The January 2025 episode of the IGC podcast features Ambassador Nadia Theodore, Permanent Representative of Canada to the WTO, UNCTAD, ITC and WIPO, and Nohora Alejandra Quiguantar, IGC Youth Champion and Indigenous woman leader from Colombia. They reflect on global power dynamics, discuss the transformative potential of feminist policies, and highlight the importance of intersectional approaches towards fostering equitable representation in decision-making.Please note: With many thanks to Grecia PIllaca for interpreting, this episode features an English translation from the Spanish original contributions of Nohora Alejandra Quiguantar. To access the full, unedited episode, please click here.
TRANSCRIPT
Nadia Theodore
Feminist policies don't, by default guarantee you equity and inclusion, or shifts in power dynamics. Getting the design and the implementation right is truly fundamental in the business world. There is a saying that says “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. To me, that resonates on many levels, but in particular, when you're thinking about feminist policies and really realizing the potential of the impact of feminist policies. Culture will eat your strategy for breakfast.
Hannah Reinl
Hello and welcome to a new episode of the IGC Podcast. My name is Hannah Reinl and I’m with the International Gender Champions Secretariat in Geneva. This episode is part of our Youth Champions Programme, which connects 10 Geneva-based Gender Champions with 10 young gender equality activists from around the world. Through this programme, we want to promote intergenerational dialogue for gender equality, amplify the voices of youth activists and cultivate learning experiences for our established Gender Champions.
Today, we are joined by two of our programme participants who will take a closer look at feminist policies from the local to the global level: Ambassador Nadia Theodore and Nohora Alejandra Quiguantar.
Ambassador Theodore is one of our Geneva Gender Champions and the Permanent Representative of Canada to the WTO, UNCTAD, ITC and WIPO. She started her public service career over twenty years ago at the Canada Revenue Agency, later worked with the Department of the Solicitor General, and joined International Trade Canada in 2004. At Headquarters, she has since served as director of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, director of the Secretariat for the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement and as chief of staff to the deputy minister of international trade. Abroad, she served at the permanent mission in Geneva and as consul general in Atlanta. Prior to starting her role in Geneva, she was the senior vice president at Maple Leaf Foods, the world’s first major carbon neutral food company.
Welcome to the IGC podcast, Ambassador Theodore! It’s a pleasure to have you with us.
Nadia Theodore
It’s a pleasure to be here, Hannah, thanks for having me.
Hannah Reinl
And our second guest is Nohora Alejandra Quiguantar. She is one of our Youth Champions and an Indigenous woman leader from Colombia. She is a co-leader of UN Women's Feminist Action Coalition for Climate Justice and founder of the organization Tejiendo Pensamiento (Indigenous Women for Climate), whose mission is to rescue ancestral knowledge and intergenerational equity to build resilient communities, and empower girls to access the resources, networks and platforms they need to advance their activism for climate justice. She is also a member of the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on the New Programme of Work and Institutional Arrangements on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (AHTEG) of the Convention on Biological Diversity to advise government parties. Welcome Alejandra - Bienvenida al podcast del IGC!
Nohora Alejandra Quiguantar
Thank you so much. Muchas gracias.
Hannah Reinl
Today we're focusing on feminist policies, and I believe often we think of feminist policies at the multilateral level. But I would like to start off by asking you, Alejandra, what do feminist policies mean to you, particularly coming from an Indigenous community in Colombia?
Nohora Alejandra Quiguantar (English translation from Spanish)
The feminist politics represent a path to justice and equities, strong, and include the perspective of Indigenous women. These perspectives also are important because they foster the guarantee of equality and rights. It helps also particularly in my community, to face problems like the violation of human rights, discrimination and inclusion. Feminist policies also revindicate ancestral knowledge, foster respect for ancestral knowledge, human rights and instead of, like, impose colonialist models, it promotes the practice of different communities, guarantees their rights and the enforcement of the representation in different stages.
Hannah Reinl
Nadia, now I’d be curious to hear from you: How does all of that translate into how Canada approaches feminist policies at the national and the international level?
Nadia Theodore
I found it really interesting to listen to Alejandra, and listen to how she translates feminist policies into her own national and cultural experiences and knowledge. Because I think that the way Canada approaches feminist policies is exactly that one, that's quite inclusive. and that is quite broad, both home and in the international sphere, globally and abroad. The idea of having an inclusive approach - and I use that word inclusive here to underscore the fact that our position as a country is that promoting and advancing gender equality, both home and abroad, is really meant to make sure that more people, both in Canada and globally, benefit from whatever it is that we are trying to do. If you're trying to advance economic empowerment, the idea is to ensure that more people benefit from that. If we're trying to advance peace and security, the idea is to ensure that everybody is feeling secure and everybody benefits from a peaceful world.
And I think that Alejandra's point is quite instructive because the idea is about making sure that policy is cross-cutting and mainstreaming it into all of our areas of work, into foreign policy, into trade, into defense, into development. My focus and my heart has always been on the economic piece, the trade piece, and the why behind that is because I truly believe that strengthening women's economic empowerment and economic place and space at home and globally is really a prerequisite for achieving broader peace and prosperity around the world. I do believe that this requires us to make sure that there are numerous voices around the table. And to make sure that we take an intersectional approach to that, which is exactly what I got from what Alejandra, was trying to say in her answer. So I think that there are a lot of synergies between what Alejandra has said with regards to feminist policies and Canada’s approach.
Hannah Reinl
So if we look at traditional policy making, that usually follows a top down approach, right? A select few people making the decisions at the top. The ambition of feminist policies, with their emphasis on values like equity and inclusion, which is the dea that you just put a pin in as well, Ambassador, is to fundamentally challenge this power dynamic. How does this work in practice, in your opinion, looking at both policy design and also implementation on the ground.
Nadia Theodore
Well, and I think that Alejandra again in the answer to your first question, really so eloquently and maybe I'll just double click on it, frankly, because it really is in my view, important to acknowledge that feminist policies don't, by default guarantee you equity and inclusion, or shifts in power dynamics. And the question says it: getting the design and the implementation right is truly fundamental in the business world. There is a saying that says “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. To me, that resonates on many levels, but in particular, when you're thinking about feminist policies and really realizing the potential of the impact of feminist policies. Culture will eat your strategy for breakfast.
And what that means is you can have the very best policy statement, the very best plan, the very best strategy- but as an organisation, as a government, as an international body, if the individuals in that organisation have not decided on, have not committed to, are not energised about doing things differently, about learning different ways of doing and being within the hierarchies, as Alejandra said, in particular, as she pointed out in her experience, Indigenous communities, which is very much something that Canada holds dear as well in our implementation of those policies, but other equity-deserving folks at home as well and abroad. And if they don't ultimately believe and to me, this is the key, that doing things differently and shifting the power dynamics will actually make things better, if you don't actually have that belief, that culture peace that has changed, well, there's a significant chance that that transformation, change, that truly transformative change, will be quite difficult in practice.
And so that really to me is that culture part and it means in practice, understanding and believing that inequalities exist along intersectional lines. It means understanding and truly believing, that for decades, and frankly, even for centuries, women, Indigenous women, equity-deserving women and folks around the world have been at the forefront of what government and international organisations today are trying to do with feminist policies. So many of these folks will say, well, welcome to our party, we have been doing it for a very long time. It also means believing in the benefit of distribution of power, therefore, right? And therefore, that power at the level of grassroots of those folks who have been doing it from time immemorial and at the institutional level, and at every level in between, distributing that power is actually going to lead you to better results. That culture piece, to me, is the key in what that actually looks like in practice.
Hannah Reinl
Yes, you won't get real transformation without a genuine commitment. Alejandra, over to you.
Nohora Alejandra Quiguantar (English translation from Spanish)
Sure. Regarding the answer, the public policy must have a bottom-up approach. For that, it requires that the world and the representation of women in decision making. So in general, all politics have the same problem. Because it lacks representation. in the particular case of Indigenous woman, it has a problem to mainstream and involve over actors and acknowledge the work and the leadership of women within the community. So the main work is to break up those stereotypes and build a cultural bridge within society, because it has perpetrated a violation of the rights of women for years. For instance, there is an example that Indigenous communities in Colombia, in order to be a leader of your own community, you must be married. And that practice impedes the access to leadership roles in Indigenous communities. So in general, a solution is that we consider to promote and foster more investment or give more funds and grants to communities and organisations that are led by Indigenous women in order that they can continue with their work in the construction. And tackle down within their own community and that they can feel the support that they have been seeking all this time.
Hannah Reinl
Thank you for emphasizing particularly the point about funding, which is so important. We do have to come to a close of this podcast, but before we go, I'd like to ask you in just one sentence, what is the one key take away that you would like our listeners to walk away with.
Nadia Theodore
You know what I would say to everybody listening, whether you're a policy maker or a policy implementor, I want everybody to think about what one of my favourite authors has talked about in one of her famous Ted Talks. And the author's name is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She's a Nigerian author and she has a Ted Talk that's titled “the danger of a single story”. And I think that fundamentally what we're talking about here when we talk about feminist policy and how to truly make it work, is to realize that if you are wedded to a single story, with regards to a country, with regards to a community, with regards to a policy or a programme, even with regards to one individual person, you can never make policies that are truly inclusive and that are truly going to work for the majority of people around the world. And so be wary of a single story with regards to anybody and anything.
Hannah Reinl
Be wary of the single story, let’s underline that. Alejandra, what's your takeaway?
Nohora Alejandra Quiguantar (English translation from Spanish)
As indigenous women, as an indigenous woman, it is important to lead the road to foster gender equality. In this sense, it's important to foster politics that are not only with special emphasis on feminism, but also that they are decolonial. And it’s important to foster and continue the legacy of our ancestors in the defense of our lands.
Hannah Reinl
Alejandra, Ambassador Theodore, thank you so much for joining us today. And Grecia, thank you so much for your invaluable support in making sure that we can pull this off in two languages, which was a first for us. We're really grateful for your help.
Nadia Theodore
Thanks so much, it was such a pleasure.
Nohora Alejandra Quiguantar
Muchas gracias!