The Foreign Service Journal, December 2010

6 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 Letting Women Lead When I joined the U.S. Foreign Service in the mid-1950s, I remember thinking the diplomatic career was one that would, like medicine, be particu- larly well served by virtues such as em- pathy and flexibility that were generally regarded as feminine. When one new female officer assigned to the office in which I worked became engaged and was reminded of the Foreign Service policy that women who married had to resign, I challenged the rationality of the policy at the most senior level of management I could contact. I was confronted with a stern, ex- plicit rebuttal: women were not the best fit for the rough and tumble of diplomacy, and such service was incom- patible with their “natural” role as mothers and wives. The “softer” virtues of women were considered inadequate to a profession that required toughness and aggressiveness (attitudes that may account for some of the worst policy misdirections of our era). Women, it seemed, were testosterone-challenged; too conciliatory. The policy was roundly reaffirmed. Only two Foreign Service women had achieved the career pinnacle — the rank of Career Ambassador — among the almost 40 people who reached that level during the 1900s. Spinsterhood was apparently the pre- requisite for female promotion. The Foreign Service, as was the case with so many other American institutions, was depriving itself of the capabilities of half the population. When I received my first ambas- sadorship in the early 1970s, I chose a female officer as deputy chief of mis- sion. The glass ceiling had begun to crack, but I still had the feeling I was breaking a taboo in the eyes of some of my seniors. Happily, the officer I chose went on to one of the most successful careers in Foreign Service history at that time. She brought to the position a mixture of assets that made a palpable difference to the mission’s success. Later, when I was serving as chargé d’affaires in a major embassy, a non-ca- reer woman was appointed as ambas- sador. I began to receive condolences from many colleagues about the prob- lems my new subservience would en- tail. We did have a rocky start, but that was more attributable to her inexperi- ence than to her gender. As time went on, her presence and perspectives were to be highly valuable to an important relationship. These antediluvian policies are now happily dead and buried. Today, by my count, approximately 30 percent of all career Foreign Service ambassadors are women. Of the 12 FSOs promoted to the rank of career ambassador since the turn of the current century, 25 per- cent have been women. American for- eign policy, I believe, has been well- served by this rebalancing. Now we need to spread recognition that diplomacy is a serious profession demanding skills in short supply, and declare that the continuing use of am- bassadorships to reward financial or other political support—as military ap- pointments once were — is a disserv- ice to American foreign policy. If I am reading the statistics correctly, this ad- ministration has been moving in a con- trary direction. Ronald Spiers Career Ambassador, retired Exeter, N.H. Let’s Help Reduce the Deficit How many of us look with extreme disdain at the lack of courage displayed up and down and across party lines on Capitol Hill when it comes to address- ing the structural budget deficit? Re- publicans reject anything that smells of a tax increase and insist on unidentified spending cuts — as long as they don’t touch programs favored by their con- stituents or treasured by their particu- lar states. Democrats want to protect the so- cial safety net by taxing the wealthy but are cowed by their own constitu- ency into rejecting any consideration of reducing social outlays even for those wealthy enough to make do with less. Yet everyone agrees that the cur- rent projected deficits are unsustain- able. So isn’t it time for some of those L ETTERS