In late 2014, Sweden became the first country in the world to adopt what it described as ”feminist foreign policy”. This was immediately met by both praise and criticism. While those who praised pointed to its relevance given the current state of global affairs; those who criticized it, did so because of its near utopian fantasies of global politics. While it has, since then, received mixed reviews in both media reporting and in academic reviews, it has never been investigated and compared to what should be perceived as the control — the feminist theory in international relations. This study aims to do so. It will, therefore, investigate the Swedish foreign policy and compare it to the feminist theory in international relations. In order to keep the study manageable, four separate branches of the Swedish foreign policy will be investigated. These are; migration, arms export, aid and diplomacy. While migration and aid are more generalized, arms exports and diplomacy are specifically investigating the United arab emirates, and Palestine, respectively. The outcome of the study was that all areas, except arms exports and aid, are both in keeping with, and against, the feminist theory in international relations. Arms exports, on the other hand, is not in keeping with the feminist theory at all. Aid is, in contrast to this, fully in keeping with the feminist theory. This creates a difficult situation when deciding wether or not the feminist foreign policy really is feminist. Sweden’s position as a weapons exporter causes severe friction with the feminist theory because of its recognition of female suffering during war. The way in which Sweden’s foreign policy aim to help women while also, in some way, perpetrating the suffering of women, creates a double standard. This double standard is what finally decides that the Swedish feminist foreign policy, even though it has many feminist leanings, is not feminist according to the feminist theory of international relations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-96078 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Gashi, Edvinn |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för statsvetenskap (ST) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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