 |
|
FROM
PARALLEL TO DUAL CAREERS: DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT - Annabel Hendry
|
|
|
 INTRODUCTION
In this paper I provide a brief summary of
the main issues relevant to the contemporary role of diplomatic spouses and its future in
the contemporary European context. Later, I outline some of the measures being introduced
by Foreign Services to respond to the changing role and position of spouses. By doing this
I hope to stimulate comparative discussion and maybe even to prompt some fresh solutions
to the dilemmas - they are needed.
In the recent past (and in some countries, even now) diplomatic spouses have been
expected to follow their partners around the world, and until recently many accepted the
role of supporting their spouses and their Services on an unpaid basis. As a result the
vast majority of spouses, the overwhelming majority of whom were wives, were unable to
follow their own careers and instead became incorporated into their partners’ work
and way of life; often identifying with his work and progress. Many did not even consider
the possibility of following their own careers, but rather saw their own career as being a
kind of "parallel" one alongside their partners, vicariously "taking
on" the latters’ rank and status and feeling a high level of consciousness of
the sets of rights and duties which followed from this.(1) It is
still quite common to hear older wives refer to "our career" when discussing
that of their husband.
Over the last two decades the situation has altered both as a result of changes in the
surrounding economic and social climate and as a result of shifts in the nature of
diplomacy itself. In the European context, spouses are today becoming far more ambiguously
placed in relation to the overall structures and operations of their Foreign Services, and
for their part often feel increasingly ambivalent about their position, their role, and
the impact of diplomacy as a way of life upon their own life chances. Therefore, following
from the general shifts in the overall social climate relevant to diplomacy, there are two
closely related specific sets of questions which need to be addressed. First, there are
those which concern the way in which the duties and privileges flow across the conjugal
link. What kinds of role should and will be played, if any, by those who marry diplomats?
Second, there are the questions which follow from the need for Services to take into
account the constraints that diplomacy as a way of life imposes on officers’ families
if they are going to be able to maintain a healthy level of recruitment and retention of
staff in the future. I shall return to these questions later.
1. A
penetrating examination of this consciousness was provided by Callan (1977).
|