Feminist Entrepreneurship within the UNSC

Abstract: This thesis seeks to answer the question of how Sweden acts as a norm entrepreneur with regards to its feminist foreign policy. Sweden’s membership within the United Nations Security Council presents an opportunity to analyse the country’s norm entrepreneurship within the UN’s most powerful organ. Constructivist norm theory combined with small state theory provides a theoretical framework for analysis. By using qualitative content analysis the author applies a model based on the action plan for the feminist foreign policy on weekly reports from the Swedish delegation to the UNSC. The Author finds that Sweden acts as a norm entrepreneur by keeping gender on the agenda within the Council, but also finds that Sweden’s small size sometimes constrains its entrepreneurship when issues of high politics are discussed.