The Foreign Service Journal, March 2016

28 MARCH 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Service,” Galt said in an interview. “I would like to see more senior women mentoring younger female officers and guiding them to bid on senior positions.” At an open forum in October, DG Arnold Chacón announced his approval of a Cox Founda- tion study to identify gaps in, and make recommendations for, mentoring opportunities at the department. Also, senior-ranked women plan to discuss ways to promote women’s mentorship at the March Chiefs of Mission conference, but on the margins rather than as part of the main agenda. Not all embrace mentoring. Palmer, for instance, stated during an interview that she believes mentoring programs are a means to cope with and, in effect, enable inherent problems in an organization. “If you have to mentor a group, it means they’re already not getting fair treatment. They’re the result of a poor personnel system that is not based on merit.” Situational Sexism There is another phenomenon within the Foreign Service that can perhaps best be described as situational sexism, in which circumstances are sometimes used to justify biases against women in the name of cultural sensitivity and practicality. The societal gender restrictions of the Middle East and parts of South Asia have offered a particularly fertile environment for this phe- nomenon historically. Admittedly, along with the Bureau of African Affairs, the Bureaus of Near Eastern Affairs and South and Central Asian Affairs have the highest percentages of female leaders in Washington and at posts today. Department leadership in both bureaus is 28 percent and 33 percent female, respectively, including both assistant secretaries. Female chiefs of mission lead 33 percent of the NEA posts and 44 percent of SCA posts. Yet in reaching out to 15 female FSOs who have worked in these regions, six mentioned that they’ve seen some male col- leagues slip into discrimination once they are surrounded by a sexist culture, in the name of working effectively in the country. Ironically, as the women point out, they are, in fact, accepted by local male leaders as “a diplomat” or “a third gender” and can therefore meet and report as successfully as men. “We can meet with the local men in their majlis (meeting rooms) and the women in their own groups,” says one female FSO, who prefers to remain anonymous. She voices frustration with what she calls the current practice of treating women as a specialty population to consider solely for women’s issues reporting. When officers meet with women, she says, they can provide fuller reports of the political, economic and security situation. She routinely asks, for instance, about the welfare of the chil- dren, whether they attend school and, finally, whether they walk to school. “That one answer tells me something about security on the ground,” she says. “If it’s safe, the kids can walk to school.” At times, this subject has led to more pointed intelligence: “I’ve been told, ‘We don’t like the kids walking past that house over there because there are these strange guys who moved in last month.’ And suddenly, we would have new suspicious actors to watch.” Joanne Cummings, who served as the first Foreign Service refugee coordinator in Iraq in 2004, makes a similar point, citing her meetings with displaced families. One group of men asked her for a generator, but the women indicated they needed a water tank: The girls of the village had been attacked while walk- ing miles to the nearest water source. When told of the men’s request for a generator, she says, “The women started laughing. ‘Oh, they want to watch TV!’” Cummings adds: “Now, if I’d been a well-prepared male FSO, I would’ve provided the generator. And I would have been doing my job. But how often have we got- ten things seriously wrong because we’ve restricted ourselves to talking to half the people in a country to get the whole picture?” Representative Representation Many have observed that a Foreign Service that better rep- resents the United States will improve policymaking, reporting and analysis. Contributions that women bring to senior ranks are informed by diverse experiences that men do not share. The examples from posts in the Middle East support this claim. In a November 2014 interview for the Public Broadcasting System’s “To the Contrary,” Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, “It is important for the world to see the face of America. They need to understand that we are a diverse society and that diversity is our strength.” The exit interviews that Secretary Kerry promised may help identify lingering barriers. There has long been a need to hear from female FSOs on their way out the door, but no one asked. Those women who remain in the Foreign Service—officers and specialists from State and the other foreign affairs agencies— should all continue to be tapped for more data, as well. Continued investigation is needed to make appropriate, relevant personnel policy adjustments. “When the final settle- ment was made in 2010, I felt glad that I had accomplished something,” Palmer writes in her autobiography. “But I knew full well that many more decades would pass before women FSOs achieved the equality that is required by law.” With shrewd effort, today’s discussions can turn good inten- tions into constructive action. n