Genom ett kvalitativt frågeformulär svarade 53 stycken anhöriga till soldater och officerare på hur deras behov av anhörigstöd såg ut under tiden för en internationell insats. Uppsatsens frågeställning handlar om det  anhörigstöd som Försvarsmakten och externa stödorganisationer har utarbetat och om detta går i linje med de behov som finns hos de anhöriga. Syftet med uppsatsen är att jämföra Försvarsmakten och stödorganisationernas utbud på anhörigstöd med den anhöriges faktiska behov och därmed svara på uppsatsens frågeställning. Syftet är vidare att utifrån resultatet även kunna ge förslag på eventuella förbättringar på dagens anhörigstöd. Genom att analysera rådata har ett resultat kunnat redovisas som visar en markant förbättring av anhörigstödet i förhållande till det missnöje som presenterades av Officersförbundet och Synovate år 2008. Enligt resultatet i denna undersökning går Försvarsmakten och stödorganisationernas anhörigstöd i linje med vad den anhörige generellt är i behov av. Denna positiva utveckling har skett med hjälp av en balanserad blandning av psykosociala och praktiska åtgärder. ABC-X modellen som behandlar familjer i stress samt Halls bok ”Counseling military families” har till stor del legat till grund för denna undersökning och stödjer resultatet utifrån de åtgärder som vidtagits skall leda till en mer tillfredställd grupp anhöriga. / The method used in this study is a qualitative questionnaire. 53 next of kin or relatives to soldiers, who is assigned internationally, were asked to answer a questionnaire. The questions were about how these persons are experiencing the support that the Swedish Armed Forces and external support organizations is providing the relatives with. The purpose of this study was to describe the available support provided by The Armed Forces and the external support organizations and then compare that to the actual need of support. Another aim of this study is to suggest possible improvements to the support of today.By analyzing the raw data from the questionnaire we can see a significant improvement of the family support in relation to how the former support looked like a couple of years ago. Officersförbundet and Synovate made a study in 2008 and the result of that study was a major dissatisfaction in the range of family support and according to that we can see a lot of positive developments. This developments has been taken place with the help of a balanced mix between psychosocial and practical measures. The ABC-X model that deals with families in stress and Hall’s book “Counseling military families” has in many ways worked as a frame for this study and also helped to explain how the developments of the family support has increased the group of satisfied relatives.

The debate on gender equality and diversity has shaped our time. More and more companies and organizations are looking into how to raise their workforce diversity. To recruit a more diverse workforce you could either raise the public opinion or get more effective in your recruitment. The Swedish armed forces are today an organization where women are highly underrepresented, only 18 percent of the personnel is female. By using a theory on diversity management, to look into if the Swedish armed forces way to handle diversity appeal to what the theory that’s used are saying. The study concludes that the Swedish armed forces partly handle the diversity focus at women in same way the theory claims to do. But one level of the theory is not proceeded. And on that part the Swedish armed forces can be better. The study concludes that there is a difference between the armed forces and the recruiting center inobjectives in diversity, this is what can make the Swedish armed forces goal hard to reach.

In the years following 9/11, research has shown that United Nations peacekeeping has grown increasingly militarized. Meanwhile, there have long been calls for women’s increased participation in peacekeeping, for a myriad of reasons mainly founded on instrumental and essentialist arguments. According to feminist theories, however, militarization would limit the agency of women as they are often placed in marginalized, protected roles when such a militarization occurs. Against this background, this thesis has utilized a visual and textual discourse analysis to investigate memory books published by the Swedish Armed Forces, which detail the presence of the Swedish contingency in MINUSMA in the period 2014-2019, to understand the connection between female peacekeeper’s agency and the increasing militarization of the UN’s most deadly peacekeeping mission. The findings suggest that militarization does not seem to limit the agency of Swedish female peacekeepers, who have seen their roles become more varied and seemingly possess more agency later than earlier on in the mission, despite an increased militarization of the peacekeeping mission. The thesis thus contributes to an underexamined connection between agency and militarization in the context of peacekeepers, while exploring a heretofore unexamined material. In doing so, the thesis opens for further research in both the material itself as well as further comparative studies.

Even after the introduction of the UNSCR 1325 and subsequent resolutions, women’s leadership in the context of the WPS Agenda remains very low, despite the clear stance of the UN towards a support of an increased participation of women in peace and security processes. The aim of this thesis is to specifically address women’s leadership in the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) in the framework of peacekeeping operations, looking at the way the gender perspective is applied in the SAF through the introduction of the Handbok Gender, adopted in 2016. Since the focus of this research is on women, the theoretical perspective utilised as reference point is feminism and specifically a feminist constructivist approach with an institutional focus. Mixed research methods have been applied in order to collect the data, while the main centre of attention of this project has been a critical discourse analysis of the mentioned gender policy. Sweden has been chosen as case study because of the relevance of its singular feminist policies (Wallström’s statement that Sweden is pursuing a feminist foreign policy is a clear example), nevertheless the conclusions appear to be quite contradictory because even in a country which officially identifies as feminist women’s leadership in peacekeeping operations is very low.

The struggle for an equal society in terms of equal rights, opportunities, and obligations has long been fought in Sweden and has resulted in Sweden emerging as one of the world most equal societies according to UN rankings. This paper attempts to, with the knowledge of Sweden´s pre-eminence on the equality rankings, to examine why the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) remain a male-dominated workplace, despite decades of stated equality aims. There is thus a question left unanswered as to the nature of this apparent discrepancy. This paper aims to examine the nature of this discrepancy, what has been done to implement equality and what challenges lie ahead for the SAF on the issue of gender equality. Through a theoretical base primarily consisting of an institutional disposition this paper uses a qualitative text analysis study of the public material which is available regarding the SAF´s gender equality work, mainly the official appropriations documents for the SAF, as well as the annual reports from the SAF to the government. Gender and equality have been studied in the past in numerous political science journals both in the context of western armed forces in general and the SAF in particular. Remaining is a need for more research problematising the concept of gender equality within the armed forces and in its relationship to the government, which this paper attempts to explore. Indications indicate that the challenges the government and the SAF must face involve defining what they mean by equality as well as clarifying what the policy objectives are as there is a risk that the implementation of the policy will fall completely or partially if they remain abstract, unclear and/or contradictory.

This study examines how The Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) communicates via their commercials and how this may affect their brand. The Swedish Armed Forces has always been an important authority and their priority is to prevent war and crisis in Swedish society. According to SAF themselves, one of their strategies with using commercials frequently is to attract potential recruits. Even though this is their goal, the SAF hasn't always been as open minded as today. In fact it’s been a relatively closed authority in earlier years, according to previous research. This has created a lack of knowledge among the public regarding what they do. This study compares two time periods to see if their commercials have changed. The first time period extends from 2011 until 2016 and the second period extends from 2017 to 2022. The theories that are applied to this study are semiotics, framing and representation theory and the methods that are used are a quantitative content analysis and a semiotic analysis. By using these theories and methods it might be possible to discover similarities and differences in the commercials and also to seek for a greater meaning in the empirical material. The reason why this topic is interesting to research is because the SAF is one of the most important authorities in Sweden and also because Sweden re-introduced compulsory conscription in 2017. Because of that it is of importance that the SAF appears as an attractive brand and a good employer. The result of the study states that the commercials have developed a lot over years and that they nowadays exhibit several parts within the SAF and that they represent diversity. In earlier years only one type of human was represented in their films but by the years they have included humans with different ethnicities, gender, sexuality and lifestyles within their films. They also show parallels between daily life and the life within the armed forces. By doing this they appear to be closer to the people which creates a feeling of safety and importance towards their work.

The Swedish Armed Forces (SwAF) have been making internal efforts to enrol more women through changes in legislation and mandatory conscription, since the adoption of Resolution 1325 in the Swedish Parliament at the turn of the century. Since the alterations, an upward trend of female recruits as well as women making careers and reaching high ranking positions, has been identified. Consequently, raising other issues about how SwAF is making efforts to adapt their prevailing male dominated organization towards their now increasing female personnel.  To achieve the objective of understanding how male normativity is experienced in the Armed Forces, the study derives from explorative semi- structured interviews with female recruits, as well as previous studies conducted in the area, departing from a constructivist and feminist theoretical approach. The result supports, that women are nevertheless experiencing obstacles and are expected to repetitively prove their positions as soldiers, in terms of bodily differences, materiality, language, comradery, and community. It also speaks for continued efforts to broaden the Armed Forces' inclusivity, challenge gender norms and customs, and improve accessibility for female recruits, and female military personnel.

This study sets out to examine how men and women within the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) reason about decision-making and the use of violence in relation to security and conflict resolution, and whether or not their reasoning differ. The study comprises a qualitative case study whereas the SAF has been identified as a critical case. The research takes off in theoretical fields such as; international relations, gender, security and feminism. With departure in essential-, standpoint- and difference feminism in particular, an analytical framework has been created. The core assumptions in the framework are: women are peaceful and prefer individual decision-making in relation to security and conflict resolution. Men on the contrary are violent and prefer individual decision-making. The validity of these assumptions is tested by ten qualitative interviews with five women and five men within the SAF. The finding of the study is that the SAF appears to socialize a similar behavior amongst their male and female co-workers. Hence, men and women within the forces seem to reason about security and conflict resolution in comparable ways. The feminist assumptions in the analytical framework are thus proven invalid. Nevertheless, the branches of the feminisms that depart from social construction rather than biological determinism are proven correct.

With a more dangerous international climate the need for states to expand their armed forces has become more prominent. When the supply of volunteers is too low, states turn to conscription in order to fulfill the demand for fighters. This thesis asks the research question; How does the recruitment strategy affect the treatment of recruits within state armed forces? By combining pre-existing theories of rebel recruitment, socialization and militarized masculinity, this thesis argues that utilizing conscription as recruitment strategy increases the amount of mistreatment recruits face. To explain the causal relationship between conscription and mistreatment, a perceived lack of commitment to the ideals of militarized masculinity is proposed as the causal mechanism. Due to the masculinity norms mentioned within the causal mechanism, the thesis argues that female recruits will face high levels of mistreatment independently of recruitment strategy. Utilizing a structured, focus analysis method, the thesis tests this theory on three different time periods within the Swedish armed forces history. The empirical data used was decisions made by the Swedish armed forces disciplinary board. The empirical evidence gives minor and inconclusive evidence in support of the theory. Unnecessary endangerment of recruits increases with the use of conscription.

The Swedish Armed Forces’ Flying School has been training future pilots for a long time. For almost 60 years, the SK 60 aircraft (SAAB 105) has been used to train fixed-wing pilots. The Flying School has a flight simulator of type BITD (Basic Instrument Training Device), named FlightBook, as a tool to help students practise their flying and to learn through experience. Experiential learning is used in various kinds of education, one of which is flying training. David A. Kolb has developed a learning cycle that explains the process of experiential learning. The learning cycle starts with concrete experience followed by reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. This study analyses FlightBook using Kolb’s learning cycle to see if it is appropriate for use in flying training. The results of this study show that FlightBook is an effective tool for practising some elements of flying training. FlightBook is necessary for emergency training because of the high risk and it being impossible to conduct some of the training during actual flying. For landing an aircraft, FlightBook is not as suitable as it is for emergency training but is still an effective tool for the initial steps, prior to the final stage. For the final stage, when the aircraft is getting close to the runway, FlightBook does not have the credibility that flying instructors and students wish it had. In real flying, pilots use feel and balance to get things right before landing, which is not possible with FlightBook. Experience gained when practising with FlightBook is essential for future pilots so that the training can continue to be as effective as possible. Otherwise the training may be even more delayed and that will cause problems for the Swedish Armed Forces. / Försvarsmaktens flygskola har under en lång tid utbildat blivande piloter. I nästan 60 år har skolflygplanet SK 60 (SAAB 105) använts för utbildning av transport- och stridspiloter. Flygskolan har en flygsimulator av typen BITD (Basic Instrument Training Device - Grundläggande instrumentträningsstation), vid namn FlightBook, som hjälpmedel i flygutbildningen. I FlightBook lär sig flygeleverna genom erfarenhetsbaserat lärande. Erfarenhetsbaserat lärande används i flera utbildningar. Flygutbildningen är en av dem. David A. Kolb har skapat en modell som förklarar processen som sker under erfarenhetsbaserat lärande med hjälp av en lärcykel. Lärcykeln inleds med att konkreta erfarenheter samlas in och följs därefter av reflekterande observationer, abstrakta konceptualiseringar och aktivt experimenterande. Arbetet analyserar FlightBook med Kolbs lärcykel och resultatet visar att FlightBook är ett bra hjälpmedel för att öva vissa moment i flygträning. Vid övning av nödträning är FlightBook väsentlig, framförallt för flygsäkerheten, eftersom de flesta momenten inte är lämpliga att öva i verkligheten. Vid övning av landning är FlightBook inte lika lämplig som vid nödträning eftersom de sista momenten under landning skiljer sig från verkligheten. Trovärdigheten som lärare och elever önskar under de sista momenten saknas. I verkligheten använder sig piloterna av känsla och balans för att komma rätt inför landning vilket inte är möjligt i övning med FlightBook. Momenten inför landning är dock lämpliga att öva. Erfarenheterna som erhålls när eleverna övar i FlightBook är nödvändiga för att flygutbildningen ska fortsätta vara så effektiv som möjligt. Förseningar i flygutbildningen kan genom fortsatt effektivisering förhindras och därmed undvika problem för Försvarsmakten.