"I have not achieved a feeling of being masculine.”  : An exploration of masculinities in the Swedish Armed Forces

Historically and presently most people employed in military forces worldwide are men. With a focus on peacekeeping and equality, the Swedish Armed Forces (SwAF) aim to recruit more women. But even as gender issues become a central focus of the SwAF, policy is mostly aimed towards women despite most employees being men. This study came about by leaning on feminist scholars’ arguments that men and masculinities need to be examined and involved when working towards positive peace, so that they do not remain naturalized and become unidentified obstacles. To achieve this aim, this thesis draws on semi-structured interviews with Swedish Peacekeepers and present a complex, contradictory puzzle of how masculinities are performed, perceived, and reproduced. Masculinities are admired but ridiculed, used as a tool for battle but an obstacle for rehabilitation, a source for deep emotional bonds and rigorously performed to turn off emotionally, and is mainly existing in the eyes of the beholder but seldom seen in oneself. The results support theoretical complexity of militarized masculinities and confirm that militarism is not inherent or come natural to men but is a performative, social construction