Another Promise for Peace?: A Power Critical Exploration of Germany’s Feminist Foreign Policy
2023 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 12 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
This thesis explores what kind of ‘problems’ Germany’s official Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) guidelines represent and aims to address this field via a poststructural policy analysis inspired by Foucauldian discourse analysis. The analysis follows six analytical questions starting with “What is the ‘problem’ represented to be?”, also known as the WPR approach by Bacchi and Goodwin. By applying such WPR approach, the analysis investigates ‘problem’ representations, embedded discourses and their power relations as well as silences, effects and alternatives within FFP. The main findings reveal how FFP problematizes equal participation, representation of and opportunities for women and marginalized people as a matter of rights and as instruments bringing peace, security and stability while also requiring special protection. Such representations predominantly entail liberal and global feminist perspectives with neoliberal tendencies. Despite standing in contrast to one another, they borrow from intersectional and postcolonial discourses and feminisms. Moreover, the liberal rights-discourse constructs women as a homogenous group while intersectionality acknowledges differences. Instead of radically questioning persisting power structures, dominant neoliberal discourses effectively construct women as important change-makers and equality as a factor everyone supposedly would benefit from the various discourses trigger an othering-effect making women and marginalized people still the other.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 54
Keywords [en]
Feminist Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy, International Relations, Poststructural Policy Analysis, WPR approach, feminism
National Category
Political Science Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Gender Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-62269OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-62269DiVA, id: diva2:1793579
Educational program
KS GPS Peace and Conflict Studies
Supervisors
Examiners
2023-09-082023-09-012023-09-08Bibliographically approved