Laurence Badel, professora da Sorbonne, historiadora das relações internacionais com ênfase na participação das mulheres:
H-Diplo|Jervis Forum Article Review 191: Pierre on Badel, "'Auxiliary' Jobs?"
https://networks.h-net.org/group/discussions/20146045/h-diplojervis-forum-article-review-191-pierre-badel-auxiliary-jobs
christopher ball
The Jervis Forum
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum
Article Review 191
Laurence Badel, “‘Auxiliary’ Jobs? French Women’s Multiple Entry Pathways into Diplomacy, 1900–1947,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 35:3 (2024): 432-455. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2024.2383001.
9 April 2026 | PDF: https://issforum.org/to/JAR-191 | Website:rjissf.org
X: @HDiplo | BlueSky: @h-diplo.bsky.social | Mastodon: @HDiplo| Mastodon: @HDiplo
Editor: Diane Labrosse
Commissioning Editor: Lori Maguire
Production Editor: Christopher Ball
Pre-Production Copy Editor: Mia Tellmann
Marine Pierre, Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen
The scholarship of Laurence Badel focuses on modern diplomatic practices, women’s roles in diplomacy and international relations, and the relationships between diplomacy, economic actors, and European integration, while also contributing to the historiography of international relations and offering reflexive perspectives on the field as a discipline.[1] This article offers a significant and methodologically innovative contribution to the historiography of diplomacy, gender, and the state in the first half of twentieth-century France. By adopting a broad sociological definition of diplomacy as a socio-professional sphere rather than a narrowly institutionalized career, Badel challenges the dominant narrative that has long confined women’s entry into French diplomacy to a handful of exceptional figures who succeeded in passing the diplomatic competitive examination. Instead, she reconstructs a far more complex landscape of female participation that is structured around multiple entry pathways, which are often informal, precarious, and officially classified as “auxiliary,” and nonetheless involved substantial political, administrative, and cultural responsibilities.
The article situates itself explicitly within the historiographical renewal initiated by gender history, the New Diplomatic History, and the New Consular History.[2] Responding to Emily Rosenberg’s call to move beyond celebratory histories of “pioneering women,”[3] Badel proposes a shift in analytical focus from formal titles and examinations to practices, functions, and trajectories. In doing so, she questions the analytical validity of the dichotomy between “diplomatic professions” and “auxiliary professions,” a distinction which is deeply embedded both in administrative taxonomies and in the self-representations of diplomatic actors themselves. To replace this binary, she advances a functional mapping of the diplomatic sphere that was structured around four broad categories of activity—logistics, support, communication, and political work—within which women were present in far greater numbers and with far greater responsibilities than conventional narratives suggest.
The core argument of the article is that throughout the first half of the twentieth century, women were not marginal actors waiting passively for formal inclusion in the diplomatic corps. Rather, they were already deeply embedded in the functioning of the French diplomatic apparatus, both at headquarters and abroad, through a wide range of positions that were officially classified as auxiliary. These roles (typists, clerks, translators, cipher specialists, archivists, and rédactrices) often entailed responsibilities that went well beyond the supposedly subordinate nature of their status. In practice, many women drafted diplomatic notes, managed services, conducted cultural diplomacy, and assumed political responsibilities indistinguishable from those of male diplomats, albeit without the corresponding recognition, remuneration, or career security.
One of the article’s major strengths lies in its careful deconstruction of the dominant narrative surrounding the “first women diplomats,” particularly the figure of Suzanne Borel (later Suzanne Bidault), the first woman diplomat in France prior to 1945. Through a critical reading of autobiographical sources, Badel demonstrates how Borel’s memoirs contributed to a heroic and individualized account of women’s entry into diplomacy, one that minimized both the collective dimensions of feminist mobilization and the pre-existing presence of women in the diplomatic sphere.[4] By contrasting these narratives with archival documentation and contemporary press sources, Badel reveals the extent to which autobiographical memory itself participated in the symbolic construction of a male-dominated professional identity, even when articulated by women.
Methodologically, the article is grounded in an impressive and original corpus of sources. Particularly noteworthy is Badel’s use of a previously unpublished photographic register of Quai d’Orsay personnel from 1938–1940, which provides a rare and concrete snapshot of the gendered composition of the ministry on the eve of the Second World War. This source allows her to move beyond abstract categories and to reconstruct the actual distribution of tasks, revealing that women were present across all four functional categories, including political work. Personnel files, recruitment regulations, competitive examination records, and ministerial correspondence further enable Badel to trace individual trajectories and institutional constraints with remarkable precision. One of the most striking results of this approach is the way in which it brings back into view a large number of women whose names, careers, and biographies had largely disappeared from the historiography, thereby opening up rich avenues for future prosopographical and comparative research.
The article convincingly shows that auxiliary status functioned both as a barrier and as an opportunity. While the precarious nature of auxiliary employment exposed women to job insecurity, salary discrimination, and limited prospects for advancement, it also constituted one of the primary gateways into diplomatic work at a time when formal examinations were closed or restricted. Technological changes, particularly the introduction of the typewriter, played a crucial role in feminizing administrative labor and creating new points of entry into the diplomatic sphere. Yet Badel demonstrates that these technical positions were rarely confined to purely mechanical tasks and often evolved into substantive political and administrative responsibilities.
The article also examines how the disruptions produced by the Second World War, the Vichy regime, the Resistance, and the Liberation reshaped women’s access to diplomatic careers within the French institutional context. Badel analyzes the creation of the cadre latéral in 1944 as an exceptional recruitment mechanism designed to integrate Resistance fighters into a diplomatic corps affected by purges and regime change. Although not conceived as a gendered policy, this mechanism enabled a limited number of women to obtain diplomatic or consular appointments. At the same time, the article emphasizes the uneven and often contradictory outcomes of this process, including blocked careers, downgrading, and the persistence of institutionalized gender discrimination.
The analysis of postwar trajectories further underscores the structural limits of these wartime openings. Restrictions on married women’s employment,[5] conflicts over reclassification, and unequal access to the newly created corps of civil administrators reveal the resilience of gendered hierarchies within the French state. Even women whose Resistance credentials were indisputable encountered institutional resistance, which illustrates the fragility of gains obtained under exceptional circumstances. In this respect, Badel’s article contributes not only to diplomatic history but also to a broader understanding of how gendered inequalities were reconfigured rather than eliminated during moments of political rupture and administrative reconstruction.
While the article’s empirical richness is one of its greatest strengths, it also raises questions that invite further discussion. Its focus on France allows for a finely grained institutional analysis, but it limits the scope for systematic international comparison. Badel gestures toward parallels with Switzerland and Britain, yet a more explicit comparative framework might further clarify the specificity, or representativeness, of the French case.[6] At the same time, the article opens multiple promising avenues for future research, notably on transnational circulations of female diplomatic labor, comparative recruitment regimes, and the long-term effects of auxiliary careers on professional identities.
These limitations do not detract from the article’s overall contribution. By foregrounding auxiliary careers and subaltern positions, Badel successfully contests conventional definitions of diplomacy and invites historians to reconsider the boundaries of the diplomatic profession itself. Her work demonstrates that the history of diplomacy cannot be fully understood without integrating the gendered division of labor, the role of administrative support functions, and the impact of exceptional political contexts.
In sum, “Auxiliary” Jobs? French Women’s Multiple Entry Pathways into Diplomacy, 1900–1947” represents a major contribution to the social history of diplomacy and to the historiography of gender and the state. It will be of particular use to scholars working on diplomatic history, gender studies, and the sociology of public administrations, and it provides a compelling methodological model for future research on subaltern actors in international relations.
Marine Pierre is a postdoctoral researcher at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen. Her work focuses on the social and diplomatic history of international organizations, with particular attention to expertise, transnational careers, and bureaucratic cultures. She is currently conducting research on the League of Nations.
[1] Laurence Badel is Professor of Modern History and International Relations at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her previous publications include Écrire l’histoire des relations internationales: genèses, concepts et perspectives XVIIIe-XXIe siècle (Armand Colin, 2024); “Au défi des mots, des émotions et des « non-lieux » Écrire l’histoire des relations internationales contemporaines au 21e siècle,” 20 & 21. Revue d'histoire, 162:2 (2024): 47-62, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/vin.162.0047; “Les enjeux de la ‘diplomatie féministe’. Représentation de l’État et promotion des droits,” Annuaire français de relations internationales (2023): 927-942, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/epas.ferna.2023.01.0927; “De La capitale au forum. Fonctions, usages, hiérarchies de la capitalité diplomatique (XIXe-XXIe siècle),” Revue Historique 703:3 (2022): 625-662, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/rhis.223.0625; Diplomaties européennes XIXe-XXe siècle (Presses de Sciences Po, 2021); Histoire et relations internationales. Pierre Renouvin, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle et la naissance d’une discipline universitaire (Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2020); Un milieu libéral et européen. Le grand commerce français 1925–1948 (Institut de la gestion publique et du développement économique. Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1999).
[2] In addition to the already rich historiography mobilized by Badel, it is also possible to point to a broader body of scholarship on diplomacy and gender, including: Nevra Biltekin, “Unofficial Ambassadors: Swedish Women in the United States and the Making of Non-State Cultural Diplomacy,” International Journal of Cultural Policy: CP, 26:7 (2020): 959-972, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2020.1823975; Jennifer A. Cassidy, Sara Althari, “Introduction. Analysing the Dynamics of Modern Diplomacy through a Gender Lens,” in Jennifer A. Cassidy, eds., Gender and Diplomacy (Routledge, 2017): 1-31; Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politic (University of California Press, 2014 (1990)); Helen McCarthy, Women of the World. The Rise of the Female Diplomat (Bloomsbury, 2014).
[3] Emily Rosenberg, “Gender,” The Journal of American History, 77:6 (1990): 116-124.
[4] Suzanne Bidault, Par une porte entrebâillée ou comment les Françaises entrèrent dans la Carrière (La Table ronde, 1972), 219.
[5] While marriage is often invoked as a constraint on women’s diplomatic careers, a growing literature has also shown that the diplomatic sphere, and the men who officially embodied it, relied heavily on the informal yet essential labor of diplomats’ spouses in sustaining diplomatic representation, sociability, and everyday diplomatic practice: Isabelle Dasque, Le pouvoir des femmes de diplomates. XIXe-XXIe siècles (Nouveau Monde Éditions, 2025); Alexandra Penler, The Quiet Diplomats: American Diplomatic Wives and Public Diplomacy in the Cold War, 1945–1972, PhD Thesis (2023); Erlandsson Susanna, Personal Politics in the Postwar World. Western Diplomacy Behind the Scenes (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022); Molly M. Wood, “’Commanding Beauty’ and ‘Gentle Charm’: American Women and Gender in the Early Twentieth-Century Foreign Service,” Diplomatic History 31:3 (June 2007): 505-530, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.2007.00629.x.
[6] On other national cases of women and diplomatic career, we can note the following: Brigitta Niklasson, “Introduction: Approaching Gender and Ministries of Foreign Affairs,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 17 (2022), 339-369, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/1871191x-bja10123; Philip Nash, Breaking the Protocol: America’s First Female Ambassadors, 1933–1964 (The University Press of Kentucky, 2020); Elise Stephenson, “Domestic Challenges and International Leadership: A Case Study of Women in Australian International Affairs,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 73:3 (2019): 234-253, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2019.1588224; Molly M. Wood, “Wives, Clerks, and ‘Lady Diplomats’: The Gendered Politics of Diplomacy and Representation in the US Foreign Service, 1900–1940,” European Journal of American Studies 10:1 (2015): DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.10562.
christopher ball
The Jervis Forum
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum
Article Review 191
Laurence Badel, “‘Auxiliary’ Jobs? French Women’s Multiple Entry Pathways into Diplomacy, 1900–1947,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 35:3 (2024): 432-455. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2024.2383001.
9 April 2026 | PDF: https://issforum.org/to/JAR-191 | Website:rjissf.org
X: @HDiplo | BlueSky: @h-diplo.bsky.social | Mastodon: @HDiplo| Mastodon: @HDiplo
Editor: Diane Labrosse
Commissioning Editor: Lori Maguire
Production Editor: Christopher Ball
Pre-Production Copy Editor: Mia Tellmann
Marine Pierre, Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen
The scholarship of Laurence Badel focuses on modern diplomatic practices, women’s roles in diplomacy and international relations, and the relationships between diplomacy, economic actors, and European integration, while also contributing to the historiography of international relations and offering reflexive perspectives on the field as a discipline.[1] This article offers a significant and methodologically innovative contribution to the historiography of diplomacy, gender, and the state in the first half of twentieth-century France. By adopting a broad sociological definition of diplomacy as a socio-professional sphere rather than a narrowly institutionalized career, Badel challenges the dominant narrative that has long confined women’s entry into French diplomacy to a handful of exceptional figures who succeeded in passing the diplomatic competitive examination. Instead, she reconstructs a far more complex landscape of female participation that is structured around multiple entry pathways, which are often informal, precarious, and officially classified as “auxiliary,” and nonetheless involved substantial political, administrative, and cultural responsibilities.
The article situates itself explicitly within the historiographical renewal initiated by gender history, the New Diplomatic History, and the New Consular History.[2] Responding to Emily Rosenberg’s call to move beyond celebratory histories of “pioneering women,”[3] Badel proposes a shift in analytical focus from formal titles and examinations to practices, functions, and trajectories. In doing so, she questions the analytical validity of the dichotomy between “diplomatic professions” and “auxiliary professions,” a distinction which is deeply embedded both in administrative taxonomies and in the self-representations of diplomatic actors themselves. To replace this binary, she advances a functional mapping of the diplomatic sphere that was structured around four broad categories of activity—logistics, support, communication, and political work—within which women were present in far greater numbers and with far greater responsibilities than conventional narratives suggest.
The core argument of the article is that throughout the first half of the twentieth century, women were not marginal actors waiting passively for formal inclusion in the diplomatic corps. Rather, they were already deeply embedded in the functioning of the French diplomatic apparatus, both at headquarters and abroad, through a wide range of positions that were officially classified as auxiliary. These roles (typists, clerks, translators, cipher specialists, archivists, and rédactrices) often entailed responsibilities that went well beyond the supposedly subordinate nature of their status. In practice, many women drafted diplomatic notes, managed services, conducted cultural diplomacy, and assumed political responsibilities indistinguishable from those of male diplomats, albeit without the corresponding recognition, remuneration, or career security.
One of the article’s major strengths lies in its careful deconstruction of the dominant narrative surrounding the “first women diplomats,” particularly the figure of Suzanne Borel (later Suzanne Bidault), the first woman diplomat in France prior to 1945. Through a critical reading of autobiographical sources, Badel demonstrates how Borel’s memoirs contributed to a heroic and individualized account of women’s entry into diplomacy, one that minimized both the collective dimensions of feminist mobilization and the pre-existing presence of women in the diplomatic sphere.[4] By contrasting these narratives with archival documentation and contemporary press sources, Badel reveals the extent to which autobiographical memory itself participated in the symbolic construction of a male-dominated professional identity, even when articulated by women.
Methodologically, the article is grounded in an impressive and original corpus of sources. Particularly noteworthy is Badel’s use of a previously unpublished photographic register of Quai d’Orsay personnel from 1938–1940, which provides a rare and concrete snapshot of the gendered composition of the ministry on the eve of the Second World War. This source allows her to move beyond abstract categories and to reconstruct the actual distribution of tasks, revealing that women were present across all four functional categories, including political work. Personnel files, recruitment regulations, competitive examination records, and ministerial correspondence further enable Badel to trace individual trajectories and institutional constraints with remarkable precision. One of the most striking results of this approach is the way in which it brings back into view a large number of women whose names, careers, and biographies had largely disappeared from the historiography, thereby opening up rich avenues for future prosopographical and comparative research.
The article convincingly shows that auxiliary status functioned both as a barrier and as an opportunity. While the precarious nature of auxiliary employment exposed women to job insecurity, salary discrimination, and limited prospects for advancement, it also constituted one of the primary gateways into diplomatic work at a time when formal examinations were closed or restricted. Technological changes, particularly the introduction of the typewriter, played a crucial role in feminizing administrative labor and creating new points of entry into the diplomatic sphere. Yet Badel demonstrates that these technical positions were rarely confined to purely mechanical tasks and often evolved into substantive political and administrative responsibilities.
The article also examines how the disruptions produced by the Second World War, the Vichy regime, the Resistance, and the Liberation reshaped women’s access to diplomatic careers within the French institutional context. Badel analyzes the creation of the cadre latéral in 1944 as an exceptional recruitment mechanism designed to integrate Resistance fighters into a diplomatic corps affected by purges and regime change. Although not conceived as a gendered policy, this mechanism enabled a limited number of women to obtain diplomatic or consular appointments. At the same time, the article emphasizes the uneven and often contradictory outcomes of this process, including blocked careers, downgrading, and the persistence of institutionalized gender discrimination.
The analysis of postwar trajectories further underscores the structural limits of these wartime openings. Restrictions on married women’s employment,[5] conflicts over reclassification, and unequal access to the newly created corps of civil administrators reveal the resilience of gendered hierarchies within the French state. Even women whose Resistance credentials were indisputable encountered institutional resistance, which illustrates the fragility of gains obtained under exceptional circumstances. In this respect, Badel’s article contributes not only to diplomatic history but also to a broader understanding of how gendered inequalities were reconfigured rather than eliminated during moments of political rupture and administrative reconstruction.
While the article’s empirical richness is one of its greatest strengths, it also raises questions that invite further discussion. Its focus on France allows for a finely grained institutional analysis, but it limits the scope for systematic international comparison. Badel gestures toward parallels with Switzerland and Britain, yet a more explicit comparative framework might further clarify the specificity, or representativeness, of the French case.[6] At the same time, the article opens multiple promising avenues for future research, notably on transnational circulations of female diplomatic labor, comparative recruitment regimes, and the long-term effects of auxiliary careers on professional identities.
These limitations do not detract from the article’s overall contribution. By foregrounding auxiliary careers and subaltern positions, Badel successfully contests conventional definitions of diplomacy and invites historians to reconsider the boundaries of the diplomatic profession itself. Her work demonstrates that the history of diplomacy cannot be fully understood without integrating the gendered division of labor, the role of administrative support functions, and the impact of exceptional political contexts.
In sum, “Auxiliary” Jobs? French Women’s Multiple Entry Pathways into Diplomacy, 1900–1947” represents a major contribution to the social history of diplomacy and to the historiography of gender and the state. It will be of particular use to scholars working on diplomatic history, gender studies, and the sociology of public administrations, and it provides a compelling methodological model for future research on subaltern actors in international relations.
Marine Pierre is a postdoctoral researcher at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen. Her work focuses on the social and diplomatic history of international organizations, with particular attention to expertise, transnational careers, and bureaucratic cultures. She is currently conducting research on the League of Nations.
[1] Laurence Badel is Professor of Modern History and International Relations at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her previous publications include Écrire l’histoire des relations internationales: genèses, concepts et perspectives XVIIIe-XXIe siècle (Armand Colin, 2024); “Au défi des mots, des émotions et des « non-lieux » Écrire l’histoire des relations internationales contemporaines au 21e siècle,” 20 & 21. Revue d'histoire, 162:2 (2024): 47-62, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/vin.162.0047; “Les enjeux de la ‘diplomatie féministe’. Représentation de l’État et promotion des droits,” Annuaire français de relations internationales (2023): 927-942, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/epas.ferna.2023.01.0927; “De La capitale au forum. Fonctions, usages, hiérarchies de la capitalité diplomatique (XIXe-XXIe siècle),” Revue Historique 703:3 (2022): 625-662, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/rhis.223.0625; Diplomaties européennes XIXe-XXe siècle (Presses de Sciences Po, 2021); Histoire et relations internationales. Pierre Renouvin, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle et la naissance d’une discipline universitaire (Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2020); Un milieu libéral et européen. Le grand commerce français 1925–1948 (Institut de la gestion publique et du développement économique. Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1999).
[2] In addition to the already rich historiography mobilized by Badel, it is also possible to point to a broader body of scholarship on diplomacy and gender, including: Nevra Biltekin, “Unofficial Ambassadors: Swedish Women in the United States and the Making of Non-State Cultural Diplomacy,” International Journal of Cultural Policy: CP, 26:7 (2020): 959-972, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2020.1823975; Jennifer A. Cassidy, Sara Althari, “Introduction. Analysing the Dynamics of Modern Diplomacy through a Gender Lens,” in Jennifer A. Cassidy, eds., Gender and Diplomacy (Routledge, 2017): 1-31; Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politic (University of California Press, 2014 (1990)); Helen McCarthy, Women of the World. The Rise of the Female Diplomat (Bloomsbury, 2014).
[3] Emily Rosenberg, “Gender,” The Journal of American History, 77:6 (1990): 116-124.
[4] Suzanne Bidault, Par une porte entrebâillée ou comment les Françaises entrèrent dans la Carrière (La Table ronde, 1972), 219.
[5] While marriage is often invoked as a constraint on women’s diplomatic careers, a growing literature has also shown that the diplomatic sphere, and the men who officially embodied it, relied heavily on the informal yet essential labor of diplomats’ spouses in sustaining diplomatic representation, sociability, and everyday diplomatic practice: Isabelle Dasque, Le pouvoir des femmes de diplomates. XIXe-XXIe siècles (Nouveau Monde Éditions, 2025); Alexandra Penler, The Quiet Diplomats: American Diplomatic Wives and Public Diplomacy in the Cold War, 1945–1972, PhD Thesis (2023); Erlandsson Susanna, Personal Politics in the Postwar World. Western Diplomacy Behind the Scenes (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022); Molly M. Wood, “’Commanding Beauty’ and ‘Gentle Charm’: American Women and Gender in the Early Twentieth-Century Foreign Service,” Diplomatic History 31:3 (June 2007): 505-530, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.2007.00629.x.
[6] On other national cases of women and diplomatic career, we can note the following: Brigitta Niklasson, “Introduction: Approaching Gender and Ministries of Foreign Affairs,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 17 (2022), 339-369, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/1871191x-bja10123; Philip Nash, Breaking the Protocol: America’s First Female Ambassadors, 1933–1964 (The University Press of Kentucky, 2020); Elise Stephenson, “Domestic Challenges and International Leadership: A Case Study of Women in Australian International Affairs,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 73:3 (2019): 234-253, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2019.1588224; Molly M. Wood, “Wives, Clerks, and ‘Lady Diplomats’: The Gendered Politics of Diplomacy and Representation in the US Foreign Service, 1900–1940,” European Journal of American Studies 10:1 (2015): DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.10562.
