This thesis explores how UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security and its ensuing National Action Plans for gender equality inform justifications of international intervention. I ask the following questions: how does Resolution 1325 and its ensuing National Action Plans for gender equality construct subjectivities of gender? How have states appropriated these gendered subjectivities in the legitimation of conflict? I review feminist, postcolonial, and poststructuralist literatures to argue that Resolution 1325 is aligned with broader United Nations governmental strategies for framing and justifying international intervention. Resolution 1325 produces dualistic subjectivities of gender, where women are constructed either as victims or as empowered, albeit within the limits deemed acceptable in masculinized contexts. I analyze the case of German National Action Plans for gender equality and the official policy texts related to its intervention in Afghanistan. I demonstrate that the foreign policy of a seemingly progressive state embraces Resolution 1325's dualistic subjectifications of women in conflict to construct logics that legitimize the Afghan intervention. My study findings show that Germany discursively constructs women and gender equality in accordance with the UN's guidelines and its good governance framework, which do not challenge existing structures of masculinity. In addition, they function as a means through which Germany legitimizes neoliberal and neocolonial policies as acceptable, ultimately failing to challenge the international war system. / Master of Arts / This thesis analyzes UN Security Council Resolution 1325's influence on the development of German gender equality policy and German foreign policy towards intervention in Afghanistan. I ask how the visions of gender produced in Resolution 1325, which primarily frame women as victims or only as empowered, inform the approach of Germany to Afghanistan. I find that German gender equality policy and policy towards Afghanistan are heavily influenced by the UN's framing of gender, as these ideas allow for Germany to justify its role in Afghanistan as a means to empower women further or save them from victimization. This allows Germany to maintain its role as a progressive humanitarian state by aligning its justification for the mission with the UN's broad objectives. However, doing so sets a dangerous precedent by legitimating intervention so long as it fits within the confines of the UN's notion of acceptability. Ultimately, my work shows that gender and attention to women functions to "clean" the German intervention in Afghanistan and portray it as progressive in accordance with the UN's values despite the inherent militarism of the intervention.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/103959 |
| Date | 22 June 2021 |
| Creators | Harris, Sabrina Kylie |
| Contributors | Political Science, Zanotti, Laura, Reeves, Audrey, Dixit, Priya |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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