This thesis examines the Swedish Government Cyber Security Strategy laid out for the years 2016-2022 using Carol Bacchi’s discourse method and theory concept “What’s the problem represented to be” (WPR). The theoretical framework of the thesis also builds on critical theories on security- and threat perception following the concept of “exceptionalist securitising” and “diffusing insecurities”. The study suggests that the government has a national security focus that stresses “high politics” cyber threats rather than risks related to individuals and the Swedish society. Potential enemies are presented as located outside of the national boarders indicating a more traditional security perspective and enemy construction coming from other states. The study also disclosed that the strategy strives to stress the necessity of raising the awareness on cyber security as well as uniting the authorities working on cyber security while neglecting the democratic limits that political actions such as state-monitoring and data surveillance implicates.

My study examines trauma informed practice (TIP) policies in BC, Canada. My chosen methodology, what is the problem represented to be (WPR) (Bacchi 2009), makes politics visible in policies. I am interested in the effects of trauma policies on women who experience male violence. How does discourse produce certain effects and constitute specific subjects within these texts? I extend a politicized analysis of TIP policies, specifically, an in-depth feminist post structural analysis. I advance an understanding of the effects of policy, particularly for women who have experienced male violence and who receive services under the TIP guidelines. I note the absence of an intersectional analysis and the lack of attention paid to power relations, specifically associated with the provision of care within the health care system, the construction of the traumatized female subject and the absence of a social justice lens in TIP policies. My study addresses the meanings, and resulting practices arising from the TIP policy and its impacts on women's lived experiences. My feminist post structural analysis provides a critique of TIP policies glaringly absent from the literature. I examine available literature, which evaluates TIP. My analysis deepens the understanding of the policy's inherent assumptions by revealing the problem of trauma, as represented in TIP policies. I explore the emergence of the dominant concept of trauma in the completion of a genealogy of trauma. I uncover the commonly accepted trauma ethos, a set of principles and beliefs about violence against women that has set the path for a trauma discourse in BC's guidelines, policies, and programs. I explore my interest in iv the ontology of trauma, the nature of trauma itself and the way of being when trauma has occurred. While exploring this interest through a genealogy of trauma, I identify five historical figures; the traumatized female figure, the assaulted woman figure, the wounded veteran figure, the colonized Indigenous woman figure and the emancipated woman figure. My study explores how women are obscured and invisible in policies intended to address violence against women. I demonstrate that this invisibility results in gender-neutral policies-if there is no gender-based violence- we, therefore, do not have to think of gender-based treatment. The patriarchal erasure of women from trauma policies continually repositions what the problem is represented to be. These policies constitute women as the less valued subjects, fundamentally damaged and flawed. Trauma policies shape women as people who can damage staff; assuming they are a source of trauma infection; they can infect staff with their trauma resulting in vicarious traumatization of staff. Trauma policies characterize the traumatized female subject as fundamentally different from the staff or the professional expert. Only certain kinds of women can be traumatized, the mentally ill and substance-using women. My study exposes the presupposition embedded in policies that only certain women are violated, and other women are unlike them. This trauma discourse is grounded in racism, colonialism and sexism, built on stereotypical patriarchal representations of women, resulting in the stigmatization of women who experience male violence. / Graduate / 2022-08-25

Girls’ education is one of the main attributes that contribute to the development of a nation and society. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the girls’ education is discursively constructed by the development agencies promoting girls’ education. Furthermore, the thesis also aims to explore how these discourses reflect the concepts of gender equality, equity, and empowerment in the policy texts in relation to girls’ education and what similarities and/ or differences are found by the produced knowledge in relation to girls’ education by the development agencies in correspondence to the three theories: Human Capital Approach (HCA), Human Rights Approach (HRA), and Capability Approach (CA). The study’s theoretical perspectives include the three theories of education: the human capital approach, the human rights approach, and the capabilities approach. To examine how development agencies policy texts discursively construct girls’ education, an analysis informed by interpretive and qualitative approaches to critical discourse analysis is conducted. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the research method contributes to analyze how discursive practices or texts are produced, described, and interpreted particularly in the policy documents. The analytical framework of Carol Bacchi (2009) ‘what’s the problem represented to be’ (WPR) as an analytical framework contribute to understand; 1.how something is presented as a problem and phrased in a specific policy text; 2. provides a systematic way to critically investigate problem representations in the policy texts to see what they include, what is not included; and 3. to retain the validity of the study quite high. The questions addressed in this study are: 1. what is the problem represented; 2. what solutions are provided to this problem; 3. what effects are produced by the representation of the problem; 4. what is unaddressed/silenced in the problem representation of girls’ education? The study compares policy texts published between 2010 to 2020 sampled from some the biggest foreign aid donors such as Japan, United Nations of America, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Italy, Finland, and France working in areas of development assistance and support specially focused on gender and education of developing countries. The analysis suggests that the development agencies primarily views the importance of girls’ education in instrumental terms even though discourses harmonizes with the human rights and capabilities approach discourses. The discourses of the three theories are compatible with each other and the underlying message remains quite the same in all the development agencies. The human capital discourses to a large extent followed discourses on women and gender equality. The discursive constructions of girls’ and women structured around economic development and efficiency thus sustain hegemonic gender power structures and gender inequalities rather than challenging them. The current discourses of the development agencies of dominantly constructing the importance of girls’ education as economic actors should address the root causes that hinders the girls’ education and agency which otherwise the consequences of only constructing women only as economic agents and as passive subordinates will be most likely to increase gender inequalities and poverty continue to exist further rather than ending it.

Scarce community mental health resources have led to people in crisis (PIC) overusing the emergency department (ED) and encountering police more frequently. To divert PIC from the ED and criminal justice system, and support them in their community, police services have implemented crisis response teams (CRTs). CRTs refer to police, health and mental health crisis response. Evidence of CRTs’ effectiveness in achieving their desired outcomes is limited, mixed, and/or anecdotal. I completed three studies using various theoretical and methodological approaches, which included: (a) a critical interpretative synthesis (CIS) of the conditions under which CRTs are formed, their features, and their outcomes; (b) a policy analysis using a case study design to examine how and why a CRT model was adopted in Hamilton, Canada; and (c) a what’s the problem represented to be (WPR) critical policy analysis of why police are implicated in crisis response. The CIS presents a conceptual framework depicting how unresolved structural conditions produce system- and individual-level challenges. Second, the case study examines the mobile crisis rapid response team (MCRRT) development in Hamilton. The analysis shows that initiatives that incrementally expand on the boundaries of existing programs are likely to be adopted. Third, drawing on WPR, we excavate problem representations within policy and policy-related texts to understand why police-based CRTs are expanded in Ontario. When mental health is framed in terms of safety and implicated within discourses about risk and danger police intervention is legitimized. Collectively, these studies provide a theoretical framework connecting structural, system, and individual factors most relevant to CRTs; demonstrate that an incremental approach to CRT adoption did not disrupt existing system arrangements; and problematizations within government policies that legitimize police in mental health crisis response. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Since deinstitutionalization, during which mental health patients were discharged into the community, this population has had more frequent encounters with police, contributing to criminalization and tragedies. They have also increasingly sought mental health crisis support in emergency departments. Police, health, and mental health crisis response teams (CRTs) have been implemented as an alternative response to people with mental health issues who are in crisis. To date, CRTs have been widely implemented but with little, mixed, and/or anecdotal evidence demonstrating their effectiveness. This dissertation contextualizes information about CRTs by presenting (a) a conceptual framework on CRTs, outlining the structural, system, and individual conditions under which CRTs are formed, their features, and outcomes; (b) a case study that examined under what conditions a CRT was developed and implemented in Hamilton, Canada; and (c) a critical discourse analysis of CRTs.

Violence against women continues to be an issue that severely impacts women worldwide. Since the global spread of the #MeToo movement in 2017, debates regarding this issue significantly increased. Yet the precise ways in which women are impacted by violence, heavily influenced by their unique and diverse aspects of identity, are often disregarded. By focusing on two of these aspects of identity, namely gender and nationality, and comparing the circumstances of sexual violence against women in Germany, Nigeria, and South Korea, this thesis aims to showcase the diverse experiences of ‘being a woman’ and what this implies regarding the issue of sexual violence against women. With an additional analysis of four important international conventions aimed at ameliorating women’s lives (UDHR, CEDAW, DEVAW, and BPfA) regarding their acknowledgement of this diversity and guided by three theories, namely Multi-Ethnic Feminism, Feminist Postcolonialism, and Intersectionality, this thesis highlights the necessity of including everyone and their unique experiences with all kinds of discrimination to adequately tackle an issue such as sexual violence against women.