Can foreign policy be feminist? Sweden says yes.

A doctor in a sparsely furnished Nairobi clinic, providing a young woman with birth control. A job-training center throwing open its doors to women in Armenia. A United Nations delegate urging the assembly to consider gender in its global climate change policy.

If those are the answers, then this is the question: What, exactly, does a feminist foreign policy look like?

It’s a question that has been floated many times since October 2014, when Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, announced that her country planned to become the first in the world to put feminism at the heart of its foreign affairs.

“A feminist foreign policy aims to respond to one of the greatest challenges of this century, continued violations of women’s and girls’ human rights – in times of peace and in conflict,” Ms. Wallstrom explained at Helsinki

Ideals put to the testBeing the nice guyOn-the-ground asterisks