Almanac
2024 came with its own challenges. Women's rights and gender equality now constitute world's fault lines. Protecting the rights of women and girls and all marginalized groups during conflicts is no longer a generally
accepted norm. On the contrary, authoritarian, populist and conservative governments do not shy away from discriminating women's rights. The abortion bans in the USA, the anti-LGBTI stance in some EU member states and Russia, the Istanbul Convention, which is being discussed not only in Turkey but also in some Council of Europe and EU member states through a disinformation campaign, are the most obvious indicators of this anti-gender trend. This year, as Women in Foreign Policy, we are opening the Almanac with this topic.
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The Women in Foreign Policy’s Almanac starts with three pieces on the earthquake and then covers the world in 2022, through a gendered lense. From the war in Ukraine to NATO’s 2022 priorities, from elections in Brazil and Israel to Sustainable Development Goals and the COP27 meetings, we covered main events of the 2022 with a particular emphasis on women’s interests. How did they affect women, what did women do in face of the developments were the questions that guided us while taking a stock of the year.
Women in Foreign Policy continues to raise awareness about the WPS agenda, to report the situation of women and women’s rights in different geographies and to highlight the role of women in international politics. This year, the Women in Foreign Policy Almanac is even more meaningful. We asked our writers to focus more on women, peace and security issues, and we wrote most of the articles in collaboration with our students or colleagues.
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The preface to the 2019 Almanac of the Women's Initiative in Foreign Policy began with the sentence, "2019 was recorded as a year in which women were increasingly able to make their voices heard in every field, took to the streets and voiced their rights, wishes and reproaches on social media". Of course, 2020 was again the year of women. But the COVID-19 pandemic has changed both our agendas and our lives in ways we cannot imagine.
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We asked for opinions from DPK members, all of whom are experts in their fields, who share their views with their students, instead of the quarrelsome TV shows on television, with experts in any medium, in their own columns and interviews. Thus, we have compiled 19 issues that have been transferred from 2019 to 2020 for the world and Turkey, with the invaluable contributions of our members who are experts in related subjects.
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“…With this Almanac, the Women in Foreign Policy Initiative pays tribute to these women and documents 2019 from our perspective. Each of us wrote short excerpts of themes or events based on our own expertise. Instead of the usual year-end letters of past years, we created this resource to help answer the question, “How was 2019?” “More importantly, all the entries in this Almanac are written by female experts who usually prefer the classroom, workshops and events of their choosing over the yelling and screaming of fact-check-free TV talk shows. These experts are all members of the Women in Foreign Policy Initiative, which has become a fruitful, inviting space for collaboration…"