Foreign and Commonwealth Office Women

FCO Women is a diverse network of women (and men) around the world working for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who come together, sharing experience and advice, to promote gender equality in the workplace and in the wider communities in which they work and live.

FCO Women and PWN both support a global network of professional women and they are collaborating to share learnings and experiences to enable women to achieve their full potential in an international workplace.

We know that a gender balanced workplace yields the best results. The FCO has come a long way towards that goal over the last few years but we are not there yet. That’s why FCO Women aims to maximise talent of women throughout the organisation, whilst supporting career structures that are flexible enough to ensure that women’s talents can be used to the full alongside any parenting or caring responsibilities that they may have. Directed by a steering committee elected by our members, FCO Women is collaborative in our approach, working with all those that wish to help us achieve our goal. However, we stand ready to challenge, if necessary, where we see any barriers to gender equality, most of which can be barely visible.

Day to day, we support our members by facilitating events and masterclasses with both internal and external speakers, to inspire and learn from each other as well as other inspirational role models who are paving the way for gender equality within their own working communities. We create the space for women to ask questions, share experiences, seek advice and grow their confidence. Through these evolving conversations, we are able to learn what more we need to do to truly realise gender equality, understanding what has and hasn’t worked in the past, and build the community to help us achieve it. Sessions are held both in London and in our growing and increasingly active sub networks across the globe, such as Brazil, China, US and the Asia Pacific. 

We also support women to champion each other through peer mentoring and we constantly talk to other networks like ours, both within and outside the UK, to share experiences and seek opportunities for collaboration. We keep in regular contact with our members, including through our regular newsletter. With such a large global network, it is important that we keep everyone involved  and ignite discussions to encourage the development of regional programmes, so that everyone benefits regardless of geographic location. We also promote our work whenever we can, to grow our profile and garner increasing support. 

On top of that, we use our privilege of having access to most countries of the world to promote gender equality in many other societies. For example, in Baghdad, some of our members organised an event to celebrate being a women in Iraq today, the contribution that women make to the world and the importance of gender equality. Hanaa Edwar, President of the Iraqi Al Amal (translation: Hope) association spoke about the women in her life and how they inspired her and gave her confidence to follow her dreams and take on challenging work to engage and push for change to ensure a bright future for Iraqi women.

We are always looking for new collaborations so if you would like any more information, please contact Emily Farrow.

Author: Emily Farrow, FCO Women