2025/11/17 by Taylor Robertson McDonald · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Gender, Security, and Conflict #Peacebuilding and International Security #Historical Gender and Feminism Studies
paper · doi:10.1177/00207020251397651
openalex created_date 2025/11/17 · openalex publication_date 2025/11/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This article examines the Justin Trudeau government's embrace of its feminist foreign policy (FFP) in response to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, using an ontological security (OS) approach. OS approaches anticipate that, in times of uncertainty, states seek to project a coherent identity by narrating policy shifts as consistent with their pre-existing state identity narratives. While many of the Canadian government's policies in response to the invasion of Ukraine aligned with Canada's Feminist International Assistance Policy , official government narratives largely avoided explicit references to feminism or Canada's FFP. This silence reflects an effort to maintain narrative continuity by aligning with NATO's masculinized identity narrative as a collective military power, while downplaying Canada's identity as a state with a feminist foreign policy. By foregrounding the role of identity narratives, this article offers a novel approach to evaluating the Trudeau government's embrace of its FFP, showing how gendered silences help manage ontological insecurity and enable the government to pursue FFP goals even while omitting them from public statements.