Rebuilding Masculinity: Total defense discourse and implications for the Swedish crisis management system

Abstract

Sweden has in the past decade embarked on a journey to rebuild the concept of ‘total
defence’. The crisis management system led by the Swedish Civil Contingency Agency has
become all-the-more involved in the civil defense, with the Swedish Armed Forces
responsible for military defense. The present thesis aims to explore the topic of gender and
language in Sweden’s total defense discourse to uncover if there is a relationship between
gendered language and securitization. The paper draws on feminist theory, securitization
theory, and Fairclough’s theory of power and discourse to understand how masculine-coded
language manifests in relation to ongoing securitization processes. The methodology
employs critical discourse analysis to offer a feminist lens to view the nexus of masculinity,
security, and language in Sweden. The findings show that discourse constructs an envisioned
goal of total defense as idealized masculinity. While previous literature has highlighted a
feminization of the population and civil actors through a logic of masculinist protection, an
additional finding is that society as a whole is discursively masculinized in the juxtaposition
of ‘vulnerable’ as femininity and ‘resilient’ as masculinity. In this sense, ‘rebuilding total
defense’ entails rebuilding masculinity, casting the past ‘passivity’ and ‘neutrality’ in
international relations as dangerous. The crisis management system is caught in a tension of
expected submission to military domains and hierarchal alignment, simultaneously a
masculine drive for action and preparedness.

Popular Abstract

The discourse direction and guiding Sweden’s total defense project suggests a direction toward rebuilding masculinity as a national aim, with feminine-coded elements rendered as dangerous. Over the past decade Sweden has embarked on a journey to rebuild the total defense structure, a project that now makes the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) responsible for civil defence while leaving military defence to the Armed Forces. This institutional shift has come with more subtle changes, being the language through which the state speaks of threats and national security. Language constructs a social reality that is gendered. With this said, gendered norms and militarization has previously been studied to reveal their close connection. However, to bring about feminist change in the context of current Swedish situation, the conditions laid out by discourse must first be understood. Hence, my thesis asks whether securitization and masculine coded wording travel together in that talk of total defense.
From a theoretical perspective of feminist security studies, securitization theory, and Fairclough’s account of discourse and power, I conduct a critical discourse analysis of six key documents issued by MSB, the Swedish Armed Forces between 2014 and 2024. The first step traces how masculine-coded terms surface, such as “robust,” “decisive,” “resilience.” They cluster around the military domain, while “vulnerability” and “passivity” cling to the civilian side. The second step weighs what this lexicon does to our perception of reality and Sweden’s crisis management system, which now operates in the slipstream of a more masculinized logic.
The discourse reveals complex tensions. Each time a threat is named, a rhetoric of sovereign masculinity rushes in to promise protection. Neutrality, once a Swedish hallmark, is recast as feminised weakness while preparedness and resilience are framed as masculine ideals to be mobilized. Previous research has noted how the population is feminized through positining it as vulnerable and lacking agency. While this finding emerges, so does a suggestion that society as a whole is simultaneously re masculinized: rebuilding total defence is narrated as rebuilding masculinity.For the crisis management system, this discursive order translates into alignment into military hierarchies much like women’s subordination into hierarchial levels in a patriarchal system. Practices culturally coded as feminine that once anchored civilian preparedness are dictated as the opposite of achieving security. The result is a narrowed field of acceptable voices, methods, and futures inside Sweden’s crisis management arena, where “resilient” is the goal and “vulnerability” the danger.

• author: Sunnerås Jonsson, Ida Filippa
• supervisor: Misse Wester
• organization: Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety
• course: VBRM15 20251
• year: 2025
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Technology and Engineering
• keywords: Crisis management, security, gender, discourse, language, masculinity
• language: English
• id: 9208395
• date added to LUP: 2025-07-22 13:13:35
• date last changed: 2025-07-22 13:13:35