Women have conquered British diplomacy, a bastion of male privilege until a few years ago: with the appointment of Menna Rowlings as head of the diplomatic office in Paris, now in all the most important countries of the world, ambassadors represent Her Majesty’s government. The impressive list: United States, UN, China, Russia, Japan, Germany, Canada, Australia and even Italy, with our Jill Morris. And to think that until 1946 women were not even admitted to the British diplomatic corps and until 1973 they were forced to resign if they got married; it was only in the 1980s that women in the Foreign Office were allowed to take courses in difficult languages such as Chinese, Arabic or Japanese and it took until 1987 to have the first married ambassador.
Now the women have taken a large revenge. The latest addition to the formidable patrol, the ambassador to Paris, who was preceded by as many as 43 male ambassadors, graduated from the London School of Economics and had previously held the same post in Australia. But the pioneer considered Karen Pierce, who was ambassador to Afghanistan and then to the United Nations, before assuming the leadership of the diplomatic office in Washington: at the UN Dame Karen Pierce had become famous for her heated denunciation of Putin’s Russia after the attack with the nerve in Salisbury. And now facing the Kremlin in Moscow is Deborah Bronnert, who in the last year has been summoned numerous times to the Russian Foreign Ministry due to tensions between London and Moscow. While another who doesn’t send her to say Dame Caroline Wilson, the representative in Beijing, which has become the black beast of the Chinese government for his defense of freedom of the press.
Diplomatic but steadfast, the British ambassadors. And therefore make you smile, reading them today, the reasons with which the exclusion of women from the Foreign Office was once justified: The female physical constitution is not such as to allow them to endure overwork in hot and unhealthy climates; or in many countries it would be extremely difficult to establish those contacts that form a large part of diplomatic work. These prejudices have been largely overcome, so much so that today Great Britain has over 60 ambassadors. And all the Foreign Office trying to be more representative of the entire population: a wall of mirrors has been installed at the headquarters to encourage employees to imagine that they can represent Britain regardless of appearance, gender or race. But so far there has been only one female foreign minister, Margaret Beckett: and when Tony Blair offered her the job in 2006, she reacted with an astonished Oh heck!
April 30, 2021 (change April 30, 2021 | 19:23)
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