Foreign Service Officer Alison “Tally” Palmer was an Africa specialist who couldn’t get a job in Africa. Palmer, who joined the State Department in 1959 and had already served overseas in the Congo and what was then British Guiana, trained as an Africa political-officer specialist in 1965 — only to be turned down by three U.S. ambassadors in a row.

Each cited the same rationale: she’d invite sexual advances from her African counterparts. Yet, as Palmer testified years later, the only threats of sexual assault she ever encountered in Africa came from senior U.S. personnel.

After those rejections, Palmer tried for a fourth position in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The assignment officer wrote the ambassador that he might be “surprised that we would consider sending a girl to Addis,” but that she’d “fill the job splendidly.” The ambassador agreed, and offered her a post as social secretary to his wife.

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It was the final straw. In 1968, Palmer filed the department’s first-ever gender discrimination complaint with the State Department’s Equal Employment Office.

Although the office privately found in her favor, it withheld the finding from her personnel file. She then took the case outside the department, appealing to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, whose 1971 hearing produced the public ruling that finally forced State’s hand.

On Aug. 19, 1971 — 55 years ago today — the investigation concluded that State had discriminated against Palmer. Time called it “Tally’s Triumph.” Palmer wasn’t impressed: the promotion and back pay, she said, were “no more than what the Department was required to do” under a 1962 executive order.

Years passed before she actually received them. The delayed victory came with retroactive pay, which Palmer used to fund a landmark class-action lawsuit on behalf of all Foreign Service women — filed in 1976, the same year the Times asked whether she was “trouble or a pioneer.”

It would take 34 more years — and proof that State’s reforms had worked — before the case was settled, in 2010. In March 2025, the Trump administration eliminated diversity as a formal criterion in Foreign Service hiring and promotion — the same standards Palmer’s case had shaped.

What’s in a headline?

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“I have crossed the Atlantic and returned more times than I have fingers and the Pacific more times than toes. Three trips completely around the world, one by air, two by ship (one of these by Chinese freighter). Jamaica visited first in 1924—returned 4 times. Barbados 4 winters. Cuba, Colombia, Hong Kong, Taiwan….”

There is only one American woman diplomat. Literally. Yet Lucile Atcherson’s arrival signals a “very unfortunate precedent” indeed for the striped-pants set in Washington, and those representing their nation around the world.

Despite achieving the third-highest score on the U.S. Foreign Service exam in 1922, it takes badgering from the President of the United States himself1 for the polyglot, who graduated from high school at 14 and Smith College at 19, to officially join the Department of State.

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For the next five years, Atcherson serves in Washington, Bern and Panama City before resigning to get married, at least according to the breathless coverage at the time (“Cupid Wins,” declared The Miami Herald; “First United States Woman in Diplomatic Service to be Bride of Chicago Doctor,” the International News Service crowed.)2

And that’s that.

When you’re the first, the second sentence — which is to say, what happens next and for the rest of your life — hardly matters, as far as history is concerned. But it’s what happens next that I think about most often.

To get there, we have to go back to the beginning, back before Lucille was the first. We have to go back to when she wanted it, and badly.

There’s nothing like a woman who wants, and takes it seriously.

It’s true that Lucille Atcherson wanted to marry George Curtis, a doctor from Chicago who she meets while serving in Switzerland. It’s also true, though it didn’t make it into print at the time, that her boss in Berne and countless others back in Washington, including the head of Personnel, vocally opposed her presence, often to her face but also behind her back, officially and otherwise. With management maneuvering to keep advancement off the table, she cut her losses.

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There are many indications it was the right call and — less obvious ones — that the cost would be steeper than ever acknowledged.3

Truest of all might be this: Lucile Atcherson wanted to become a diplomat, and to work and live all over the world. And how.

Fluent in French, German, Italian and Spanish, Atcherson had traveled to England, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Turkey by her mid-20s. In fact, she had lived primarily abroad since 1917 when she volunteered for the American Fund for the French Wounded during World War I. She went on to work as a private secretary for Anne Morgan, who co-founded The American Committee for Devastated France (known as CARD or Comité Américain pour les Régions Dévastées de France).4 It was in this role that Atcherson had reason to frequently interact with American diplomats. As the post-war recovery took shape, Atcherson began to imagine what could come next:

Atcherson had been recognized for her service by the French government, and in a bittersweet, sliding doors-esque turn of events, had been widely talked — and written — about as a future appointee to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, endorsed even by U.S. Ambassador to France Myron T. Herrick. As the buzz built around her in Europe, and with a fellow Ohio native (eager to capitalize on newly enfranchised voters5) in the White House, Atcherson returned home to prepare.

For more than a year, Atcherson devoted herself to readying for the three-day Foreign Service exam. A consular officer she met in Paris offered an informal study guide, recommending books on everything from commercial geography to the economic history of Japan. She read them all. She took a post-graduate statistics class at the University of Chicago, and sought out private tutoring in history and political science from professors at Ohio State University. When that didn’t feel sufficient, she moved to Washington, D.C., and enrolled at George Washington University, taking additional classes on world history, foreign trade and international law and attempted to enroll in a prep course specifically for Foreign Service hopefuls.

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She was denied entry to the cram class because the professor didn’t want a woman’s presence to distract the other men, but eventually Atcherson convinced him to provide private lessons. He was so impressed with her work, he allowed her to attend the final class in person. In July 1922, she and 12 men passed the test.

Qualified beyond measure, yet still having put in more work than most, she did what she set out to do. She did it well enough that the outcome could not be disputed. While coming in third, she was only 0.57 percentage points behind the highest-scoring candidate.

What came next should have been the easy part — the celebratory part. After all, Atcherson’s earlier achievements had won the admiration of men and women, officially and otherwise, overseas and in the West Wing. The press coverage suggested as much (“Talking like a woman of the world and looking like a debutante after her first ball …”). Would that skill, talent, desire and widespread support could make it so.

To be continued…

What’s in a headline?

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This is a home for stories about serious women. Skilled women. Sharp women. Sensitive women. Stubborn women. Successful women. Women with swagger.

If you’re going to have courage, duty, drive and wonder at the forefront, you’re going to need to have some swagger. But you have to catch this woman at a very special and often fleeting moment in time. Before the swagger turns to silence, then resignation and quiet dignity, if she’s lucky. And that’s why you have to turn to the difficult women, the shrill women and the (too) proud women. Those women likely had swagger at some point before it slipped away or was snuffed out.

We share stories to remember, yes, but also to re-evaluate and to reframe. In this moment of widespread, intentional erasure, there is an imperative to record. And yet it’s the reclamation that must be built into the effort.

Welcome to Our Women in the World. May you see yourselves in these stories. May this be the invitation to share your own. To contribute a word. To record yourself into this moment. To reclaim what has perhaps been misunderstood long before now even as words and livelihoods are being weaponized (and not for the first or last time, of course).

OUR WOMEN IN THE WORLD is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

What you will find here:

The women interviewed here range in age from late 20s to early 80s and their first-hand experiences working in war zones, evacuating embassies under fire, being high-value hostages and being personally attacked will be riveting. Political events will provide the backdrop and guide posts throughout, but these conversations are meant to bring to life the untold stories of those who were and are making difficult decisions, sounding (sometimes unheeded) alarms and representing the United States to allies and adversaries alike. And that means illuminating how they did it.

These aren’t tales of bravery and triumph told in a vacuum. Readers will see themselves in so much of what is happening behind the scenes. These women didn’t have it all. Far from it. These conversations won’t shy away from their sacrifices — both personal and professional, like the decision to pass on an exciting opportunity because a spouse compromised on the last assignment, and the anger and resentment that follows.

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With wit and honesty, the women enrich their tales of globetrotting by getting real about exactly how they make it out the door in time for that cocktail party at the palace or are able to join that last-minute boat trip along the Bosphorus sipping Turkish coffee with a military attache.

Opening a window into their most candid, striking and impulsive moments is the only real way to understand the inner lives and motivations of any woman. I hope you will join me and share your own story.

Join the Conversation:

If you’d like to share your story or know someone else who might have stories of her/their own to share, please write to me here: jen@jenniferkoons.com.

Weekly snapshots of women in the world throughout history. After all, this newsletter is meant to spotlight others, amplifying cross-generational contributions—talent, ambitions, challenges and milestones.

The more I learn, the more I wish to share. And learning is a lifelong process. But these snapshots are meant to strengthen our foundations and stoke our interest. Many readers won’t recognize every name. My hope is that after reading though, they may wish to learn them. Only in so doing can you begin to see modern diplomacy laid out in full.

From the desk of Jennifer Koons:

Jennifer Koons is a storyteller specializing in global affairs and diplomacy — and the women shaping both. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Foreign Policy. She is a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grantee, a former senior writer at Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and a journalism lecturer who has taught at Georgetown University and at Northwestern University, including at its Qatar campus.

She has reported from across the Middle East and Europe, as well as the Sahel. Her reported work includes a Washington Post profile of Adela Raz — Afghanistan’s last woman ambassador to the United States — published in the immediate aftermath of the Taliban’s takeover — and an Atlantic story about who gets to be America’s face to the world.

The culmination of this work will be: The Striped-Pants Girls, a reported history that is currently in progress, and SAFIRA, SAFIRA, a debut novel inspired in part by the experiences of these same diplomats — including one whose story could only ever be told as fiction.

For secure—encrypted—correspondence and/or if you’d like to share your story or know someone else who might have stories of her/their own to share, please reach out directly: jen@jenniferkoons.com.

Our Women in the World is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and supporting this work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

*What’s in a name? Inspiration and admiration, of course.

Competency with an asterisk. Too beautiful to take seriously. And yet. …

That is the undertone—if not the actual framing—around which diplomat Halima Embarek Warzazi was introduced to readers in American press coverage during her first dozen years at the United Nations. That she got any coverage at all is noteworthy, but please return to the second sentence—and then the first. Beneath the effusive praise for the “slim, beautiful,” quadrilingual diplomat, who was ”young and glamorous enough to be a fashion model” or “could be a film star,” is that asterisk. Call it what it was: skill.

Any suspicion that she might have won a beauty award in the chairmanship was quickly dispelled by her knowledge of committee procedure, built up through participation in four preceding Assembly sessions.

—The New York Times wrote in a profile of the Moroccan diplomat, then 33.

The first woman to represent Morocco to the world knew she couldn’t change being objectified or under-estimated, but standing out opened doors, and for more than five decades, she walked through them. She was just that good.

Dressed in brilliantly colored robes, she flashes a smile as she moves gracefully through the U.N. corridors, often stopping to take part in the behind-the-scenes caucuses where much of the real business of the U.N. is conducted.

—Beryl Bernay wrote for Parade in 1968.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Soraya Warzazi, who remembers her grandmother as being “very patient and strategic because she quickly understood the importance of navigating male-dominated spaces carefully and women’s sympathy to advance gender equality.”

Warzazi died last May at 92, and in returning to her groundbreaking legacy, it’s striking to see these through-lines and how she draped her extreme competency in cultural diplomacy. Seemingly superficial details, like wearing caftans and takchitas, invited questions. And Warzazi always had answers because she understood the power of perception, and subverting it. In a decades-long career steeped in human rights, gender equality, racial and social justice, those initial instincts are illuminating—and masterful.

“You would not have looked at me,” she laughed, “if it had not been for this dress.”

— The Associated Press wrote in 1964 under the headline: “Jackie Kennedy Dazzles at the UN, But She’s Not the Only One.”

Your grandmother lived an extraordinary and purpose-driven life and, among many other accomplishments, was among the first Moroccan women to hold a diplomatic position. Can you tell us about her as both a woman in the world and the woman you knew?

Yes, definitely. She was one of the strongest and most stubborn people I have ever known because she was deeply committed to her work and to the values she carried with her. And she did everything she could to achieve her goals, whether for her career or also for her life in general. And in diplomatic circles and beyond, she was known for being that strong woman who defied and challenged patriarchy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and also at the United Nations.

She demonstrated to Morocco and to the world that women can fully assume political and leadership responsibilities. And I can say also that my grandmother was very patient and strategic because she quickly understood the importance of navigating male-dominated spaces carefully and women's sympathy to advance gender equality.

She also achieved so much because she dared. She dared to ask to go to the United States. She dared to ask to join the diplomatic corps in Washington and then join the United Nations. And she dared to speak up when she disagreed about something.

She spoke four languages, French, Arabic, Spanish, English. She had many friends in the UN coming from diverse countries and with diverse backgrounds, and these intercultural skills helped her to have a strong support system that enabled her to rise through the ranks and hold major responsibilities. For example, in 1966, she was the president of the Third Committee [of the General Assembly] at the age of 33.

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And I can also add that as a grandmother, she was very humbled and discreet about everything she achieved throughout her career. And to be honest, on a personal note, I didn't realize everything she did and that she was this strong woman until I did my internship at the UN in 2018. I knew that she had an impressive career and was an important diplomat, but I didn't realize how much until I was welcomed by the ambassador to the United Nations and by the Diplomatic Corp.

And I quickly understood that she was not just any diplomat. She was the diplomat, the Moroccan diplomat, who had left a lasting impression on everyone around her. And as a grandmother, she was very attentive to my siblings and myself. And she was also very direct to people, very funny and always smiling and laughing. She was just special and unique.

For those who aren’t familiar with her story, can you speak to how she first joined the diplomatic corp?

After her studies in Cairo, Egypt, she decided to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Morocco, in Rabat, the capital, in 1957. She was only 24 or 25, and she dreamed of a career where she would be able to travel and to meet people from different backgrounds, different horizons, and to make new friends. Her father had many acquaintances within the government, which facilitate her entry at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

She spent roughly two years at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And after a personal tragedy where she lost her fiancé at that time, who was the director of the King’s Cabinet, she asked the Minister of Interior, who was a friend of hers, if he could help her to go to Washington. And the Ministry of Interior arranged an audience with the King, and the King gave her his approval. And my grandmother joined the Diplomatic Corps in Washington in July 1959 as a cultural attaché.

In 1973, she became an expert member of the UN Special Commission against Apartheid and Racial Discrimination. She would go on to hold other powerful and meaningful positions that often focused on human rights, including the rights of women and children. What insights do you think she might have shared looking at the world as it is in this moment?

I think she would be very upset by the current state of the of the world because of the rise of hate and discrimination against marginalized communities, and especially against racialized women, women coming from different backgrounds, from the Global South countries such as Morocco, because of the rise of polarization, neocolonialism, genocides, climate disasters and the ongoing injustices that impact women especially.

I think she would be very upset by the current state of our world, but as a stubborn and determined woman, I’m convinced she would continue to hold out hope and would do everything she could to push for a better world. And I think on the other hand, she would be very proud to see that many women today continue to fight for their rights and fulfill top diplomatic positions in Morocco, for example, and in the Global South in general. And should be proud for sure that historically marginalized women are more and more agents of change, and that in the most difficult times and moments of our history, it is essential to continue our own fight.

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What were the ways in which she instilled her sense of home, duty and diplomacy as part of her personal legacy?

I would say that at home, she taught us that women and girls deserve the same rights as men and boys. For example, access to education, professional opportunities, freedom and justice, and she encouraged us to challenge the prejudices that impact women and confined women to the private sphere and to trust women’s abilities.

I would also say that my grandfather shared this mindset because he strongly supported her career, and he cared for my father when she was abroad, and at that time, it was really, really rare.

She also translated her convictions into action. For example, she opened an embroidery workshop in Rabat to help marginalized women achieve their financial independence. And she instilled in us pride in our identity, culture and heritage. For example, at the UN, she perfectly embodied intersectional feminism by representing and defending Morocco’s values while wearing traditional Moroccan clothing, and she carried this same pride at home. For every reception, birthday or family gathering, for example, she honored our traditions by the way she she dressed, and she also taught us to be open minded and to listen carefully to others.

I grew up in a multicultural environment where several languages were spoken at the table—French, Arabic, Spanish—and people from different backgrounds and cultures were invited to our table. And for her, cultural diversity was a powerful way to challenge prejudice that impacts many communities, and advance gender equality, racial equity, justice and the [Sustainable Development Goals] in general.

And also, she told us that when faced with injustice, we must stand up rather than remain neutral and passive. For example, when my father was young, or even myself or my siblings, if any of us were intimated at school, she told us not to let ourselves be pushed around and to show what we were capable of. She also wanted us to take up space, meaning that we could share our ideas with respect, of course, but also with confidence and conviction. That was very, very important for her. Since we were young, she often reminded my sister and myself, especially, that we must act so that our future remains in our own hands. That was her mantra. It was very, very important for her.

That’s beautiful. And as you said, it’s so necessary to hear today. And I think what you shared about cultural diplomacy too and modeling that is so powerful. Is there anything else about your grandmother that you hold close but would like to share?

A have a funny personal story. When she arrived in Washington in July 1959, the consul of Morocco to the UN in New York was supposed to to welcome her, but unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding between the Embassy of Morocco, the permanent mission of Morocco to the UN, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When she arrived, the consul was not there to greet her.

She waited for several hours and when she met him finally, she was so upset that she made a scene. The consul was very, very calm and very patient. He tried to calm her down, but apparently it was very hard. But eventually, the following month, they became very close friends, and the consul introduced her to his own friends, which helped her integration to the United States, but also to the UN. And, finally, they married each other in 1961 and they had a very happy life, and the consul was my grandfather.

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That’s amazing, wow, such a good story.

Anytime they’d tell the story I’d be laughing along with my parents and my family. And my grandmother was very direct, so when she was upset, she was really upset.

I love that, and it goes to what you were saying about how she taught you to take up space.

It’s important, especially nowadays, because even if there is progress within public spaces, it’s not perfect for women, and especially for racialized women, because of intersectional issues that we are facing, it’s important to take up space and to say what justice should be. And I think that was the lesson I learned from my grandmother.

What’s in a headline—

If you’re in a reading mood—

Glimpses of a text exchange, TikToks or televised congressional testimony, Google searches and articles out of time and place, these are the ways in which we now witness the lives of those we cast as the best and worst of us. The same woman’s smirk could be empowered or enticing at 22 and repellant at 49. People change in countless ways—but not every way. And for women in particular, it makes aging–existing—in public particularly perilous.

As news writers and news readers, we often meet someone at the highest (or lowest point) of a career. The articles about ambassadors become books about secretaries of State. We all do our best to factor in personal histories, childhood traumas and dreams deferred. And still, I am frustrated by the linear limitations, word counts and “news pegs.” It’s one thing to reflect back on a disappointment and another to watch it unfold.1

By now, it’s obvious that i’m interested in being in conversation with diplomats at all stages, of interrogating what was missed while on deadline, of making peace with the constraints of any story about a life. And still, I have wondered what it would be like to return to a person again and again; to mess with the timeline until what is considered good and true is beside the point.

This is a home for stories about the women who represented and are representing their nations in the world. In collecting these stories, the collection itself becomes something that can’t be so easily compartmentalized.

Exploring and revisiting duty or talent, let alone drive or desire, at a time when the institutional scaffolding of American diplomacy (and American journalism) is under attack can feel reckless, tone deaf or worse. I’d be lying if I didn’t wonder what I’m doing here at all most days—and there’s silence to prove it. But to act as if the preservation and reclamation of stories hasn’t been at the soul of survival throughout history feels far more dangerous.

And when ‘real stories’ aren’t possible, well, there is freedom in writing from fact and a different kind of freedom from the invention of characteristics and choices, which are no less based in reality, but won’t prove costly for real people who exist beyond these pages. “I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth,” Tim O’Brien wrote in The Things They Carried. Though it’s been a favorite for more than two decades, this line has never resonated more.

And that brings me to Emerson James, an adventurous and complicated woman who derives her worth from being fantastic at her job (and then she loses it). The protagonist of SAFIRA, an upcoming work of literary fiction, is a composite character based on interviews with more than two dozen female diplomats over a half decade of reporting. But she is fictional, and that’s by design.

Propelled by wanderlust, curiosity and self-regard that spans time and time zones, Emerson’s ambition and talent may hit differently at different points in her career. Not much is gained when you’re infinitely more popular and well-known overseas but so much can be lost if you’re invisible—or silenced—when catastrophe captures attention back home.

For three decades, she’s been in love with Jake Vaughan, a fellow diplomat with whom shared passions and late nights in conflict zones made romance deeply attractive. But that mutual ambition and adventure-seeking, which at first felt so intoxicating, was often tested when it came to who took what assignment and who turned down a promotion.

Right now, though, our women is lovesick, and it’s embarrassing. Let’s meet her there.

Draft Excerpt: SAFIRA

THE MIDNIGHT DINNER

TUNIS, TUNISIA, August 19, 1983—There are husbands, and then there are Husbands. Jake Vaughan is a Husband. At least that’s what Emerson insists when she stumbles from the restaurant, slurring her words and smelling like shisha and single malt, the former of which she loves and the latter of which leaves her, well, pretty pissed. A capital “H” Husband is meant to be a compliment. But Emerson can barely stand her good fortune, the power he yields to her too much. It’s also incredibly attractive, and drives her to drink, apparently.

“Nothing and no one but you, James.”

He actually says shit like that to me, she tells the friend driving her home.

“You’re commanding and capable and impossibly attractive.”

He wrote that in a birthday card with a cartoon dog and a cat on the front. We’d been dating for three months, she adds for emphasis. The emphasis seems to be some variation of “can you believe this fucking guy?”

And, she trails off before recovering, and, he asks: “may I?”

Met with a blank stare, she adds—in bed. Then stage-whispers: The insufferable clown! It is all just so … impossibly sexy.

My point… my point [she looks around for it]... is that he’s not just sweet? That would be one thing, and sickening enough, but…the last time we saw each other, she stage whispers again….

Maha walks Emerson to the front door and watches in loving judgment as her friend takes three tries to unlock it. They hug goodnight, and Emerson promises to go inside and start guzzling water and that she’ll pick up the candles for the consular chief’s birthday the next afternoon. Swaying to music she remembers hearing earlier in the evening, Emerson tilts her head to rest the phone receiver between her ear and shoulder and calls the operator, asking to be connected to Jake Vaughan in Boston. While she waits, she splashes olive oil into a skillet and unwraps mlewi to reheat. Her husband, visiting his ailing dad back in Massachusetts, is going to be living with her for the first time when he arrives in three weeks.

“James?”

There he is. She relaxes into the smile in his tone.

“Do I hear the stove? Midnight meal?”

I suspect I may be some sort of sexy culinary magician, she tells him as she drops the flatbread onto the pan.

And then they talk about Emerson’s Thursday night and Jake’s Thursday morning. They talk about his dad’s transplant surgery and the supervisor who added his name to three of Emerson’s recent cables. They talk about her in-law’s beagle, now snoring on his lap, and the crocodile farm Emerson and a few friends went to last weekend (easily 500 crocodiles, just lazing about). They talk until today becomes tomorrow.

THE LAST DINNER

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 19, 2001—Jake picks up Dukem carryout, a favorite but also reliably open until 11 p.m. It’s listed on the (actual) Post-it of things they love about being back in D.C. The small piece of paper had been a strategic choice. They didn’t want to feel depressed by the length of their list.

Hardship posts are supposed to be difficult, it’s why they are usually short-term deployments. But Emerson and Jake have a running joke that they’d beg to stay in Baghdad for years and swap the assignment with returning back to headquarters. And that isn’t a completely impossible ask. Some diplomats spend nearly the entirety of their careers outside the country. The assumption from friends and family is that that is exactly what they’re signing up to do. And Emerson and Jake would prefer it that way. But there is a catch. To rise in the ranks—to distinguish yourself and advance, including to the rank of “Career Ambassador”—you have to show your face in Foggy Bottom, not a short-term hardship assignment.

It helps that they’d already done stints at Operations, a job so all-consuming that they didn’t have much time to focus on anything outside the building—or each other, falling hard on and off duty. This is Emerson’s fifth tour back at headquarters; Jake’s fourth and the third time they’ve overlapped, albeit briefly. Jake is leaving for Islamabad tomorrow.

Emerson is seething with jealousy, and not in the playful way she is used to either. It’s ridiculous. He was here a full six-months before she joined him from Iran, having been the principal officer at U.S. Embassy Tehran. They’d moved Nazneen into her freshman dorm the previous weekend. Lucy is opting to go with Jake to Pakistan, a choice Emerson is excited about and encourages, but also leaves her feeling unmoored.

“Adventure awaits,” she’d written on the note she is going to sneak into her youngest daughter’s carry-on. And it does. Jake’s will be as deputy chief of mission for U.S. Embassy Islamabad; Lucy’s as a sophomore at the international school; Nazneen’s as a university student. Emerson’s adventure will once again be as a happy, supportive mom and wife who isn’t panicking about a physically fracturing family unit without a dream assignment to distract her. Yes, that.

It doesn’t help that she’s not even at headquarters—“with friends,” she doesn’t say that part out loud because it sounds like her job is in high school. She’s doing a year-long stint as deputy commandant/international affairs advisor at the National Defense University. It’s a sort of gloriously Defense-world title and a plum opportunity. It’s also different and interesting and… Emerson is bored out of her mind.

Interrupting her spiral, Jake sets their order on the kitchen counter. He greets her with a series of mindless nips—on her mouth, her forehead, her shoulder. Then sets a second bag on the counter, with hunter-gatherer gusto: an original chili-half smoke, per tradition. Laying it on pretty thick before ‘shipping out,’ love, she teases. Though she approves, of course she does. A tiny voice wonders whether he would have remembered if she hadn’t suggested he swing by their favorite Ethiopian restaurant, which is only blocks down the street from Ben’s. “Nothing and no one but you,” he murmurs as he pulls plates from the cupboard. She’s not the only one in her feelings tonight. Did he suggest Dukem? She’s not sure she remembers anymore. But, clearly, they both remember how they have always opted to spend the nights before they part.

Lucy is out with Matty, she tells her 51-year-old husband as he fishes around in the dishwasher for forks. He is still as impossibly and irritatingly attractive as ever even though (maybe even because) she knows that underneath his navy sweater is a “Brown University Dad” t-shirt. Triumphant, he stands up straight with their utensils. Emerson wraps a hand around his neck for leverage, watching his eyes flutter shut as his own breathing falters.

THE SECOND DINNER

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 3, 1978—Over Coronas, chips and salsa, Jake’s best friend from college tells them about the birth of his son. The baby, Jasper, is four months old and this is Justin’s first trip back to D.C. He is Secret Service, assigned to the former president’s detail in the Isles of Capri, which means a home-base in nearby Naples. He is one of Jake’s douchier former intramural broom ball buddies, who went to great pains during their first meeting to bring up the college girlfriend who gave Jake so much head he could “barely walk to our games.” It’s their second date, technically. Even before they arrive, Jake insists this counts for nothing but two colleagues meeting one colleague’s friend. Emerson, sensing his distress, doubles down. We’re meeting this guy after waking up together in my bed, Vaughan. Are you saying that’s the only place our dates are going to take place? Jake groans. And it only gets worse (for him) from there….

Justin is in rare form tonight. Jasper’s entry into the world was so easy, he gushes. Mara, his wife, was just “so good” and hadn’t made “a single sound” during the delivery, he tells them. Already appalled, Jake visibly winces as Emerson sends a painfully pointed smile in his direction. Impressive, she says.

Prepare for me to scream to my damn heart’s content if we have a kid, she tells him on the metro afterward. I may even wake up Justin all the way down in Florida. Jake looks slightly nauseated and slightly panicked and changes the subject to work. Emerson looks like she’s getting a good-natured kick out of his misery. But inside she also feels slightly nauseated and panicked, and frustrated with herself as a result. No question she knows her role in a train-wreck of a meal like this one with the boy she likes bearing the brunt of his friend’s bullshit. She is meant to needle and tease. And she does. It is her default setting, after all. But beneath the banter igniting their interactions, she feels almost paralyzingly placid. The silence expected from good mothers starts so soon.

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THE BEST DINNER

NEAR ISFAHAN, IRAN, October 12, 1982—Emerson and Jake spend their honeymoon driving from Damascus to Delhi in a Ford station wagon. At first, the State Department vetoed the trip. But Jake had lobbied with all his persuasive super powers while he was back in Washington. He got permission just before they’d run out of time. His next posting is in India, and he is supposed to report to the embassy at 8 a.m. on October 24. Driving roughly 8 hours a day, they’d figured they were leaving plenty of cushion for impromptu sight-seeing and newlywed-related activities. They’d arrive in 10 days with five to spare.

But it’s nearing the end of day three and…that is not what is happening. Instead, Jake has spent easily half their drive time underneath the Ford, rather than in it, trying to fix its shock absorbers and one thing after another…. At this rate, they’ll be lucky to arrive the day before he’s due. This sort of sustained misadventure is a nightmare scenario for a couple. Finger pointing (“Why did you suggest this?!”) and second-guessing (“How did you expect this—trip, marriage—to work?!”) only escalate. Resentment and recriminations lead to uncomfortable silence and falling asleep on opposite sides of the bed.

Emerson and Jake are not that couple.

You look so good with the sand in your hair, baby. And caked on your face and under your socks… and fingernails…. She laughs, though she’s not entirely kidding, handing him his water bottle as he emerges from underneath their vehicle.

“Is this some sort of fantasy come to life for you, James?”

He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively, inadvertently dislodging sand into his nose and mouth. He sputters, staggers around and then spits as more sand falls free.

Oh, is it ever, husband.

Husband. God, she realizes that everything about their exchanges these days is nauseating. But if anyone could feel the way her belly swoops and cheeks ache when she remembers this man belongs to her…. If they knew the way she fell even harder for him after he suggested this ridiculous roadtrip to mark their marriage, well, she’d deny it. But her body would betray her. She grins—constantly. She touches him—constantly. Like now, joining the futile effort to de-sand him, brushing her hands down his cheeks, ruffling through his hair, shaking out his shirt. It’s pointless. Hopeless. Only one recourse. It’s just so greedy, the way I want you.

They emerge from the hotel shower starving and go in search of beryan, a fried lamb meat patty, topped with almonds, barberries and cinnamon. They keep a respectful distance while walking with pinkies lightly intertwined around Naqsh-e Jahan Square. The families with children who’d been splashing in the fountain are beginning to depart for the sunset prayer. In the dark as the muezzin’s chants float from the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, they admire the masterpieces of Persian architecture now doubled in the water.

Emerson sneaks a kiss at the crinkled corner of Jake’s eye, right near his temple. Night blooming flowers emerge, softly fragrant. My nana loved petunias. Though she wouldn’t have imagined she’d find flowers from her garden blooming at the foot of Safavid Era mosques. “She’d love them more for the fact.” She would.

They settle beneath the stars on the patio of a cafe with beautiful stained glass windows as the crickets reach a crescendo. Emerson takes the paper menu and a pen from her purse and draws two columns: where we’ve been | where we want to go.

She passes the pen to Jake.

THE DINNER FOR THREE

SANA’A, YEMEN, May 9, 1992—Everyone assumes he works for the agency, especially with that jawline and made-for-TV head of hair. Sloane laughs loudly.

“You like them pretty, E.J., so do I.” Emerson rolls her eyes in mock disagreement.

Not that pretty, she lies. And where is Mrs. Sloane tonight, Jonathan?

“Madrid with her mother,” he grumbles. Emerson chuckles.

“James, Jonathan,” a familiar voice greets them, warm and wry. “Getting up to trouble yet?” He rests a hand between her shoulder blades as he settles into the chair next to her.

Did the girls fall asleep OK?

“It was pure chaos, bribed them both,” he tells her.

So a normal night?

“Banal in its normalcy,” he assures her.

“I hear you’re taking a break,” Jonathan says to Jake.

“The most exhausting break of my life,” he says, without any bite.

You should see the embassy wives. They try so hard not to visibly fantasize about my husband in front of me, but then they’ll see him dropping off the girls at school and….”

Jonathan laughs.

“You’re going to ace your performance review.”

There’s no heat behind it, but it’s a joke not without judgment. Jake gives him the finger, good-naturedly.

There was a time, far too recently, when the wife of a Foreign Service Officer’s performance (at social receptions or catered lunches) was factored into her husband’s official performance review. When there was a party for embassy personnel or a host country leader, the senior officer’s wife was supposed to make canapés. And the children weren’t off the hook. Jake grew up with the words “everything you do reflects on your father” echoing in his brain. When she heard this for the first time, Emerson’s mind had immediately gone to Emalyn—a Foreign Service Officer in her own right who then played a key role, whether she had wanted to or not, in her husband’s career ascendance.

“And you, E.J.,” Sloane’s voice brings her back to the present, “when does your ‘sabbatical’ start?” There’s a wary underdone, poorly masked beneath the light ribbing.

There are only so many jobs for ambitious political officers of the same rank in an embassy. Emerson and Jake had done their share of posts apart, making a long-distance marriage work better than either of them thought possible. But they couldn’t justify the arrangement as easily while raising their daughters. It had been Jake’s idea to trade off, take a year’s leave without pay. The rationale had been that it only had to happen when there weren’t two spots open at a post and that it would only be necessary during the six- or seven-year window when the girls’ weren’t too old to prefer their friends’ company to both parents every day.

It made sense—in no small part because Jake put his hand up first. But now they’re six months away from Addis Ababa where Emerson will become… the wife. She too gives Sloane the finger.

This is what wanting to stay married to the same person looks like, she tells him. I understand why that’s a foreign concept.

But it stings, and she’s embarrassed, also unfairly irritated with her husband for being so unashamed of their choices.

Jake rubs a finger along her pulse point in understanding and takes over giving Sloane a hard time.

“Aren’t all pioneers afflicted with moonstruck madness,2 man? They’ll be teaching our technique in future tandem classes for years to come.”

Sloane shrugs, and they move on to safer topics, like his visit to Moscow earlier in the month. Emerson watches a flicker of something pass through Jake’s eyes. Her own mind drifts to a throwaway comment from an assistant back at headquarters. She had been coordinating the ambassador’s travel plans from Russia through Emerson’s neck of the woods. He had meetings in Egypt, Jordan and Israel but no official reason to make an 18-hour stopover in Yemen. “Oh, you must be one of Jonathan’s people,” she’d written.

We’ll see.

If you’re in a reading mood:

It sounds like the set-up to a joke or a Leslie Knope dream sequence: Two middle-aged American women in smart pants suits slip out of their Prague hotel. …. In reality, a New York Times reporter was attempting to capture what was dubbed an ongoing “audition” by then-UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright for a more prominent role in a second Clinton administration.

The middle-aged American women in smart pants suits [sic] were Albright and, of course, Hillary Clinton.

And that’s the thing when writing about a prominent person on the ascent, you don’t know which details will become defining and which will fall away. How acceptable will ambition be at a certain point—with and without caveats that make it palatable?

If the first line of the Times piece had, in fact, been a joke, well, the joke is on…

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Gina does not want to go to London.

The day after finding out she’s landed a coveted spot at one of the largest and busiest U.S. Embassies in the world, she begins angling for a way out. Still in Washington where she is completing her new Foreign Service Officer training, she starts walking up and down the hallways of the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau.

She pops in unannounced to offices and introduces herself. She mentions that she speaks Arabic and that she’s going to be bidding on the Middle East for her second assignment so please, please keep her in mind. Then a few weeks before she is supposed to fly off to Heathrow, she gets a call saying they are looking for a consular officer in Baghdad. The leg work has paid off, and Gina is thrilled. But her plan hits a snag when the Near East Bureau chief calls the head of the European Bureau, who says Gina has such a great reputation, they want to keep her in London.

Gina is furious. She knows she has no reputation at all at the moment. She’s just getting started. But if somebody thinks you’re desirable, someone else is going to want you, so she heads to London for three months until she can escape to Baghdad.

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At 27, Gina arrives during the Iran-Iraq War to lead the mission’s consular section, the only woman head of a department at the time. A diplomat who picks her up at the airport tells her that during an all-staff meeting, someone had announced Gina’s appointment by saying: “Not only is she a woman, but she’s Black.”

Gina feels the story, relayed casually as if it was supposed to be small talk, is the first signal that she’s not expected to succeed by colleagues and higher ups on the ground. She’s already familiar with not being given the same space as others to fail back home.

Forty years ago, Gina showed up on the first day of her Foreign Service orientation as one of 13 women and two Black people in a class of 52. Over drinks that first week, several of her new colleagues started a guessing game about how many members of the new class were “affirmative-action hires.”

“It gave me a sense of what the FS would be like early on,” she said.

Gina went on to spend much of her career in the Middle East, moving from Iraq to Egypt, then later becoming the director for the Arabian Peninsula at the National Security Council, eventually being named the first woman to manage the U.S. consulate in Jeddah and later serving as the U.S. ambassador to Malta.

At the time, a female ambassador who had spent many years in the region warned her to “watch out for our own men, not the locals. The locals take you as you are.”

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Pretty soon, Gina said, she was treated as just one of “the Americans” by the royal family and most government officials—all men. But she also crossed many thresholds that no…

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Mike Pompeo walked so Pete Hegseth could run.

The performance of swagger and the performance of masculinity is entirely redundant, and so you can imagine why I’ve thought once or twice about revising the About section of this newsletter.

Introducing Our Women in the World, I write:

This is a home for stories about serious women. Skilled women. Sharp women. Sensitive women. Stubborn women. Successful women. Women with swagger.

If you’re going to have courage, duty, drive and wonder at the forefront, you’re going to need to have some swagger. But you have to catch this woman at a very special and often fleeting moment in time. Before the swagger turns to silence, then resignation and quiet dignity, if she’s lucky. And that’s why you have to turn to the difficult women, the shrill women and the (too) proud women. Those women likely had swagger at some point before it slipped away or was snuffed out.

For anyone who has derived their worth and work in the world by the degree to which they are seen as serious and studious,1 which is to say me and many of you reading, there can be something especially unsettling about a seemingly superficial descriptor like swagger.

In a review of the third season of The Diplomat, the NPR pop culture critic Linda Holmes summarizes the Netflix show’s protagonists, married Ambassadors Kate and Hal Wyler, by writing: “Kate is good at a lot of things, but Hal has far more swagger.”

Keri Russell’s “Kate” is “a longtime Foreign Service officer who’s been doing delicate work in the Middle East, as has her husband Hal,” played by Rufus Sewell. “Hal has the same job Kate does, but he does it very differently.”

Reader, I laughed.

In her memoir, “Lessons from the Edge,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch describes being “allergic” to the term, blaming the Secretary of State who “appropriated it”:

The media was lauding my walk across the Capitol grounds on the way to the hearing as a defiant thumbing of my nose at the president and Pompeo. My choice of dark sunglasses, a testament to my badass nature. The Washington Post even referred to my swagger,2 a word I had become allergic to after Pompeo appropriated it.

The truth was that I had been apprehensive about the deposition and had wanted to drive into the underground garage to avoid the press waiting at the Capitol entrance. But the committee staff had said that that was impossible. As for my sunglasses, they were just regular prescription lenses that darkened automatically in sunlight.3

Yovanovitch continues, writing: I didn’t even know exactly what the word ‘badass’ meant. My millennial interpreter, Zoë, had to explain it to me, and when she did, I had to question how anyone could think that it applied to me. Although I’ve always aspired to be the person that word describes.

And there’s the rub.

There are many badasses in this line of work—the predictably klutzy, dangerous-in-the-kitchen, has-messy-hair-so-you-know-she’s-serious TV ambassador included4—and most of them would prefer to be described as anything else.

I get it. If, in ‘real life,’ someone referenced my “swagger,” I’d immediately inspect my outfit, wondering whether I sleepwalked into someone else’s closet, sporting a stranger’s flashy something. Next, I’d wonder which off-hand remark came across as arrogant enough to suggest I thought I was hot shit.

So what does it look like to reclaim or reject a characteristic that’s either the imperative or the antithesis of success in diplomacy and the wider world? The confusion make sense. The repulsion too. As Yovanovitch clocked, it’s the co-opting and the alpha-ing of it all.

If you’ve been interviewed by me in the past, you’ve likely been assured that there will never be a girl-bossification of your life and your story. But it’s hard to convey why you care about writing about women who love their jobs—and are damn good at their jobs—without running right up against this line.

To avoid that cute shit, that performative badassery, that embarrassing swagger, we keep our hair a little bit undone, we wear our prescription frames boldly like body armor, we eschew empowered anything, lean into data and show up to do the work in a way that will be appreciated and not arouse attention that can’t be controlled.

“Aloof” and “cold” are less than ideal but in someways they’re preferable. There’s a reason Hillary Clinton, a diplomat long before and since serving as Secretary of State, told Humans of New York:

“I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that’s a hard path to walk. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you don’t want to seem ‘walled off.’ And sometimes I think I come across more in the ‘walled off’ arena. And if I create that perception, then I take responsibility. I don’t view myself as cold or unemotional. And neither do my friends. And neither does my family. But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I can’t blame people for thinking that.”

In some ways, though, it’s what she said even earlier that sticks with me. She names the perceived “charisma” deficit that followed her throughout her professional and political life. She compares it to the two “naturals” in her orbit, the men who reached the top of the mountain, felt your pain and gave you hope:

Speaking at a post-screening Q&A with former American ambassador to the U.K. Jane Hartley, the creator of The Diplomat, Debora Cahn, joked about a third season plot twist wherein Russell’s American ambassador gets passed over for the Veep job by another career government bureaucrat, her exasperating-in-a-charming-always-fails-up-way husband:

“How did we come up with the idea that a really smart woman with a lot of experience and a real granular understanding of how things work would be sort of ready, willing and able to take a big leadership job and then didn’t get it at the last second?”

Sometimes it all just hits a little too close to home. But everything is copy.

All this is to say that I’m sticking with “swagger,” despite or maybe because it’s so uncomfortable, so ill-fitting when dropped into this modern moment. I disagree that those of us who defiantly curled up on the touch to read instead of learning to cook Thanksgiving dinner (precedent),5 those of us who eat with gusto, aware of the crumbs only after we leave the meeting, who are too quick to cry or to vibrate with fury, are any less capable of finding the fun in the assignment, who aren’t here from the jump because adventure and duty are drivers—even for those who don’t look or act the part.

When we pull back and contextualize, we realize it’s a characteristic that can be complimented by “serious women. Skilled women. Sharp women. Sensitive women. Stubborn women. Successful women.” And, if I can add, earnest women, women who want, courageous women, resilient women, broken women, women who show up and tell the truth.

Let me leave you with the words and wisdom of two women who owned and adored their swagger, defined on their terms and for their pleasure and purpose: Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison.

Are you familiar with the above photo of a young Maya Angelou? It’s joyful and subversive, knowing, irreverent and sharp enough to wound, which is within her power and at her discretion either way. Even better, there are a half-dozen easily accessible videos of Angelou performing her declaration of resiliency and worth (the “dream and the hope” of Black Americans), “And Still I Rise.” She’s at various ages, which makes it all the more exhilarating to watch the “sway of her hips,” and the renegade breakaway laugh, the intentional and prolonged final rise.

The Ethics of Swagger is described as exploring “how prizewinning novelists between 1977 and 1993 signaled the end of black writers’ journeys through insecurity toward autonomy”:

If [Toni Morrison’s] commitment to youth empowerment put her on familiar terrain, then her mention of strutting complicated matters. Strutting is “to walk with an affected air of dignity” or “to . . . swagger.”

Although these definitions imply garishness, Morrison’s remarks revealed a blend of responsibility, achievement, and style that fueled late twentieth-century black artistic freedom. Her attitude and the era that it captured mark a crucial development in African American literature.

I’ve written before about Morrison’s impact on this space and those who she called “outlaw women”:

I have spent much of my career self-imprisoned by the repulsion of being cast as a “women’s” reporter instead of a serious national security journalist or war correspondent. The idea that a story—let alone a book—would be seen and marketed as “for women”? It incensed me. And I’ll tell you what, it incenses many of the women I speak to as well. We’ve spent our lives asking to be taken seriously and the idea of being shoved into the “and she’s a WOMAN”¹ category feels like admitting defeat. I realize the paradox, of course, is that I’ve always wanted to write about women. It’s just that I mean women like me—adventurous, savvy, talented, bossy, sensitive, surviving, petulant and self-righteous. Toni Morrison called them “outlaw women.”

Or, you know, women with swagger.

Share Our Women in the World

What’s in a Headline?

Share Our Women in the World

If you’re in a reading mood…

In her own words, Malina Mirkhail is an Afghan-born development professional with over a decade of experience managing USAID and donor-funded programs across democracy, governance, and human rights sectors. She is passionate about advancing women’s rights, equity, and inclusive development, drawing on her work in fragile contexts like Afghanistan to inform global dialogue on aid and reform.

Below she becomes the first person to join thisBy the Book-style feature. Sitting At The Table With– provides an invitation into your work in the world and the personal experiences that have shaped you and in so doing, shaped the fabric of your nation’s place in the world. We see through borders, real and manufactured, one person and place at a time.

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Who do you think you are?

I see myself as a bridge-builder—someone who stands at this threshold, having seen both the fragility and the power of human will. My story is not just Afghan; it is universal — about resilience, about the responsibility of those who can act, and about the belief that even after collapse, there can be renewal. I am a bridge between past and future, between local realities and global action. And I want the world to know: we cannot afford to give up on each other.

Soft power is—

To me, soft power is about influence through values, culture, and partnerships rather than force. I’ve seen firsthand how education, diplomacy, and human rights programs can shape perceptions and open doors, especially for women and children. When a country or an institution invests in people, builds trust, and promotes equity, that creates a kind of power that is lasting, because it wins hearts and minds rather than imposing control.

The antidote to erasure is—

The antidote to erasure is recognition and inclusion. It means amplifying voices that have been silenced, especially women and marginalized communities, and ensuring their stories, struggles, and contributions are not just acknowledged but woven into the fabric of policy, history, and collective memory.

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No one has ever wondered why I—

No one has ever wondered why I chose to stay committed to democracy and governance work despite the risks and sacrifices. As an Afghan woman born and raised in war and instability, I have given my past, present, and future to this journey. I gave my whole self, my personal life, my dreams, my time, and yet, I lost so much along the way. But even in that loss, I found purpose: to stand for women and children who deserve a better world.

The worst day in my professional life:

The worst days in my professional life…

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ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA, November 29, 1991—“Who the hell is she?” It’s a question Emerson and the four other women in her Foreign Service orientation class used to jokingly pose to each other all the time. The tradition began organically, and predictably, enough after they overheard a guy in their group say as much when asked if he knew Alison Palmer. Alison “Tally” Palmer was a legend to 2.25 percent of the incoming officer class: An Africa specialist who couldn’t seem to get a job in Africa. Palmer, who joined State in 1955, filed a class-action discrimination lawsuit against the department the year before Emerson came aboard. She retired in 1981. The lawsuit is ongoing. Now Palmer’s ghost is everywhere in Ethiopia, haunting Emerson.

Haunted seems to be the theme of Emerson’s interior life at the moment. Which is another way of saying that the wife-ing isn’t going as planned. Jake had taken a year’s leave without pay while she was in Yemen and when he was tapped as principal officer in Addis Ababa, it was time for Emerson to return the favor. From all outward appearances, her husband had handled his “gap year,” as they jokingly called it, surprisingly well. He embraced the extra time with the girls, taking them on adventures and coaching Lucy’s soccer team. He helped Naz make not two, not three but four elaborate shoebox dioramas for school projects. These are parenting responsibilities they couldn’t exactly farm out regardless, nor would they want to, and yet it had never fallen to one person before or even two. They’d always relied upon a rotating team of three or four treasured babysitters. So this was Jake’s suggested solution. “Temporary,” in his words, until the girls are older. Emerson had agreed without (verbalized) reservation. From start to finish, she was an equal and enthusiastic participant in this decision.

What they have mostly avoided addressing even now is the cliff they’re speeding toward as they continue to excel at work, despite their planned time away. They aren’t going to be searching for two openings, they’re going to be competing for the same jobs. They already are though they’ve side-stepped this deftly—or blindly—definitely willfully, so far.

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Now it’s eight weeks into full-time wife-ing and mom-ing and the anxiety has curdled into something more like dread. Emerson has two-dozen-and-one hypotheses for why this is and they all are varying degrees of caustic, exacerbated by indignation and fear. It’s hard to explain, and admitting any of it out loud feels like it will make it more real. There’s that and the “I told you so, factor.” If she shares her misgivings with friends, colleagues and—god forbid, mentors like Sloane and Nadia, well, she can see the pity in their eyes. She can hear “we tried to warn you” on their tongues, a chorus of “this was never going to work.”

She can’t tell Jake, not only because it would

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It wasn’t the short kilt or the stylish red turtleneck sweater. It wasn’t the long blond hair or the long legs either. Oh but that photo — casual and on horseback, a pyramid in the background. The visual message more appreciation than appropriation,1 bypassing the lead altogether: 25-year-old Beth Jones looks more like an American college girl than the American consul in Egypt. It’s easy to assume the reporter saw the grown woman (young, single and attractive) as an unlikely contrast to this man or perhaps imagined readers would have a time-appropriate image similar to this guy, nothing if not beautiful and stylish in the Egyptian-Libyan desert.

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Whether it was the photo or the so-hot-it’s-hard-to-believe-she-does-this-for-a-living characterizations, this Associated Press story, which first ran in May 1974, was syndicated dozens of times — in some cases picked up almost nine months later, and by newspapers all over the United States and Canada (we’re talking The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, The Staten Island Advance and Waterloo Region Record). The headlines vary (and you can read some favorites further down) but most do include a black-and-white photo of a young U.S. diplomat named Anne Elizabeth (“Beth”) Jones.

That same year, The Christian Science Monitor profiled Eleanor Hicks, the chief envoy at the U.S. Consul in Nice. In the accompanying photo, a glamorous 31-year-old Hicks, captured “relaxing” on a promenade along the Mediterranean coast, tells the reporter: “Before everything else, I’m a diplomat.” The story, one of a number of profiles of Hicks, who has left a tremendous impact — including in this space2 — was also picked up by newspapers across the country.

Ten years earlier, National Geographic published then-31-year-old Jane Goodall’s first major account of her work with chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania. The follow-up coverage of Goodall, photographed in her Chuck Taylor high tops and handing bananas to David Greybeard, a wild chimpanzee, appeared in publications all over the world.

Far be it from me as an ink-stained wretch to prioritize the power of visuals, but before it became (more) acceptable or expected for women to thrive in these ways, the art often captured the magic. “The girl who lived among the wild chimpanzees,” for example, recalled dreaming “as a man” in order to imagine herself on adventures. “At the time, I wanted to do things that men did and women didn’t.”3

Clearly, that’s not to say that when each of these women would speak they weren’t also bewitching with tales of astonishment, adventure and excellence in the fields they carved out for themselves. It’s simply that the visuals mattered. The framing always matters.

If you’ve known me or been reading this space long enough, you’ll anticipate the draw — to feel at home in the world and to tell about it. So I can’t think about Jane Goodall without thinking about Foreign Service Officer Melinda Crowley, for whom it was “the National Geographic magazines that were a fixture in my grandparents’ home.”

Ambassador Deborah Jones’ childhood bedroom4 was just “plastered with maps on the wall of all the places in the world [she] wanted to go.”5 Ambassador Barbara Bodine’s “personal hero” was “Gertrude Bell, who went out wandering around the Saudi desert back in the 1920s and 1930s. If I had people looking at me cross-eyed, you can imagine what she had.”6 For Foreign Service Officer Olimar Maisonet-Guzmán it was Carmen San Diego, “a brilliant strategist, [who] had multilingual skills, and had an appreciation for arts and history.”

“Maybe, she would have made a great diplomat in another life.”

Beth Jones, whose 35-year diplomatic career included achieving the highest rank of career ambassador, described the Foreign Service not as the goal but as the “fallback.”

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CAIRO, EGYPT, May 1988 — She canters around pyramids every weekend. When the Pol-Mil officer, Irina, invites her to go horseback riding for the first time, it sounds unpleasantly tourist-y. Six weekends later, when she tells her husband she plans to start leasing a horse, it feels mortifyingly

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Like every literary heroine whose inner knowing was seen and nurtured, Marilla Ricker1 thrived during a childhood cultivated by her parents to feed her curiosity.2 Indulged and encouraged in this way, it’s hard not to imagine a precocious girl who probably becomes something of a firecracker in adolescence. Then, well, what do you call a grown woman with an “immense force of character”?3

A woman who wants.4

Whether appealing, sensible or not, which is never really the point when you’re raised to take up space, Ricker found purpose in the practice of showing up, again and again; and explaining why she was there.

It’s a testament to the drive and audacity of her pursuits that her public case for becoming the first woman in American history to serve as an ambassador is nearly an asterisk in her story.

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There is a moral crisis engulfing the world as we speak, a crisis of injustice and inaction, a crisis of silence and acquiescence. The crisis is caused by centuries and generations of oppression and repression—

Three decades ago, then-Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto stood from the podium in Beijing and began her address at the Fourth UN World Conference on Women.

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While serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright told Wendy Sherman: “When you sit across the negotiating table, you are the United States of America, not Wendy.”1 It’s a sentiment I’ve heard referenced over and over again in dozens of interviews with diplomats, American and otherwise.

When you sit across the table or walk into a room, you are the nation you represent.

It’s a heady concept meant to underscore the duty and responsibility inherent in the role of a diplomat. But it also carries an external symbol with an internal kickback: who does your country want as its face to the world? “Pale, male and Yale” has been a long-running and popular rhyme in the U.S. Foreign Service for a reason and yet for many who don’t fit the mold, serving overseas becomes the first time they feel truly and fully American.

In the face of a full “Deep State” purge, it’s more imperative than ever to trouble the narrative that some people’s skills and experiences — their stories — are the default and everyone else’s will be defined against them.

Somewhere between an oral history project and and stand-alone story, Sitting At The Table With– is a By the Book-style feature. An invitation into your work in the world and the personal experiences that have shaped you and in so doing, shaped the fabric of your nation’s place in the world. We see through borders, real and manufactured, one person and place at a time.

It’s a rare responsibility indeed to represent a nation—and to tell about it. But this is also a place to refill your cup; a respite from chaos and erasure. I take seriously the things we love—in our work as much as in our lives, as inseparable as the two can be.

Here’s the Questionnaire. Offer what you wish, add whatever is missing, and share widely.

MEMOIR

A Woman in Arabia: The Writings of the Queen of the Desert by Gertrude Bell

Abroad for Her Country by Jean M. Wilkowski

Diplomat and Priest: One Woman’s Challenge to State and Church by Alison Palmer

Diversifying Diplomacy: My Journey from Roxbury to Dakar by Harriet L. Elam-Thomas, with Jim Robinson

Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir by Marie Yovanovitch

Madam Secretary by Madeleine K. Albright

Mission to the North Hardcover by Florence Jaffray Harriman

No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington by Condoleezza Rice

Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power, and Persistence by Wendy Sherman

Our Woman in Havana: A Diplomat's Chronicle of America's Long Struggle with Castro's Cuba by Vicki Huddleston

Terrorism, Betrayal, and Resilience: My Story of the 1998 U.S. Embassy Bombings by Prudence Bushnell

The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir by Samantha Power

This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

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BIOGRAPHY

Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by Janet Wallach

Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell

Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper

Mrs. Ambassador: The Life and Politics of Eugenie Anderson by Mary Dupont

Women of the Foreign Office: Britain's First Female Ambassadors by Elizabeth Warburton and Richard Warburton

Woman of the World: Mary McGeachy and International Cooperation by Mary Kinnear

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RESEARCH

A Seat at the Table: Women, Diplomacy, and Lessons for the World by Susan Sloan

Feminist Conversations on Peace edited by Sarah Smith and Keina Yoshida

Gender and Foreign Policy in the Clinton Administration by Karen Garner

NATO Partnerships for Women, Peace, and Security by Lisa A. Aronsson

New Directions in Women, Peace and Security edited by Soumita Basu, Paul Kirby and Laura Shepherd

‘Once and For All’: The Fourth UN World Conference on Women and the Institutionalisation of Women's Human Rights in American Foreign Policy by Rebecca Turkington

Strengthening the Representation of Women in Diplomacy: Challenges and Policy Solutions edited by Karen E. Smith and Marta Kozielska

The Face of the Nation: Gendered Institutions in International Affairs by Elise Stephenson

The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security edited by Sara E. Davies and Jacqui True

Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500 edited by Glenda Sluga and Carolyn James

Women as Foreign Policy Leaders: National Security and Gender Politics in Superpower America by Sylvia Bashevkin

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NON-FICTION BY WOMEN IN DIPLOMACY

An American Brothel: Sex and Diplomacy during the Vietnam War by Amanda Boczar

Breaking Protocol: America's First Female Ambassadors, 1933-1964 by Philip Nash

Her Excellency: An Oral History of American Women Ambassadors by Ann Miller Morin

International Women's Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History by Jocelyn Olcott

The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age by Elizabeth Shackelford

The World that Latin America Created by Margarita Fajardo

U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women's Human Rights by Kelly J. Shannon

Women's Antiwar Diplomacy during the Vietnam War Era by Jessica M. Frazier

Women at The Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results by Jane Addams

Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat by Helen McCarthy

What’s missing? What’s coming? Send new, overlooked and recommended titles.

Women’s rights are human rights… is not the line that stood out upon re-watching Hillary Clinton’s 21-minute call to action that became a viral sensation (before such a thing even existed).1

The history of women has been a history of silence.2

Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.

The “today” in question occurred a quarter of a century ago, but it remains top of mind. Not the least when the U.S. Department of State, for which Clinton went on to serve as secretary, recently removed mention of gender-based human rights abuses in its annual report. It is part of a widespread, government-led campaign of intentional erasure.

The legacy of the Beijing conference will be heralded as world leaders continue to convene in Turtle Bay. Women’s rights, representation and participation will be prioritized (to a point) and continue to be debated.3 The history of those in attendance—and those represented—and how it’s recorded and shared will be worth watching.

Madam President of the General Assembly

Former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock became the 80th president of the United Nations General Assembly last week, officially assuming the role as the new session kicked off on Sept. 9.

Baerbock became the fifth woman to serve in the post, and the first from the so-called Western European and Others Group. By contrast, 75 men have held the presidency since since the post was created in 1946. (Read more)

“As only the fifth woman in this position in 80 years, I am fully aware that peace and development can only be sustained when half of the world’s population, when women have an equal seat at the table,” she said following her election in June.

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Decorated diplomat Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was the first woman elected as president of UNGA. Pandit, who also served as chief envoy to the Soviet Union, the United States, Mexico, Ireland and Spain—and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, was served during the eighth session in 1953. Watch the address here.

By the Numbers: 8 for 80

1. Eighty years ago, 850 delegates from 50 nations met in San Francisco, California, to create the United Nations. Of this number, only eight were women, of whom just four signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945.

2. It has been 50 years since the United Nations designated 1975 as International Women's Year, organizing a world conference in Mexico City on the status of women. The decade from 1975-1985 was known as the UN Decade for Women.

3. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action.

4. This year also marks the 25th anniversary of the of landmark Women, Peace and Security Agenda (UN Security Council Resolution 1325).

5. As of Jan. 1, 2025, 26 UN member states have a female head of state or government, compared to a peak of 30 countries in 2023, according to the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women’s Power Index.

6. Should growth remain at its current rate, gender parity will not be achieved for 130 years, according to UN Women estimates.

7. Five women have served as president of the United Nations General Assembly, including former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who kicked off the 80th UNGA on Sept. 9.

8. Zero women have served as secretary-general of the United Nations.

To Read:

• “Courage in A Year of Anniversaries”

  • Dawn Le reflects on the lessons of what she’s come to think of as the “50-30-25th Year:” Fifty years since the Vietnam War, which shaped my family’s journey to America; 30 years since US-Vietnam diplomatic normalization and Hillary Clinton’s declaration at Beijing Conference that “women’s rights are human rights;” and 25 years since the United Nations formalized women’s crucial role in ensuring sustainable peace through the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS).

• Gender Apartheid as an International Crime: Taliban Oppression in Afghanistan Triggers Campaign

  • “This is a unique and time-bound opportunity to incorporate the crime of gender apartheid into international law through the draft crimes against humanity treaty that is being negotiated at the UN General Assembly,” Heather Barr writes.

• “Half the world, only a quarter of the news”

  • Key finding: Progress toward gender equality in news coverage has been “flatlining” since 2010 and the trend continues today.

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To Attend:

High-level General Debate will begin next week, and take place from Sept. 23-27. Relevant events to attend or, in some cases, watch virtually if you aren’t in New York for UNGA 80:

• Sept. 15: Launch of the Gender Snapshot 2025 report

• Sept. 17: Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security is hosting: Peace in Action: Amplifying Women’s Voices from War Zones Ahead of UNGA 80.

• Sept. 21: UN Women will host the side event: At Risk and Underfunded: The impact of global funding cuts on women’s rights organizations working to end violence against women and girls

• Sept. 22: High-Level Meeting on Beijing+30

• Sept. 23: Mexico’s first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is scheduled to speak.

• Sept. 24: The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Focal Points Network is hosting: Deepening WPS Commitments for Action: Innovating and adapting to deliver on peace and security.

• Sept. 26: The UN Women Leaders Network will host a side event: Women’s Leadership for Peace

ICYMI…

To Discuss:

• The UN’s impossible job: Who would want to be the next Secretary-General?

• Diplomacy Without Consequences

To Watch:

To Remember: International Women’s Year

Valerie Pettis, a then-27-year-old graphic artist with Henry Dreyfuss Associates in New York, designed the emblem for International Women’s Year (IWY) in 1975.

“I began with iconography for peace, equality, women’s gender,” she explains, “ultimately incorporating them into one succinct shape: a dove with an equal sign in the tail and a woman’s gender glyph in the centre.”

Sally Swing Shelly, who was Chief Information Officer of International Women’s Year for the UN, insisted that the designer be a woman. Pettis was given one week to complete the design.

Read more about the logo at Logo Histories.

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IWY Recommended Read:

• International Women’s Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History by Professor Jocelyn Olcott

FROM THE ARCHIVES

U.N. Wants It to Be More Than a ‘Ladies’ Meeting’

The United Nations wants men to attend its International Conference on Women and is advising governments to see that men are represented equally in the delegations.

Why men? Conference planners are reluctant to say it openly but privately admit they think governments will take, the conference more seriously if it's not an all women affair. When women meet separately, it's treated lightly as a ladies’ meeting.

Key Role for Women in United Nations

Six years ago this month, Ambassador Adela Raz, then-Afghanistan’s Representative to the United Nations, addressed the UN Security Council on the dire situation in her country and its implications for international global peace and security.

“The poised, beautifully-informed lady diplomat” who “didn’t start out with the idea of being influential.”

Sure, probably not.

Probably not in diplomacy and probably not in American electoral politics2 or American public life. Not quite. But Helen Eugenie Moore Anderson, known as “Eugenie,” chased mastery from as early an age as any of the greats. And when it came to her influence on the world stage3— and on the home front, how fortunate that she was wrong.

There is an origin story — an inflection point — attributed to the nascent-American diplomat’s awakening to democracy at a dangerous crossroads and the call to come to its defense.

Read more

Here’s what you need to know: The striped-pants were worn1 mostly by the men2, the boys (complimentary3). At least in the turn of the 20th Century origin story4 of what would become a disparaging description of diplomats. The term, similar but also a step-up from “cookie-pusher,” did not have (yet, of course, also did have) a gender component. The immediate connotation was that this lot cared far too much for style (European morning coats and striped pants) over substance (fatigues and ammunition, presumably)—currying favor at cocktail hours instead of deciding fate in the trenches by real and manly means.5

Yet somehow these superficial bureaucratic peacemakers have always been (and continue to be) too serious, too prepared and too invested. Too superfluous but also too skilled and too earnest. Too effeminate—too much like a woman, period—which is to say too ineffectual, too weak, miraculously not enough and yet somehow too much. Imagine that. And now imagine the striped-pants-cookie-pushing-peacebuilding-diplomat actually is a woman.6 Can you? Imagine!

Soft power diplomacy—“like a woman would do7”—has always been derogatory, see, because of the inherent contradiction. Power is anything but, of course. Or so it goes. Yet actively diminishing, sidelining or silencing anyone has always seemed to suggest they are being treated as something else entirely: a threat too powerful for words.8

Vital and heroic efforts are under way to protect and preserve the historical record. And in revisiting, revising and reframing, there’s a call toward what may have been previously dismissed or downplayed as too skilled, serious, sincere, strategic—and soft. There’s so much power to be rediscovered right here. There are so many stories worth sharing.

About their Stories

The Striped-Pants Girls section of Our Women in the World is an intentionally and passionately curated collection of short and singular9 accounts. The sort of stories you share when catching up with a friend over dinner, on a long car ride with your goddaughter or in an oral history collection, which is to say epic and emotional, meticulously-researched and gloriously told. Relentlessly exciting tales about a woman (you or otherwise) often maneuvering her way between excellence and expectations (her own and otherwise).

These stories will cross centuries and time zones and double as a dissection of a nation and a people’s place(s) in the world. The through-line between storytellers and diplomats, it has always seemed to me, is the the call to reflect life back to who we are and connect with who we could be together; it’s also how we come to know ourselves.

Ambassador Ruth A. Davis, and so many other purpose-driven and brilliant trailblazers, has spoken eloquently and at-length about making sure that while she was the first, she was not the last. To show up, to stand up, to repeat under the best and worst of circumstances, is the call. And in this space, that looks like collecting stories that will ignite inspiration, reflect back to young readers and their teachers, mentors, grandparents and friends, what a life of service and adventure holds.

“It is not enough to be the first. That achievement must be followed by a concerted effort to ensure that I am not the last.” —Ambassador Ruth A. Davis

It feels less than far-fetched to imagine many of those drawn to these pages may have once found home in libraries—or the company of book(readers), period. And it is the stacks that are meant to be evoked as the categories continue to expand (foreign affairs, obviously, but think also: historical non-fiction; travel; politics and policies, action and adventure; romance, you get the idea).

Each issue and story is meant to be both short and savored; in transit, at bed-time for girls10 and grown-ups alike. Indeed we deserve to enjoy our stories. To revisit them, revise them, reclaim them, and share them as widely as possible.

And so these true (lived and learned, remembered and restored) stories will feature international intrigue, betrayal, slander and silence. But they will also be about adventure and bravery, sex and self-regard, drive and desire. Universal (and some exceptional) experiences and a riveting read—with plenty of swagger.

My son is traveling in Jordan and how can I get in touch with him?1

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When man-made and natural disasters strike, Barbara Mae Watson and her team would spend part of their 12- to 18-hour-workdays fielding pleas from the loved ones of Americans living, working and visiting abroad.

Nearly 60 years ago this month, Barbara had 48 hours to coordinate getting 25,000 Americans out of seven countries that had severed diplomatic ties with the United States.

Dubbed “one of the busiest government officials in Washington” during the 1967 war, Barbara lead the State Department’s so-called “crisis bureau.”2 She’d been on the job for six weeks.3

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