• North American Studies

Alison Palmer, a United States Foreign Service Officer from 1959 to 1981, brought a gender equity complaint against the U.S. State Department in the late 1960s and then led a class action lawsuit by female officers that lasted until 2010. Examining the records of Palmer’s grievances against the Department of State reveals linkages between gender, sex, and race in the U.S. Foreign Service. U.S. Ambassadors to three African nations justified their rejection of her from their staffs by stating that Palmer would be an ineffective diplomat because she would face sexual advances by her counterparts in the African governments. Yet, as Palmer testified in 1971, the only threats of sexual assault she faced in African postings were by more senior personnel in the American diplomatic community. The actions against Palmer show how sex replaced gender as the excuse for discrimination against female officers in the late 1960s and 1970s Foreign Service. The sexualization of women officers led to less rather than more gender equality among Foreign Service Officers.

“We can’t be more machista than the Argentines,” former President Bill Clinton reportedly quipped in 2008, when his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton was battling in the Democratic primaries of the presidential election, shortly after Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner had been elected President of Argentina in 2007, and following Michelle Bachelet’s election in Chile the year before. The United States more ‘machista’ than Latin America in politics ? A challenging issue that was tackled during the Fren...

When Barack Obama acceded to the Presidency of the United States he held out the promise of a new beginning. As a master of political rhetoric he had spoken of a new start following the dismal years of the Bush administration. He would take America back to its inspirational creed of freedom and democracy. He augured a break with policies infringing on civil liberties and government under the law. Once in office, though, the power of rhetoric that had carried him into the White House ran into the hard reality of political rule under conditions of ongoing wars in far-away countries and the threat of terrorism, lurking at home and abroad. This chapter will explore how well President Obama managed to preserve democratic freedoms at home while fighting terrorism.