UCLA Center for the Study of Women

The United States Government has been concerned about Third World Women for some time now, especially since the terrorist attack of 9/11. The US Government has been interested in these women in a very particular way feeling a sort of political mission to save them from their oppressive men and culture. This attitude has already been interrogated and criticized by many feminist scholars (Ferguson 2007 et al) and hence, in my research I focus on a different approach deriving from the UNSC Resolution 1325 (2000) aiming to empower women in conflict and postconflict settings.

This paper critically looks at the US policy on Resolution 1325 from a transnational feminist perspective. I use the What’s the Problem Represented to Be?-approach to the interrogation of a selection of US policy documents. The research question of the paper is as follows: Can this policy be regarded as feminist empowerment? Or is it rather organized according to the logic of masculinist protection?