How is women positioned in conflict? A critical discourse analysis of UN resolution 1325 UN resolution 1325 was adopted in the year of 2000 with the purpose to raise awareness regarding the impact that armed conflict has on women and the importance of their participation in conflict resolution and peace-building operations. This thesis aims to analyze UN resolution 1325 and deconstruct the language in it in order to make visible how power structures affect women. Furthermore, with postcolonial feministic theory, this thesis examines the colonial power structures that are maintained within the resolution. Using a modified version of Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA), this study examines which subject positions are given to women within the realm of the resolution and furthermore how it affects their agency. This paper has framed three subject positions that make available; women as victims, women as or with children and women as a means for peace. The result show that these affect women's political agency as they are reduced to homogeneous oppressed, as peaceful by nature and as non-political beings, which partly upholds colonial power structures and partly consolidates female gender roles.

Feminism as a tool has lately been used more frequently by governments and institutions, but has been criticized for only representing a Western point of view which has ignored perspectives of women in the so-called Global South. This thesis aims to investigate if Canada, in its recently launched Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy, describe women in developing countries from a Western view or if they have incorporated a postcolonial perspective in their policy. By applying a feminist postcolonial theory on Canada’s feminist development policy and with the inspiration of Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, a shift in in the creation of subject positions of women in developing countries was noticed. The concluding remark emphasize that Canada should keep the postcolonial thought in mind while exercising their policy in the field of development in order to gain trust in the feminist belief.

Feminism as a tool has lately been used more frequently by governments and institutions, but has been criticized for only representing a Western point of view which has ignored perspectives of women in the so-called Global South. This thesis aims to investigate if Canada, in its recently launched Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy, describe women in developing countries from a Western view or if they have incorporated a postcolonial perspective in their policy. By applying a feminist postcolonial theory on Canada’s feminist development policy and with the inspiration of Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, a shift in in the creation of subject positions of women in developing countries was noticed. The concluding remark emphasize that Canada should keep the postcolonial thought in mind while exercising their policy in the field of development in order to gain trust in the feminist belief.