Doing Feminist Discourse Analysis: Domestic Violence in the Women-Friendly Welfare State of Finland

In the foregoing sections, Amy Mazur and Véronique Mottier discuss feminist methodologies in feminist comparative policy (Mazur) and in feminist political theory (Mottier). The aim of this piece is to apply some of their methodological insights. The article will briefly analyse some feminist discourses on the state in Finland and Britain and the ways in which these discourses influence feminist engagements with the state. As such, the piece captures the idea that the state has become an important focus of feminist theory, as argued by Mazur and Mottier. More specifically, the article combines three aspects that are increasingly central for feminist political analyses: the contributions of comparative theory (Mazur) and discourse analysis (Mottier), and the importance of contextual theory (Siim, 2001).