The Foreign Service Journal, June 2005

12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 5 Women Ambassadors: Undaunted “Women ambassadors have risen to the highest levels in some of the world’s most dangerous places, but not without a fight.” So begins the cover story by Shane Harris in the April 1 edition of Government Executive ( http://www.govexec.com/fea tures/0405-01/0405-01mag.htm ). The article features former ambas- sadors Prudence Bushnell, Barbara Bodine and Elizabeth Jones, career ambassador and former assistant sec- retary for consular affairs Mary Ryan and Ann Wright, a former Army lieu- tenant colonel who joined the Foreign Service in 1987 and served as deputy chief of mission at Embassy Ulaan- baatar before retiring in 2003 in protest of the Bush administration’s Iraq invasion plan. The experiences of these women paint a picture of the progress women have made in attaining their proper professional status in the Foreign Service. Where enlightened mentor- ing by senior male colleagues of the kind that Bodine and Jones experi- enced was absent, the 1976 class action lawsuit filed by FSO Alison Palmer, claiming Foreign Service p rejudice against women, helped to clear the way. Both Ryan and Wright were signatories to the lawsuit. Rulings in the case, including the determination that the FS entrance exam illegally discriminated against women, helped dismantle barriers that had kept women from advancing. In the 1920s, State Department o fficials proposed banning women f rom the department altogether. And, until 1972, a female Foreign Service o fficer had to resign if she married. Today, as Harris notes, most men in the Foreign Service would never chal- lenge women’s intellectual ability to conduct diplomacy. And, indeed, women have risen to the top, served in the most critical and perilous places, and shaped the conduct of for- eign policy. Yet, of the 148 ambas- sadors posted as of 2004, 99 were c a reer members of the Foreign Service; and of those only 23, less than 25 percent, were women. Public Diplomacy: Running in Place The release in early April of a Government Accountability Office report, “Interagency Coordination Efforts Hampered by the Lack of a National Communication Strategy,” has once again thrown the spotlight on the U.S. public diplomacy muddle ( http://www.gao.gov/new.items/ d05323.pdf ). In light of the spreading and deep- ening of anti-Americanism around the world during 2004, reflected in polling data, the House Appropria- tions Committee’s Subcommittee on C YBERNOTES To help with your Independence Day planning, click on this authoritative recordof the history and traditions of America’s birthday celebration. You will learn how the Fourth of July got to be an official holiday and what the first cel- ebrations looked like, see a list of planned events for 2005, and much more. The site offers chronologies of notable occurrences, music sung and played, and what the presidents did on that date from 1776 to the present. Jefferson, we learn, was the first to hold a public Fourth of July reception at the executive mansion in 1801. Oral traditions, from the first public readings of the Declaration of Independence to the orations and speeches of recent years, are documented, as well as activities in Congress. There are stories of unusual July 4th events, such as the 1901 festivities on Pike’s Peak that featured “the largest pyrotechnic display ever,” visible from 200 miles away. And, under “Other,” there is a comprehensive list of children’s books about the 4th. This unique database was begun in 1995 by James Heintze, head of the music library at American University, Washington, D.C. A musicologist, Heintze was working in the newspaper archives at the Library of Congress when he first encountered detailed accounts of Independence Day. Heintze began by assembling a record of the musical events, as for many years the Fourth was an occasion for debuting new music. “And then I realized you can’t just pull out the musical events,” he told Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher in a 2004 interview. “I had to tell the whole story.” Heintze has painstakingly developed the collection, based primarily on newspaper archives, and continues to update it regularly. Site of the Month: Fourth of July Celebrations Database http://gurukul.american.edu/heintze/fourth.htm