controversial choice. When her biography was published in 2019, Wallström wrote the foreword and hosted a memorial seminar at the MFA in her honour (Jäderström, 2019). Moreover, in 2019 the Swedish representation to the UN in New York redesigned one of the conference rooms, naming it the “Agda Rössel room” (Radio Sweden, 2019). Rössel was described as an “unknown pioneer” suitable for the MFA’s strategic ambition to reconstitute firmly rooted gender roles and notions of leadership in diplomacy within feminist discourse and practice (Bergman Rosamond & Hedling, 2022, p. 312). Thus, the articulation of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy within visual language was a concerted effort to broaden the appeal of the country’s gender equality agenda by employing feminist aesthetics, while aligning with the country’s formally articulated foreign policy goals.

5.3 Resonance: Visual Experiences of Gender Equality

Sweden’s feminist foreign policy was diffused through several visual campaigns to ensure that it would reach global audiences. One of those campaigns was the Swedish Dads photo exhibition, a successful feminist foreign policy campaign that yielded a somewhat unanticipated reach and response by global audiences. The reason for this success was the way the exhibition resonated with experiences of fatherhood and gender equality amongst local audiences in a broad range of countries. The campaign featured portraits of 25 Swedish fathers on parental leave and documented their views on being a modern man and father. Swedish photographer Johan Bävman took the photographs with the specific purpose of being used in the campaign. The fathers depicted had all taken at least six months of parental leave, a choice made possible by the gender-equal distribution of parental leave in Sweden since 1974 (Sundström & Duvander, 2002). The exhibition, produced by the Swedish Institute, Sweden’s leading public diplomacy agency, aimed to show the effects of more gender-equal parenting at the individual and societal levels and toured Swedish embassies from 2015 onwards. The exhibition took different forms and was sometimes shown beyond the confines of Swedish embassy buildings, including in the Shanghai Metro and at the OECD in Paris. The Swedish government saw the exhibition as an important tool in visualising the country’s feminist foreign policy with the extract below capturing this position:

The exhibition is provided through SI and has evolved into an important tool in the work of feminist foreign policy to bring about new attitudes and values. The photographs have been shown at Swedish embassies in around 70 countries, and more exhibitions are planned. The Swedish Dads exhibition has generated discussion in many countries, and has acted as a useful springboard for further dialogue and events relating to gender roles and gender equality. Swedish embassies have arranged local photo competitions in which fathers can participate in several countries, including China, Uganda, Thailand, Tunisia and Switzerland. In other cases, the exhibition has been augmented with discussions of parental insurance, socially engaged photography, the role of fathers and norms of masculinity. The exhibition has taken different forms and has been shown in different places within society, including in the Shanghai Metro and at the OECD in Paris. Employees at some embassies have also further developed aspects of the campaign by adopting the term ‘Embassy Dads’ and using social media to talk about their own experiences as dads and equal partners. A collection of photographs from the local exhibitions all over the world has also been created under the title Global Dads. (Government Offices of Sweden, 2019a, p. 41)

The success of the campaign can be explained by Sweden’s ability to package the campaign in a fashion that would not seem contentious in some settings but rather resonate with local audiences. For example, in Japan the campaign was reported to have inspired Japan’s Minister of the Environment Shinjirō Koizumi to take two weeks of parental leave (Hong, 2023; Motoko, 2020), a decision that shocked many Japanese people. where new fathers are entitled to parental leave, but where very few exercise that right (less than 6% in 2019) (Berger, 2020; McCurry, 2020).

In other contexts, the exhibition became a way to showcase that Swedish embassies embody typical Swedish ideals of gender equality and justice. For instance, the Swedish embassy in Berlin (@SchwedischeBotschaft) identified a connection between #EmbassyDads and feminist foreign policy on International Women’s Day in 2017. The embassy posted a photograph depicting the Swedish Ambassador to Germany together with what we assume to be his daughtersFootnote 1 next to a statement on the need to involve men in gender equality (to break the glass ceiling), indicating the Ambassador’s personal commitment to feminist foreign policy. Thus, the ambassador appropriated the feminist message of the exhibition to illustrate his firm commitment to gender equality by being an “Embassy dad”, demonstrating how Sweden’s feminist foreign policy transpired in the country’s diplomatic representation in ways thought to resonate with German audiences.

In addition to the #EmbassyDads campaign, Swedish embassies arranged local photo competitions inviting fathers from various countries including China, Uganda, Thailand, Tunisia and Switzerland to participate, using the hashtag #GlobalDads (Admin, 2016). The success of the campaign can in part be explained by Sweden’s ability to visually communicate the principles of its feminist foreign policy through the medium of an aesthetically pleasing and highly contemporary exhibition. By using photographs depicting the lived experience of Swedish dads and pointing to the significance of gender-equal parental rights, the campaign strengthened Sweden’s self-narration as an exceptionally gender-equal state.

The timing of the campaign also mirrors the global coverage of the UN campaign #HeforShe, which highlighted the role and responsibility of men in contributing to global gender equality (Harvey, 2020). The campaign was launched in 2014 by former Harry Potter actor Emma Watson, with the latter giving a speech to the UN that rapidly went viral on social media (Stache, 2015). The success of the #SwedishDads campaign can be explained by its ability to appropriate the #HeforShe script (Government Offices of Sweden, 2019c, p. 2), with the former Swedish prime minister Stefan Löven actively supporting the #HeforShe campaign in the UN context (Government Offices of Sweden, 2015). Thus, the MFA was able to capitalise on global discourses on men’s roles in the promotion of global gender equality, creating shared visual experiences across a range of contexts, with the Swedish Dads campaign having the potential also to inspire interest in feminist foreign policy (Karlsson, 2021).

While the photographer initially intended for the campaign to inspire more men to go on parental leave in Sweden (Hong, 2023), the global projection of the campaign conveniently left out the fact that more women than men make use of parental leave provisions in Sweden. Nor did it problematise the representation of white, heterosexual middle-class men in the campaign, thus, disregarding feminist and queer calls for intersectional sensitivity in global relations (Weber, 2013). Later on, the Swedish Institute added a photo of an African-Swedish man to improve the optic representation of the exhibition, after having procured the rights to the photo exhibition (Mitchell, 2021).

In sum, the Swedish dad campaign was successfully packaged within the wider narration of feminist foreign policy and digital diplomacy, emphasising liberal norms of gender equality and justice as smart choices—these are less contentious choices than a more transformative feminist agenda that may not have found resonance with local contexts.

5.4 Contestation: Challenging the Invisibility and Silencing of Women’s Stories and Experiences

As a foreign policy agenda, Sweden’s feminist foreign policy was a highly visible political endeavour. Visibility is inherently political and provides channels through which gendered inequalities and injustices can be made visible to global online and offline audiences, enabling them to contest the patriarchal gender order and the gendered harms within it. A solid commitment to visibility then enables the uncovering of previously silenced voices and stories, with stories of women and girls being historically silenced in global politics (Hansen, 2000).

Under the foreign policy leadership of Margot Wallström and later Ann Linde, the Swedish government and MFA sought to raise awareness of the highly political feminist question “where are the women?” that was first posed by feminist scholar Cynthia Enloe (1996). One way to ensure women’s visibility was to increase their representation in foreign policy, diplomacy and peacebuilding processes to make gendered harms, discrimination and conflicts of interests more visible to larger audiences (Government Offices of Sweden, 2019a).

The visualisation of feminist foreign policy was also translated into digital diplomacy, with the specific aim of contesting and challenging online patriarchal structures and inequalities. One of the flagship initiatives in this vein was the #WikiGap initiative. It was launched by the Swedish MFA in partnership with Wikipedia on International Women’s Day on 8 March 2018. Wikipedia, created in 2001, is the world’s most extensive online and user-generated encyclopedia.

Wikipedia is a key site for the global and multilingual production of knowledge being the fifth most visited website in the world (Beytía & Wagner, 2022). Wikipedia’s rapid rise and reach have led to concerns about systematic asymmetries (Gustafsson, 2020), not least gendered ones. Online knowledge production is a profoundly political and gendered activity, giving rise to epistemic exclusions of marginalised groups. Wikipedia entries can be edited by multiple users and have therefore been critiqued for producing selective stories that highlight certain collective memories, historical events and geographical locations while silencing others (Kumar, 2017). For example, women’s experiences are notoriously absent from stories about war and peace (Enloe, 1996; Weber, 2013). Studies have shown a significant bias against women’s representation and experiences in Wikipedia biographies (Bear & Collier, 2016; Gauthier & Sawchuk, 2017; Reagle & Rhue, 2011). Rather, Wikipedia tends to disproportionately collect information about specific social groups, most notably men, from the Global North, particularly from the US and Western Europe (Beytía & Wagner, 2022). Women’s experiences of opposition and harassment in peer-produced open-source communities can also help to explain their absence from Wikipedia (Langrock & González-Bailón, 2022, p. 301).

The problem is not only that women’s interests are not sufficiently covered, and that women are less likely to edit Wikipedia articles, but also that women’s biographies often are deleted because they are being perceived as non-notable subjects (Lemieux et al., 2023; Tripodi, 2021).Footnote 2 When the WikiGap initiative was created, men produced 90% of the contents, and there were four times more articles that focused on men rather than women (Government Offices of Sweden, 2019b, p. 55). Given the gendered and discriminatory nature of Wikipedia, it is not surprising that the former Swedish government viewed it as a significant cause, worthy of being incorporated into Sweden’s feminist foreign policy.

Thus, WikiGap was a significant initiative within the broader feminist foreign policy framework introduced in 2018. The first WikiGap event was hosted by the Swedish embassy in New Delhi, which held an edit-a-thon after discovering that only 3 % of Indian editors on Wikipedia were women (Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 2018b). Edit-a-thons are public events, associated with Wikipedia, where participants collaborate to learn how to edit Wikipedia together and write new entries. The MFA saw this event as a good example of how Sweden’s feminist foreign policy could travel across contexts and be translated into practice by increasing “women’s visibility and participation in the public sphere” (Government Offices of Sweden, 2019c, p. 11). However, the organisation of edit-a-thons to contest gender imbalances on Wikipedia and by extension in global knowledge repositories was not an idea that Sweden alone could claim. Several feminist-focused initiatives had already demonstrated the impact of collective efforts to increase the representation of women on Wikipedia (Tripodi, 2021). Since 2015, advocacy initiatives (e.g. 500 Women Scientists, Women in Red and Art + Feminism) regularly organised groups of new and existing editors to write and improve articles about women on Wikipedia.

WikiGap edit-a-thons specifically sought to reduce the gender gap on Wikipedia, and to make more women interested in editing articles. During such an edit-a-thon, participants would write or translate biographies about women to uncover their stories and contributions to society. Thus, the WikiGap initiative was consistent with the broader Swedish feminist foreign policy objective of enhancing women’s representation, while empowering future generations by contesting and correcting the privileging of men’s experiences and life histories. The first event, organised by Sweden, took place across multiple settings and more than 1600 people took part, writing articles in over thirty languages. During the first three months of the campaign alone, participants wrote approximately 4000 new articles that were read over five million times (Government Offices of Sweden, 2019b, p. 55).

Foreign Minister Margot Wallström hosted the official launch event in Stockholm (#WikiGapSthlm, which took place at the Royal Technical Institute). She envisaged WikiGap as a contestation of gendered social structures arguing that its: “impact will immediately become a reality for everyone who uses the Internet” (Wallström cited in Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 2018c). To support this initiative, a toolbox was developed, containing a step-by-step guide to organise #WikiGap events, including logos, communication materials and suggestions for those wishing to develop the project further (Government Offices of Sweden, 2019a; Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 2018a, 2018b).

The WikiGap initiative was more than a stunt in public diplomacy or a superficial engagement with popular cultural knowledge constructions. It was a targeted effort by the Swedish government to tackle what was perceived as a pervasive issue of underrepresentation of women in global politics and storytelling, a concern that Foreign Minister Margot Wallström frequently raised. Including women’s stories and experiences and promoting female editors on Wikipedia could therefore be seen as a conscious strategy to challenge both the systemic gendered structures and the tactics employed by conservative and anti-gender elites worldwide to undermine gender equality (Tripodi, 2022).

By actively engaging in the WikiGap initiative, the Swedish government aimed to confront the systemic barriers that perpetuate gender disparities and counter the tactics employed by conservative elites to marginalise efforts to achieve gender equality. The significance of the initiative is recognised in Sweden’s Handbook on Swedish Feminist Foreign Policy as an example of how to empower women in the realm of knowledge production (Government Offices of Sweden, 2019b, p. 55). Similarly, Margot Wallström noted in 2019 that:

making eminent women and their achievements more visible on the world’s largest digital encyclopedia is a concrete result … of our feminist foreign policy. More than 100 million page views of 32,000 new or updated articles is a clear sign of the impact of WikiGap. I hope that they can inspire many people around the world and give people more women role models. (Government Offices of Sweden, 2019c)

Thus, the WikiGap initiative can be viewed as a multifaceted approach that sought to address the broader societal challenge of women’s underrepresentation. It also embodies a tangible effort to promote inclusivity in digital spaces. WikiGap also represents a noteworthy example of digital diplomatic communication, where the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the government joined forces with Wikipedia to address the issue of the invisibility of women’s stories and knowledge on a global scale. Including the WikiGap initiative within the broader framework of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy was a strategic move, adding visibility and credibility to Sweden’s feminist outlook. By leveraging the power of digital platforms, WikiGap sought to transcend traditional gendered boundaries and engage in a transformative feminist endeavour to reshape global knowledge production.

WikiGap encountered minimal opposition from Sweden’s international partners and adversaries, despite its inherent potential for controversy. However, its significance lies in its political implication, since it effectively politicised women’s narratives and their roles within the realm of global knowledge production. By actively engaging with Wikipedia, the initiative transformed the platform into a site of gender politics, disrupting the status quo and challenging the predominance of male-centric accounts of historical events and factual information. Hence, WikiGap prompted critical reflections on the structural biases embedded within knowledge systems and production.

Furthermore, the collaboration between the Swedish government and Wikipedia through the WikiGap initiative illustrates the power of digital diplomacy in reshaping public discourse and challenging long-standing gender inequalities. The initiative propelled the issue of gender representation to the forefront of public consciousness, mobilising collective action and fostering an understanding of the structural barriers that have perpetuated the marginalisation of women’s voices historically.

To conclude, the WikiGap initiative is an instructive example of the evolving landscape of digital diplomatic communication where governments harness the power of online platforms to challenge prevalent power structures, amplify marginalised voices and redefine the parameters of global knowledge production. By harnessing the capabilities of digital platforms, such initiatives have the potential to create meaningful shifts in public discourse, foster inclusivity and gender equality and pave the way for more equitable representation in the digital age.

5.5 Conclusion

In this chapter, we have demonstrated that visual communication and a strong awareness of the significance of digital visibility were key to the articulation, resonance and contestation of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy. By visualising Swedish feminist foreign policy, the MFA sought to engage multiple audiences, with visual representations and symbols facilitating global feminist conversations and collective activities. Though in part an exercise in nation branding, this strategy was inherently political, aiming to achieve social and political transformative and progressive change in line with Sweden’s global feminist agenda. Thus, the deployment of visuality and visibility through digital platforms activated the politics of visuality, projecting and diffusing Sweden’s feminist identity beyond borders to transform and challenge the structural inequalities of global and domestic politics.

The analysis of the visual projection of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy provided in this chapter can contribute to new understandings of the role of visuality and visibility within the politics of digital diplomacy in three distinct ways. First, visual communication enhances the articulation and resonance of diplomatic policies. Using visual language and representations in digital diplomacy makes it possible for policymakers to communicate their normative goals and messages to diverse audiences effectively. Second, visual communication in digital diplomacy enables the projection and diffusion of political identities, facilitating the alignment of diplomatic agendas with broader global causes. Finally, attention to both visuality and visibility can lead to a better understanding of the balancing act in diplomatic messaging of foreign policy. In the feminist quest for transformative global politics, using visual language and initiatives to address invisibilities requires managing the potential risks of communicating progressive agendas in political contexts less dedicated to feminist-informed change.