For the November 2023 episode of the IGC podcast, we are joined by Elena Sokova, Executive Director of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation. She reflects on the evolution of gender-related matters and women's representation in the nuclear field, discusses how the emergence of Feminist Foreign Policy challenges existing notions in international security, and shares her initiatives towards supporting a new generation of women leaders.
TRANSCRIPT
Highlight Segment:
Elena Sokova
My advice for our fellow Gender Champions is to be bold and be ambitious. It is very difficult sometimes to take upon something that looks like maybe a little bit of a challenge to implement it. You may be running against the stream a little bit or maybe you need more resources for doing something, but only the bold steps make a change.
Hannah Reinl
Hello and welcome to the November episode of the IGC podcast. My name is Hannah Reinl and I'm with the International Gender Champions secretariat in Geneva. Today, our topic is Nuclear Diplomacy, Bridging the Gender Gap for a Safer World, and for that, I'm joined by one of our Vienna-based champions. Elena Sokova is the Executive Director of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, or, in short, the VCDNP. Prior to her post in Vienna, Elena served as Deputy Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, where she had worked since 1997. Her early career started at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Elena has authored numerous articles, book chapters, reports, and other publications on nonproliferation and nuclear security. She holds a master’s degree in International Public Administrations from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a Law degree from Moscow State University. Welcome to the IGC podcast, Elena.
Elena Sokova
Thank you, Hannah. It's such a pleasure and a great opportunity to speak about some of the issues focused on gender and youth and overall, representation of the next generation and young women. And not only young, but overall gender parity in our field.
Hannah Reinl
It's certainly a very pertinent topic, so we are very happy that you are joining us today and I suggest we dive right in. So, as I said, or as it has become clear from this little introduction I believe, you have extensive experience in promoting issues of nonproliferation, arms control, disarmament. Your work also includes very close collaborations with Vienna-based organisations in the nuclear field such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). So within these multilateral spaces that you have been moving in over the last years and that focus on these matters, how have you seen gender-related topics evolve over the years?
Elena Sokova
There are some really good news in this area. I would say compared to 10 years ago, we see, and I see particularly, many significant and positive changes. I don't want to sound complacent and say that we have the mission accomplished, but just to give one example, 10 years ago, exactly in 2013, I and my friend Laura Rockwood, who was working at the IAEA at that time, wanted to organise an event during the IAEA general conference with a focus on women and gender. And, you would be surprised to hear that it was very difficult to receive approval from the top leadership of the organisation to organise such an event. We were given a slot at 7:45 AM in the morning, a breakfast session, and the session we called it Women in All Things Nuclear. The response and interest were overwhelming, but it was indeed the first event in this area at a major international forum dealing with nuclear issues. Since that, the event has become a regular part of the agenda and there are many other events that are focused on gender in the nuclear area as well. So that's one example.
But I think the biggest impact on what specific policies are put in place and actions is the result of the establishment in Vienna of the International Gender Champions hub. And that really changed the way top leadership and the embassies missions, international organisations first and foremost, approach this issue. I'm really delighted that we do have very concrete and very ambitious goals put forward by the heads of International Organisations. The IAEA Director-General Grossi announced several years ago that his goal is to achieve gender parity among the professional staffs at the agency by 2025. It's a very ambitious goal. But it's also a very concrete way of doing something to change the status quo. There are many opportunities put in place to encourage young women, even now mid-career women, to engage more in this field, to find their opportunities to grow and to engage in the field. Establishment of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship at the IAEA and the Lise Meitner Fellowship Programme as well. So, there are really bold and concrete steps that are being made.
But I'm also very pleased with the way the other international organisations are approaching these issues as well. For example, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization established a mentorship programme. I'm proud to say that we probably helped them to shape it. So our mentorship programme came first, and they reached out to us to learn more about the know-how, so to speak. But I think that other things are changing as well. As you know, the International Gender Champions take a pledge not to participate in the single-gender panels. And what I see is that now it almost goes without saying that these organisations are very conscientious about following this pattern and ensuring gender parity at various public events, so to speak, and conferences. But I also see a more recent shift, which I really welcome, that involves looking at the composition of decision-making bodies. And one example in this area is the most recent NPT review conference that took place in Vienna in August 2023. The President of the meeting deliberately looked into the appointment of chairs of various committees and working groups to ensure that there is a gender balance and also good geographical diversity. I don't want to sound, again, saying that we are already in a good place, we're approaching it, but we need to be consistent and continue that trend. So that there is no reversal on the path of it.
Hannah Reinl
Right, that there are some achievements to celebrate, as you said, maybe without resting too much on our laurels and continue with consistency. And it's wonderful to hear that the International Gender Champions prove such a good vehicle as well to move some of these issues forward. So you at the VCDNP have also done quite a bit of work on the intersection of feminist foreign policy and nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. And if I'm not mistaken, you've recently hosted an event around the topic. Can you share some more insights into this debate and its implications with us?
Elena Sokova
Sure. I'd be happy to. You referred to our event organised in the margins of the NPT Preparatory Committee meeting in August 2023. This was actually the first event focused on the feminist foreign policy within the NPT context. Gender issues became part of the discussion, and several states were very active on gender issues in the NPT review process since 2016, 2017. But feminist foreign policy is not only about the representation of women and not only about their ability to participate in the decision-making. This is a little bit of a different concept and approach. The feminist foreign policy is also about challenging the existing narratives. It's also about challenging the existing architecture in the nuclear field.
What we discussed at the event in August is how different countries that already adopted feminist foreign policy could operationalize what it means. And what we can see at the moment is that while many countries, well, not that many, there are still about 12 countries that started working in this field, so we, first and foremost, probably want to see more countries joining that, but what they have started with is defining the principles of the feminist foreign policy, the goals. But what does it specifically mean for nuclear disarmament, arms control, and non-proliferation? It is still at the very beginning of the process. Some countries started defining it a little bit more specifically. For example, if you look at the way, for example, victims of various nuclear policies, for example, testing, are treated. How do you put human security in the centre of your foreign policy?Germany, for example, is one of the countries that co-hosted that event with us, and they think about, what they focus on, is how they can do more, looking at the humanitarian impact of various nuclear policies. Chile, for example, looks at how victims of nuclear testing and overall nuclear activities are affected and what could be done to remedy that.
But we, as I mentioned, are still at the very beginning of conceptualizing how feminist foreign policy could work in this field and what changes it could bring. How do you challenge the current notions that nuclear weapons are primarily a security concept, right? How nuclear weapons not only are weapons that are harmful, but also what, for example, disarmament of nuclear weapons and the process could bring in terms of positive impact. How much economic and social benefits could be achieved by foregoing nuclear weapons? So there are many of these issues that are still on the table and need to be more well thought through and more concrete. But there are also some specific points that could be done relatively easy. For example, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has a gender focal point. I think that at least for the NPT review process, it would be good to have a similar position. Or other similar forums, I don't know, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva has a gender focal point. So that I think certain concrete issues could be implemented relatively quickly and already start having an impact. But I'm looking forward to learning more and see more from countries on how they specifically translate feminist foreign policy in either specific approaches or specific policies that lead to the change in the nuclear field.
Hannah Reinl
Definitely a topic that goes to the core of the feminist foreign policy conversation. So thank you for sharing your insights around that. I would like to come back now to your personal engagement as an International Gender Champion in Vienna. So your leadership at the VCDNP has, of course among other matters, focused quite a bit on next generation engagement and mentorship schemes, as you mentioned before. Can you tell us more about the different activities that you are implementing in your organisation and how you think such programmes contribute to a more diverse and inclusive multilateral sphere?
Elena Sokova
That is the topic I'm so delighted to speak about, not that I wasn't happy to speak about other issues, but this is so near and dear to my heart and to many activities that we offer and pursue at the centre. From the very start, when the centre opened, we made a deliberate decision at that time to focus as much as possible on inclusivity and gender parity in all of our programmes, particularly those that involve engagement when we do have an ability to select participants. For example, in our courses for diplomats that we offer them at least twice a year and sometimes more often, from the very start, my goal was to reach 50:50 parity among the participants in the course and also to aim for a greater diversity and giving more opportunities to participants from developing countries. So, we put as a goal for us 50:50 gender parity and 70-75% for participants from the developing countries and I'm really delighted that… it was not that easy at the beginning. But as time progressed, we are very happy to say that we have no difficulties to achieve these goals, these targets in the last four or five years. And then it also is a testament, probably, to more interest from women in these issues. There is also probably more junior and mid-level diplomats across the globe that are entering this field and as part of their career. So that's a welcomed development.
Having said that, we do still notice that, particularly in some parts of the world, there are very few young diplomats or practitioners or scholars who are working in this field. There is still an understanding that this field is hard security, mostly for men and so forth. It was probably additionally triggered by the COVID time when the opportunities were very limited for young aspiring specialists and even students to engage meaningfully in the field. Particularly thinking about young women who would be interested in learning more about arms control, non-proliferation, disarmament issues and also find opportunities to not only to engage in these issues but engage with their peers to see their interest, but also have an opportunity to engage with somebody who is already established in the field, who could not only be their mentor and advisor on the substantive issues, but also on their career issues, on specific policies and specific situations that they may experience in their life, including their current environment.
So we established a programme which we called Young Woman and Next Generation Initiative, which specifically looks at the engagement of the next generation. Within that programme, we have a formal mentorship programme. Each year we select 20 participants and pair them with more senior or established experts in the field, they could be coming from academia, from international organisations, from even diplomats, and the response to our first announcement was really overwhelming. We realised that the number of young women who would like to learn more or to be engaged in something like that is much larger than we could probably offer them as a structured and meaningful mentorship programme. Each year we received over 250 applications for each round, it’s became very competitive. We had to revise our criteria to really narrow the pool of applicants. But I am really convinced that we need more programmes like that in the field. And I'm glad that other organisations are picking up on the establishment of mentorship programmes or similar programmes in their work. Because I wish I myself had an opportunity when I started working in the field, but I see the real impact of these programmes. First of all, I see how much more confident some of these young women became, how they are engaging in the conferences, they are supporting each other, they stay in touch with their mentors, they find meaningful job opportunities or internships or other ways of engagement. And it's really rewarding to see them grow and make success.
Hannah Reinl
Congratulations on such a successful initiative. We are slowly getting to the end of this podcast. I feel like we could keep talking for hours, but one last question before I let you go is if you had to give one key piece of advice to fellow champions, what would that be?
Elena Sokova
My advice for our fellow gender champions is to be bold and be ambitious. It is very difficult sometimes to take upon something that looks like maybe a little bit of a challenge to implement it. You may be running against the stream a little bit or maybe you need more resources for doing something, but only the bold steps make a change. If we're doing it in really small, incremental steps, which are also needed. But bold initiatives really make a big difference. And I had several opportunities in my own experience where I thought that this is a little bit pushing too far, but we do need to push the envelope every day. That's how the change happens. We need to be outside of our comfort zone. So, be bold.
Hannah Reinl
Wonderful closing words. Be bold. Be ambitious. Keep pushing that envelope. Elena, thank you so much for sharing these insights and for joining us today.
Elena Sokova
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.