Research has established that national homeland security policy requires a whole community or all-of-nation approach to national security preparedness. What is less clear is whether all stakeholders are integrated into or benefit from this collective effort. This narrative policy analysis examined the relationship between a federally-recognized group of Native American tribal nations and homeland security national preparedness to explore whether tribal nations are effectively integrated with the collective effort for national preparedness. The theoretical framework stemmed from a convergence of social contract theory and conflict theory. Interviews (n = 21) were conducted with preparedness authorities from government agencies, and from tribal nations and nongovernmental organizations that advocate on behalf of tribal nations. Data were analyzed using Roe's narrative policy analysis technique. Results revealed areas of convergence of the government and tribal narratives on the historical disenfranchisement of tribal nations; findings also showed areas of divergence on how to better integrate tribal nations in homeland security national preparedness. The study concludes with a number of recommendations highlighting the manner in which national interests and tribal nation preparedness interests are intertwined. This study suggests that the nation's homeland security may be better served by greater inclusion of tribal nations in national preparedness efforts. The results of this study contribute to positive social change by giving voice to a heretofore disenfranchised social group, Native Americans, and by allowing them to strengthen the metanarrative of homeland security national preparedness.

Women’s wartime work is a well-known phenomenon in belligerent countries. But what happened in a neutral country like Sweden? With the outbreak of the Second World War, Sweden was put in a state of “national preparedness” that would last from September 1939 until the end of war in May 1945. From the autumn of 1939 the State Labour Market Commission (Statens arbetsmarknadskommission, SAK) had sent out signals to the employers’ associations in the engineering industry and at the ironworks that their male employees would not be granted exemptions from military service. Employers therefore had to find reserve workers, either men too old to be conscripted or women. The main purpose of this thesis is to explore how the threat of war affected the plans for and the use of women’s labour during the years of national preparedness. The national preparedness organisation did not include a plan ready for use to mobilise women either for work or for voluntary efforts for the nation during this period. The absence of a state plan for women’s national efforts became the point of departure for the Women's Organisations' Preparedness Committee, (Kvinnoföreningarnas beredskapskommitté, KBK) in 1938. The founding intention of this organisation was to gather Swedish women as a demonstration of their will to defend their country. A huge number of women – 800 000 – signed up for various tasks. This organisation was dominated by women who were eager to contribute to the national defence, and was not fully representative of the traditional women’s movement. With the passing of The National Compulsory Service Act (tjänstepliktslag) in December 1939 both men and women had become eligible for conscription. This was supposed to provide an instrument through which the government would be able to guarantee the supply of industrial labour. But the National Compulsory Service Act was never put into effect with regard to women. Instead, the governmental strategy to reach the female workforce was to establish a liaison between the state and the KBK. The Swedish way was the volunteer way. But this policy required propaganda. And so “Mrs. Loyal” made her entry in a state initiated propaganda newsreel on Swedish cinemas in January 1944. Mrs. Loyal was introduced as an example of “the national preparedness woman of today”. As a reserve worker in the engineering industry, she replaced a man who was called up for military service. The Mrs Loyal propaganda was aimed at married women whose children were grown up. The film presented the ideal situation where women registered for these courses voluntarily, to be fully trained if and when they were needed in industry. Towards the end of the war the SAK made inquiries to investigate the outcome of industrial employment during the war years. It then appeared that the Mrs Loyal-campaign had had an unexpected result. Few of the married housewives Mrs Loyal was supposed to attract had followed her example. In reality, it was a different group of women who took advantage of the opportunity. Young, unmarried women – daughters who still lived at home – saw an opening for them to leave home and earn their own livings. For these young women the preparedness situation and labour shortage actually became an opportunity for emancipation. How are we to understand the significance of the years 1939–1945 in terms of gender relations? The years of national preparedness in Sweden never became the opportunity for a broad range of women to leave their homes and become wage earners. In terms of gender contract, the housewife contract remained dominant. The traditional gender order never changed. The call for women workers was never a question of equal rights, just the temporary needs of the nation. But even if the changes were as superficial as the propaganda image, the need for women workers led to some changes. The question of equal pay was finally brought up on the political agenda with women’s entry in the engineering and ironworks industries. The conditions of labour shortage also placed a focus on other questions concerning the consequences of the protective labour legislation for women, like the prohibition against women’s night work and the question of women’s part-time work. The government had the opportunity to present new guidelines for women’s work at the end of the war. Instead a pattern was institutionalised that reinforced an image of women workers as a “latent labour reserve”. The propaganda picture of Mrs Loyal was forgotten, but in reality both married and unmarried women went on seeking solutions to the difficulties of combining wage work with children and housework.

This dissertation examines how the paradoxical process takes place whereby women are both integrated and segregated within male-dominated sites of social action, here in the Swedish labor market, national economy and military during the First World War. The potential of the First World War to change the societal gender distribution of labor in Sweden is limited by the fact that Sweden was not a belligerent state, and that the mobilization of men thus was limited. It is in social planning activity, and in the general state of preparedness for war and crisis, that this study has sought to analyze contemporaneous understandings of womens’ "tasks" in times of war and crisis. Earlier research has shown that women can be integrated in several different ways which can reproduce the gender order. This order can be re-created either in that women and men gain access to different "arenas" on different conditions, or in that women and men gain access to the same arena on different conditions (to mens’ advantage). From a gender-theoretical perspective, re-segregative integration is analyzed both at the level of conceptions and of practices. The study consists of three studies, regarding the domains of the labor market, the national economy (or economizing activity), and the military. The concept of the (social) task is used to capture those activities which voluntary organizations, the state, and/or womens’ organizations offered or enjoined/assigned to women in times of war and crisis. Women were offered tasks in e.g. the military medical service and in war veterinary care services, within so-called "time expense economizing" activities organized for the economy’s household sector, and with sewing articles of uniform clothing for older reserve troops (the landstormen). In addition, plans were laid up (although never carried out in practice) whereby women in wartime could be called upon to fill the "gaps" in the labor market left by men mobilized into the armed forces. In the domain of the labor market, womens’ integration was envisioned as taking place within an "extraordinary arena" on other conditions than those applying to men. Womens’ tasks were related to mens’ peacetime tasks, then being called "replacement work"; in relation to mens’ military service, placed into a context of "civil preparedness". In the domain of the national economy (or economizing activity), within the state National Economizing Commission, women were also integrated into a “special arena” on other conditions than those applying to men. Women were recruited into "womens’ administrations", or as the "only woman" to otherwise completely male-dominated administrations, and their tasks were limited to dealing with "the private households". In the domain of the military, women were still integrated into a "special arena" auxiliary to a male regular arena. Tasks were constituted as voluntary, were offered by voluntary organizations, and were focused on the provision of care services. In all these societal domains, a qualitative difference was created between what men did and what women did, or were envisioned to do. Womens’ tasks were constituted as feminized tasks. The tasks were however designed in a way which both challenged and confirmed more traditional conceptions of the "male defender", the "male provider", and the "masculine state and public sphere". One can reason here in terms of the gender order’s having been maintained, despite integration. In theory or in practice, this was done by tasks being recontextualized, whereby the existing order was maintained. By placing womens’ tasks into another context, order was secured, enabling the claim that "nothing has really happened". This could be expressed by saying that, when the gender order is threatened, a type of "assisting logic" intervened which placed threatening phenomena into a new context: the consequence of this was that tasks which women did, or were to do, became diminished.

During the national preparedness in Sweden, 1939-1945, the new dimensions of the “Total war” pushed for a build-up of a Civil defence that could help to reduce effects on the civil population if Sweden were put under attack. This thesis poses the question of how women’s roles in the Civil defence were motivated and driven by the state and women’s defence organisations. It aims to further give knowledge to how social and economic constraints have shaped renegotiation processes of women’s roles in times of national crisis. It finds that the state and women´s defence organisations both evoked and dismissed women’s engagement in the Civil defence. Women were expected to contribute to specific assignments but were not admitted and obliged to the duties on the same terms as men. Women’s roles in the Civil defence changed over time; this can be derived from the increased threat of war and the augmented pressure to provide reserve labour to industries and the defence.

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