On June 24, the United Nations marks the International Day of Women in Diplomacy. The occasion invites us to celebrate the slow but visible increase of women in foreign ministries, embassies, and international negotiations. Yet it also prompts a deeper question: what counts as diplomacy, and who gets recognised as a diplomatic actor?

That question lies at the heart of the European funded research project TheoFem which explores the international engagements of Catholic laywomen in the decades following the Second World War.

By looking beyond formal diplomatic institutions, the project reveals how women and religion shaped international debates on social justice, development, education, and peace.

Rethinking diplomacy beyond embassies… and beyond secularity

When we think of diplomacy, we usually imagine state representatives, formal treaties, and closed rooms. This narrow definition has long contributed to women’s historical invisibility.

For a long time, diplomacy was seen as a male domain, closely associated with state sovereignty and dominant political cultures, including male religious authority. Against this background, multilateral diplomatic practice began to expand, first tentatively during the era of the League of Nations, and then more decisively with the creation of the United Nations, which formally opened diplomatic space to non‑governmental organisations and, by extension, to civil‑society actors.

Thus, if we shift our focus away from foreign ministries and towards NGOs and international organisations, a very different picture emerges. One in which women were present from the very beginning.

Women driven by deep religious motives often fall into a double blind spot in history

Religion has also largely been absent from standard histories of the early United Nations, which often present the organisation as a secular project. This omission obscures an important reality: the Cold War (1947-1991) itself was, in many respects, a religious conflict, with moral, spiritual, and ideological worldviews shaping international alignments, intelligence work, soft-power and development agendas. This dimension of religion in politics and everyday life resonates today with broader debates on religion and democracy.

Women........

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