Swedish Feminist Foreign Policy: How can a feminist approach to foreign policy be understood?

Abstract: This purpose of this thesis is to get a further understanding of what Swedish feminist foreign policy constitutes through a critical discourse analysis. By using gender mainstreaming strategies and feminist IR-theories as a theoretical framework for analysis, key aspects from these approaches are examined within the Swedish feminist foreign policy. This thesis mainly focuses on how the concepts of gender and feminism are understood, framed and linked in the policy. Four guiding models are used to categorise the Swedish approach to gender and feminism. Official documents, speeches and debate articles are analysed. The empiric material shows that more or less all approaches discussed in the theoretical framework, are reflected in the discourses on Swedish feminist foreign policy. Conclusions drawn highlight this, but also how the Swedish approach uses gender as a tool to achieve other central goals, that are not always directly connected to the goal of gender equality. This points towards an “efficiency”-approach that is likely to be further used in the feminist approach to foreign policy. However, a stronger political and critical approach is likewise visible, and is understood as more of a normative trait in the policy – reflecting a stronger transformationalist approach to foreign policy.