Sustaining Patriarchy? : A Critical Discourse Analysis of Sustainable Urban Development

Abstract: The United Nations (UN) has implemented a policy of gender mainstreaming in their agendas forboth sustainable development and urban development with the aim of improving gender equity in member statesthrough all of the organization’s work. However, many scholars have criticized the UN’s incorporation ofgender in these agendas for lacking systemic and coordinated policy schemes that are capable of ensuringgender equity. The majority of these analyses were performed shortly after the agendas’ introductions. In thisthesis, I return to these agendas a few years after their implementation to examine the discourses of gender inurban sustainability that they contain and consider whether these discourses are or are not reflected in thenational and local sustainable urban development agendas of one member state, Sweden, and its largest city,Stockholm. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is used to identify such gendered discourses and determinewhether the ideologies they reflect are or are not contributing to the agendas’ stated aim to achieve genderequity. Findings show that there are both significant similarities and differences between discourses at all levels,with different degrees of both reinforcement of and opposition to status quo gender hierarchy at each level.Agendas at the national and local levels showed more evidence of anti-hierarchical ideology than theinternational level, suggesting that the gender equity work of member states need not be constrained by theshortcomings of the UN approach.