Why most top Foreign Office posts are held by women

BEFORE 1946, women seeking a role in the Foreign Office could become typists, cleaners or diplomats’ wives, although in 1934 a forward-thinking ambassador suggested they help pick out soft furnishings for the Office of Works. Until 1972 they had to leave the service on getting married; “pestering”, as Dame Nicola Brewer, a former High Commissioner to South Africa, would later recall, was a scourge in the 1980s. “Making a fuss would be career-limiting.” Such treatment left a long shadow. After the current head of the service, Sir Simon McDonald, was knighted in 2014, there were as many men called Sir Simon in the top two grades of officials as women.

But in the past few months, women have seized a clutch of the top jobs. In February Dame Karen Pierce was appointed ambassador to America, becoming the first woman to hold the role since it was created in 1791. Her old job of permanent representative to the United Nations was filled by Dame Barbara Woodward on August 6th. Women fill the ambassadorships to Britain’s other best pals in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing pact: Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Sarah MacIntosh speaks for Britain at NATO. Women hold the ambassadorships in Beijing, Moscow, Rome, Mexico City, Stockholm and the Vatican, and are soon to take up post in Germany and the Netherlands. They fly the Union Flag in the...