Why aren’t there more women Ambassadors around the world?

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Subheadings have been added for context.

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Maria Luísa Moreira (Host):  Welcome to a new episode of The Diplomat’s Cabinet podcast. Today we're going to talk about women in diplomacy, where they stand, how far we've come and why progress is still so slow. The Women in Diplomacy Index 2024 is an annual report that tracks the representation of women at ambassadorial level in 193 UN member states, and it does so by analyzing data on more than 12,000 diplomatic posts around the world. The latest report highlighted a reality that we cannot ignore. Only 21% of ambassadors worldwide are women, and that figure it hasn't changed much in recent years. The index also takes a new approach, and we will be looking not only at the number of women appointed, but also at what prevents women from reaching the highest levels of diplomacy and where they are actually sent. It's fair to ask, why are so few women appointed to the world's main centers of power? To unpack this, I am joined by Doctor Sarah Shihab, senior research fellow at the Anwar Gaga Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi, who is also the lead researcher for the index. We will talk about the barriers that keep women out of top diplomatic positions, what's working in countries that have achieved gender parity, and what still needs to change? I'm pretty sure this conversation will be as revealing as the index itself, so let's dive in.

Historical Barriers for Women in Diplomacy

Luísa: Dr. Sara Chehab, thank you so much for joining us today. I looked at the index that you publish every year, and the report mentions that only 21% of ambassador roles globally belong to women. We are 25 years into the women, Peace and Security agenda, which calls for greater participation in representation. So I was wondering if you have identified any cross-sectoral barriers that keeps this number low. I would say it's still very low at 21% around the world. So I was just wondering if you have identified any pain points. Any examples?

Sara: Right. So what we've been noticing is that the WPS Agenda is turning 25 years this year, and it's been quite effective in shaping the conversation around women's representation and about the need to have more women represented in senior positions in foreign policy and in diplomacy. But I wouldn't say that the impact has been direct. And so I think that it's very important to separate the WPS agenda from the conversation on on women's representation, because I think that when we're trying to identify the most obvious or the most important structural barrier, I think we have to go back in time a little bit and realize that up until the early 1970s to mid 1970s, married women couldn't become diplomats. So there was a marriage ban on women, right? The idea was that if a woman were married, she couldn't possibly have a husband and have a career abroad, so she had to leave the diplomatic court. And now that changed, obviously in the mid 70s for a lot of countries, but that still didn't change the perception that people had that diplomacy was not a woman's job. It was not a career that was meant for women. It was not something that women realised was now available to them as a career path, and so women simply did not apply to become diplomats. It wasn't a career that they were driven to. And keeping in mind that diplomacy is a very slow career because you don't get promoted every year. It's not the private sector, it's a career where ambassadors keep their post for minimum three years, sometimes five years, sometimes more. And so the turnover is actually quite slow. So bearing in mind that up until the mid 70s, a lot of countries had marriage ban and that slow process of change that leads you to a situation where, you know, we're not seeing enough women. It's not because these women don't exist. It's not because these women are not getting promoted, but it's because it takes time for that, first of all, for perceptions to change and for careers to to evolve, especially for career diplomats. So I think that is sort of a historical structural barrier that one has to be very mindful of, because I think we still see its effects, maybe not as directly today as before, but the effects are still are still lingering.

And the second I think biggest structural barrier is simply HR policies, or I should say, the lack of HR policies that facilitate the promotion of women to more senior roles. So when a diplomat, whether men or women, goes abroad and they have kids and they have families, they need family support, they need spousal support in all sorts of ways. And that's not always there in many countries around the world. And so if you want to retain talent and retain diplomats in general, whether men or women, that support needs to be there. And that is done through internal HR policies that each Ministry of Foreign Affairs actually has to do. I learned recently, for example, one country which in 2025 has 52% of their diplomats being ambassadors. But it was not until very recently that they gave ambassadors maternity leave. And so that is something, for example, obvious to many of us who work outside of that world. But that was not always possible for diplomats. And so simple HR policies, I think, go a long way. And I what I noticed from talking to many diplomats is that these are still lacking in many places around the world, and this is also the number one reason that prevents women from going into the field, but also staying on as diplomats and rising through the ranks.

Luísa: Very interesting. So if we consider the importance of institutional efforts, the Women in Diplomacy Index now tracks both appointing and host countries. So you look at the difference between the countries that have women ambassadors and the countries that appoint those women ambassadors. It's a very interesting angle. So I'm curious what new insight does this provide. Why is this important? What does it tell you about maybe different countries, different regions, different efforts?

Where women ambassadors are posted

Sara: Up until 2024, we have only been tracking ambassadorial appointments by sending states. So how many women ambassadors do countries have that that they send abroad in 2024? We did that. Plus we wanted to see which countries, as you said, have or receive the highest percentages and the highest shares of women diplomats. So I think this is the newest angle that we tried to take. But I think the interesting insight that was revealed to us, and this is something that I did not personally expect to see when I was sort of ranking countries and looking at, all right, which, which country around the world has the highest number of women ambassadors posted to it? It was Antigua and Barbuda, it was Belize, it was Barbados, Mauritius, and these are countries that I had not really they were not on my radar as being top host states for for women diplomats, but they were what was I think most interesting to me is to see how low the number of women diplomats was in countries that I call strategic states or countries of military and economic importance, the heavyweights. So I said to myself, okay, let me see how many women ambassadors are posted to the G7 states, how many women ambassadors are posted to China, how many women ambassadors are posted to India? Because when I think of, all right, who are the main superpowers? The regional powers of the world is the G7 plus China, plus India. So I wanted to see exactly. Do these states actually host many women diplomats? And I was shocked to see that that they don't. And so to me, that's an interesting insight because not only do we not have enough women diplomats. So as you said at the beginning, we only have 21% of ambassadors across the world are women. But of these 21%, how many are actually posted in states and in countries of military, strategic and economic importance? Not many. So it's not just a numbers game. It's not just about tracking how many women ambassadors we have, but we also have to look at where are they posted? Are they posted to influential capitals? Are they posted to important states? And the answer is, actually, not really. That's actually quite sad, I think, for me to find this out. And so I think that we have to scratch the surface a little bit and see, okay, we don't have a lot of women ambassadors. And the fact that they're not really posted to these strategic states also makes me question, is there some discrimination going on here? Now, obviously I don't have the answer to that question yet. This is not something that the data and the numbers can reveal. But this is something that, of course, I would like to dig more into, because that's an interesting insight that I've come across.

Luísa: I know the data doesn't go that far at this stage. I hope the index does cover this in the next edition, but what does it tell us about women's leadership? Why would you not post a woman to these heavyweights countries? What does that tell us about gender and diplomacy?

Sara: A lot of a lot of ambassadorial appointments are political appointments, right? So when your president comes and he or she appoints ambassadors outside of the normal career track. And sometimes a lot of these ambassadors and a lot of these political appointees are people that the presidents know personally or want to reward with a certain position. And a lot of them are men. So I'm thinking you reward someone when you send them to Italy or France or England or the United States. And that could be, you know, one of the reasons I'm just thinking off the top of my head, I haven't really looked at the data from from that angle, but this is perhaps the first question that comes into my mind. Now. The second question is the second. Sorry. Possible answer is because 79% of ambassadors are men, so obviously they're the majority. So whenever a post comes up, opens up, or whenever there's a there's a new appointment that needs to take place, the odds are that a man is going to be appointed because you just have more men in the field.

Policy frameworks and HR barriers

Luísa: I guess we've talked about the power centers, but what about some countries that are very prone to equality discourse and policy? Maybe Canada, Sweden, Finland, the famous Nordic countries have surpassed gender parity in ambassadorial posts. What are they doing differently? You recently hosted an event in Abu Dhabi about best practices from different countries, and what can be learned from these countries that have gone above and beyond to integrate gender equality into the Foreign Ministry. So I'm wondering what's different. What are the best practices?

Sara: Right. So I actually jotted down a few ideas from that roundtable because I want to mention them. I think they are very valuable and sort of out of the box ideas. When we hosted that roundtable in celebration of International Women's Day, we had nine women ambassadors around the table, and each one brought her own perspective and her own experience from her own country. So that was interesting. But you mentioned Canada, Sweden and Finland. Canada has been topping the chart for the last few years. They've consistently come at number one on the index for the last few years. Sweden as well is in a very good position when it comes to gender equality at the ambassadorial level. And the common thread here, I would say, is feminist foreign policy. That helps. So Canada is very committed to having a feminist development policy. Sweden had a feminist foreign policy. Obviously they scrapped it a couple of years ago, but they were the first ones to start it. And that really helps because that really puts gender equality front and center in everything that you do, including representation at the ambassadorial level. So I think that in the case of these countries, I think that helps them a lot because it's a commitment that they make, and then they have to follow through. And one of the easiest ways to follow through is to promote more women to senior positions.

But some of the ideas that come came out of this roundtable is a lot of ministries of foreign affairs around Europe, appointed committees, people within their ministries to look at what was wrong and to sort of hold leadership and management accountable, to make sure that whenever there's a new position opening up, that at least one woman applies to that position. And if women are not applying to that position that they extend, for example, the deadline to allow more women to apply trainings and unconscious bias. That's one of the solutions that I thought was very interesting, because sometimes when you think of ambassador, doctor, lawyer, automatically we're conditioned to think, oh, it's a he. What did the doctor say? Did he prescribe something? So we have to sort of uncondition these ideas. And so some ministries of foreign affairs have started to offer that, to make sure that across the board employees sort of remove that bias from their thinking, conducting gender pay gap analysis, that also helps (and obviously fixing it). Maternity leave – that's, believe it or not, something new that was initiated in many ministries of foreign affairs. And then what everybody said around the table, sort of the common thread was mentorship, formal mentorship programs, formal coaching programs. It's not easy to figure out on your own “Okay, what happens when I become ambassador? What happens when I go abroad?”, but having a mentor who's been there, done that actually helps. And when I look at, for example, at our region, I realised that these mentorship programs don't exist. It's it's very informal. You talk to your colleagues, but it's not something that's been framed in a serious way or it's not something that you must do. But having these mentorship programs and these coaching spaces help a lot, because first of all, it creates this role model idea. So you have someone to look up to, someone to go to, someone to aspire to be, and that helps. But also someone to help you navigate the difficulties and the challenges of a diplomatic life, and obviously there are many, it's not an easy career. So a lot of them brought that idea up as something that have helped them a lot throughout their careers. Unfortunately, this is not something that has been institutionalised enough, at least in our part of the world. And I think it's very easy to replicate its coaching programs, mentorship programs for women. I don't think they're costly and I think that it just takes a bit of organisation to roll them out, but the effect could be actually very positive.

Regional discrepancies in the representation of women

Luísa:  It's great to get these personalised debrief on what you've learned from these ambassadors. So if we go back to numbers and focus on your region, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has the lowest percentage of women ambassadors at 10%, according to the index. The Gulf states at 5.6%. Because you are based in Abu Dhabi, that's where your work is focused on, how does the country compare with golf neighbours in advancing these efforts? I know you have a lot of initiatives and good examples arising from the UAE. It's a very interesting country for me personally. I'm just wondering if there are any national or regional initiatives that could improve the numbers.

Sara: So you're absolutely correct. I mean, as a region as a whole, the MENA, Middle East, North Africa region has the lowest share of women ambassadors when compared to to the rest of the world. And within that region, the Gulf region (or what we call the GCC - Gulf Cooperation Council region) has an even lower share. You're absolutely right. But when we look at the GCC, the UAE has the highest share of women ambassadors in its region, in its neighbourhood. And since we published the index, they appointed actually two more women ambassadors that the index doesn't catch because we gathered the data last summer. But since then there's been some new appointments. So the percentage of women ambassadors in the UAE is actually a bit higher today than what's listed in the index. So in their immediate region, they are very serious about appointing more women to ambassadorial roles. And then when compared to the rest of the MENA region, the UAE is in sixth position, which is also not bad.

Now, what's interesting about the UAE is also the only country in the Gulf that has a National Action Plan (NAP) for the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. In the whole region, I believe only eight countries have a NAP and in the GCC, in the Gulf, it's only the UAE and they're a top donor for UN women, and they actually host the UN Women Liaison Office for the Gulf. So actually the office is based in Abu Dhabi and they're a top donor, and other countries in the region are not. So they they're very committed to this. And the Women Peace and Security Agenda has a lot of buy in domestically here and it's a very active file, it's something that they take very seriously. We, for example, trained I think by now and since 2020, more than 600 female peacekeepers from all around the world. They come to Abu Dhabi, they trained for a few months as part of WPS commitments. But it's also about visibility, talking about it at the United Nations domestically. So it's a country that has taken the WPS agenda and has really tried its best to promote it regionally and internationally as well. But if you look at the UAE, I think that doesn't really happen in a vacuum. For example, it's very much linked to the fact that representation at the parliamentary level is also very high: 50% of the seats in their parliament here are allocated to to women. There's a quota system and that quota has to be 50%. I think there are six gender equal parliaments around the world, and the UAE Parliament is one of them. 25% of their cabinet ministers are women. So it's an image that we've started to see sort of across the board at the ministerial level, at the parliamentary level, at the ambassadorial level, it's not something that's sort of happening in a vacuum. There's a very serious gender equality domestic policy that's been in effect. Sadly, this is not the case for the whole region. I think it's it's good for me being based in Abu Dhabi, because when I speak about these issues, I have a lot of partners, I have a lot of allies. People believe in the work. But then when you go abroad, people start to question “What's the point of doing this? No, we don't want to talk about these things.” And I think that we just have to keep pushing to create buy in into the agenda, to create buy in, into why representation of women matters. It started to catch on, but I cannot say that this is happening across the board in the region for now.

Story behind the Women in Diplomacy Index

Luísa: Well, in Europe there is a backlash and there is resistance to the equality ecosystem, equality policy, equality discourse. So it's not a regional issue, it's a global issue.I think it's a global issue, and I think it's best if we focus on all the proactive efforts arising from the Gulf region and how that intersects or interlinks with, you know, maybe even the European region. What sort of synergies can emerge pertaining to equality? I think that's very interesting and it's something that we we should all follow up close. This is one of my very last questions, let’s go back to the beginning. So why did the Diplomatic Academy start collecting this data? Obviously there's as you mentioned, the UAE enjoys being at the forefront of this sort of effort. So I guess it also arises from that leadership position. Why? What's the the story behind the index? And has it been used for advocacy in the country, in the region?

Sara: So this was something that I was personally very curious about. I work at a diplomatic academy, and I've been with the academy for almost ten years. And so part of my role is doing research, but part of my role is also training incoming Emirati diplomats. And year after year after year, I started to notice that the majority of our students are actually women. The majority of the trainees that were graduating 60% are women, so this was something that I personally did not expect. And then when you attend diplomatic receptions, when you go and meet other missions for admissions, you see a lot of women. But then the minute the ambassador walks in, it's a man. And I was like, but there's a discrepancy because I'm surrounded by women diplomats. And yet whenever the ambassador comes, it's a man. So I was like, okay, let me dig into this, and this is how it started. Now, obviously it's just me doing that. So I didn't really have a lot of resources. And back in the day, I was only looking at 20 countries because I didn't have the means to do more than that. A few years later, we expanded the dataset to 40 countries and then a couple of years ago, when I was talking to our current director general about a new edition of the index, he was the one who told me, why are you limiting yourself to 40 countries? You have to go global. This is the only way that the index will sort of make a difference if you really cover the whole world, and that's basically in 2023, this is what we did. So 2023 was the first year that the index truly became a sort of global index. Up until then, I had a smaller sample, a smaller group of countries. So it really started organically, out of curiosity, out of wanting to understand more why I was personally seeing a lot of women at the junior and mid-career level, but then I wasn't seeing any women at the top level. And so this is how it started.

Now, I have to say that I'm very happy that it's sort of took on and that people are looking at it. I don't know if it's used to inform policy, I hope that. A friend, a contact, a Canadian diplomat posted here, she told me that someone in the Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry actually read your index and is citing it in research and in policies and in reports that they're doing. We were in Geneva in December where we launched the index, and we had a meeting with the director general of the UN office in Geneva, I think her name is Tatiana Valovaya. She said, I've been following this work for a while now, and I really enjoy your results, but I had no idea. So I hope that it's making a difference, and I hope that it's informing policies somewhere. I'm trying to make a difference and if it's really working, I'm not really sure, but I hope. I hope that it's making a difference.

Luísa: Just the fact that you have turned this into a global index speaks volumes. And this is my very last question. You've talked about the story behind the index, I'm curious about the future. So looking ahead, what do you hope the Women in Diplomacy Index will reveal in five years? Ten years? What do you think? What would you like to see?

Sara: Well, the most obvious answer is I would like to see a big jump because for the last two years it's been very static at 21% of women ambassadors. So what I want to see, I want to see a bigger number. I want to see 30%, 35%. I'm not asking for 50% yet. I know that that equality is going to take a lot of time, but at least a big jump in results. But I also want to see more women ambassadors in strategic positions. And the last thing I really want to see, I want to see more Arab women ambassadors because I, you know, this is where I'm from, this is where I work. This is the region where I grew up. And I don't feel proud when, year after year after year, I noticed that the MENA region is trailing behind the rest of the world when it comes to women's representation at the ambassadorial level. So I want to see improvement there. Like, this is the first thing, this is the first region that I look at when I'm collecting the results and analysing results and I'm like, oh, the numbers are not so great. So that's, I think, the region of the world that I want to see making a bigger difference in 5 or 10 years. But I'm also hoping because I have this big data, I'm hoping to now sort of have offshoots of the index, so index 1.0 or index 2.0. I was talking to a colleague of mine the other day about whether or not we could, for example, look at patterns. So sort of look at GDP per capita, population demographics. How are countries scoring, for example, on various gender equality indices? And is that related to women's representation and diplomacy? So sort of finding correlations and relationships with these data because I think that could also be interesting. It is very time consuming because you need an army of research assistants to help you gather the data, but hopefully I can find a way to to do that. So yeah. Let's see. It's growing. It's growing.

Luísa: That was Dr. Sara Chehab breaking down the persistent gender gap in diplomacy and the critical work being done to close it in the Gulf region and beyond.

The Women in Diplomacy Index isn't just a data set, I feel like it's a call to action. So thank you for listening and for supporting The Diplomat’s Cabinet. If you found this conversation insightful, share this episode with your network, and don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter at thediplomatscabinet.com. You can also find a link to the full Women in Diplomacy Index in the show notes. And until next time.

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