A Nordic model of gender and military work? Labour demand, gender equality and women’s integration in the armed forces of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden (original) (raw)
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This article explores how women, men, and gender equality in the military have been debated, made sense of, regulated, and dealt with in Swedish contemporary history. It takes its empirical point of departure in 1965, when the issue of military conscription for women was first raised in Sweden, and ends with the implementation of so called gender-neutral conscription in 2018. The study is based on a wide range of sources, collected through a combination of extensive archival work, ethnographic studies, and interviews. The analysis shows how men have been the standard against which women were measured throughout the period studied. Women service members were simultaneously perceived both as a problem and as a solution to a range of problems in the organisation. Women's 'different' bodies were considered problematic, while staff shortages and demands for specific personnel qualities rendered the 'woman soldier' a solution, in particular in relation to international missions.
Scandinavian Journal of History, 2022
This article studies the historical shift in societal understandings of gender and security in Finland that led to the introduction of women’s voluntary military service and the opening of the military professions to women in 1995. With a focus on how the gendered division of defence and military labour was conceptualized at various stages, the study analyses what caused Finland to lag behind its Scandinavian neighbours in this respect, and what caused a sweeping reform process to come about in the early 1990s. Drawing on press materials, parliamentary records and policymaking documents, it traces public debates and policymaking over two decades. It shows that women’s defence work was a controversial issue, for both historical and political reasons. This caused an emphasis being placed on women’s non-military tasks within a broad understanding of societal security during the 1980s. Around the end of the Cold War, a surge of neo-patriotism coincided with the normalization of formal gender equality to effect a significant shift in notions of female citizenship towards military participation. Positive Scandinavian examples of women’s military integration were decisive at this point, as was the political impact of Finland acquiring its first female minister of defence.
Norwegian Defence Tradition – an Obstacle to Increased Participation by Women
Military Women–The Achilles Heel in Defence Politics? , 2015
“Norwegians like to look upon their nation as a leading and well-developed one insofar as gender equality issues are concerned” (Skjelsbæk et al., 2011:63). According to The Global Gender Gap Report 2011 (Hausmann et al., 2011) gender differences in Norway are the second smallest in the world. Norway was also one of the first countries in the world that opened up all jobs and functions in the Norwegian Armed Forces (NorAF) to women. This took place as early as 1984 when the Norwegian government adopted “a law that gave women the same rights and opportunities as men to pursue a military career” (Skjelsbæk et al., 2011:63), including holding combat positions. Norwegian women were not, however, obliged to perform compulsory military service, as Norwegian men are (obliged to) by way of conscription. Nonetheless, Norway has been a pioneer in NATO in terms of women’s formal access to military positions. In several leading NATO countries, as with the UK and until recently the US, women have not been given access to combat positions. The lack of access to combat positions is believed to have worked against increased participation bywomen in these countries because lack of operational experience is considered career inhibitory, irrespective of gender (Skjelsbæk et al., 2011 – see Chapter 1). However, in the United States, where women have only recently been afforded full rights and opportunities in the military, the proportion of women in the NorAF is about twice as high as it is in Norway. “In fact, the majority of NATO member countries have a higher proportion of women in their armed forces than does Norway” (Skjelsbæk et al., 2011:59; see Figure 1.2, Chapter 1). In Norway, women’s representation in the NorAF has been consistently low, between 5–8 percent, since the late 1980s (Ministry of Defence, 2007). This is the case despite the fact that there has been an explicit political aim of increasing the proportion of women in the Norwegian military for almost 30 years, with 198 unique measures and initiatives implemented during this time (Fasting et al., 2012). The question posed in this chapter is, therefore: Could there be something in Norwegian Defence Tradition that has worked as an obstacle to increased participation by women in the Norwegian Armed Forces? The question is posed because a number of authors have argued that there exists a distinctive Norwegian Defence Tradition which, to a great degree, has been interwoven with the building of the Norwegian nation and its identity (Friis, 2000; Græger et al., 2005, 2011; and Græger & Ulriksen, 2002). Furthermore, it has been argued that the role of the NoraF as an instrument for nation building has come to serve as a buffer preventing, or at best delaying, the transformation and reorganisation of the military forces that took place in other NATO countries after the end of the Cold War (Ulriksen, 2002). Against this background, the following discussion centres on whether Norwegian Defence Tradition, as described in greatest detail by Ulriksen (2002), may have also contributed to preventing or delaying increased participation by women in the Norwegian Armed Forces. It will be argued that Norwegian Defence Tradition was constructed in a way that equated military power with physically rugged ‘outdoorsmen’. Furthermore, it claims that the ‘outdoorsman’ has represented a hegemonic form of masculinity that has made it more difficult for women and men with different characteristics to be appreciated in the Norwegian Armed Forces.
Solving ‘the Uniform Issue’: Gender and Professional Identity in the Swedish Military
Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 2022
This article contributes empirical knowledge about the shifting ways in which the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) has articulated and addressed ‘the uniform issue’, that is, matters concerning servicewomen’s access to adequate uniforms and other equipment, since the 1980s. Drawing on analytical tools employed within post-structural policy analysis, we demonstrate how ‘the uniform issue’ has gone from being articulated as a problem for servicewomen, and to be solved by servicewomen, to a problem for the SAF in its pursuit to become an attractive employer and a legitimate public authority. By shedding light on how ‘the uniform issue’ has been problematized in shifting ways since Swedish women first were allowed to serve in all military positions, this article also contributes important insights into broader scholarly debates about workplace discrimination, gender equality, and gendered occupational identities in military work.
Taking the Norwegian Armed Forces as a case study, this article examines how perceptions of gender and masculinities are expressed in internal documents produced by military forces deployed abroad as well as in the military bureaucracy at home during the 1990s. One main finding is that women are largely invisible in these documents. This is true for both female participants in the Norwegian units as well as the local women in the deployment area. Assessments of the gendered consequences of operations are completely lacking. Another significant finding was that aggressiveness was hardly ever mentioned as an important quality among Norwegian military personnel abroad. The most valued qualities of a good soldier were rather endurance, a good sense of humour and personal initiative. However, the forces had a clear image of themselves as militaries, and their main priority was to maintain their warfighting skills. Expressions of racism, misogyny and homophobia were rare, which at least suggests that these are values are not encouraged, or condoned, in military training in Norway.
Women can do it 40 years as a volunteer in the Swedish Armed Forces
This is a contribution to the debate on women’s possibilities in the Swedish Armed Forces during the Cold War and after. The question I would like the readers to be faced with while reading is: “How much capacity, knowledge and energy do the Swedish Armed Forces miss out on by the prejudices against women some men in the military have, making every endeavour to stop the women, claiming that they are unfit for the military life and a danger for Sweden if they would be given a chance to contribute to the Armed Forces?” More interestingly, the reader should reflection on the following: “Can the Swedish Armed Forces really afford this loss of capacity, knowledge and energy?”.
Exclusion and inclusion in the Danish Military
Journal of Organizational Change Management
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine why and how past stories of women’s insufficiency for military work survive and how they come to form a gendered organizational narrative dominant in constructing current opinions on women in the military. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based mainly on archival data, but supported by interview material as well as participant observation data. The authors do this from the assumption that the culturally constructed notion of the ideal soldier is based on a historically constructed professional narrative. Findings The authors show how a historically produced gender narrative – based on (fictional) stories on what women can and cannot do – is perceived as true and thereby casts women as less suitable for a military career. Thus, despite the current equal legal rights of men and women in the military, the power of the narrative limits female soldiers’ career possibilities. Originality/value The paper is unique as it, in drawing...
The Role of Women in European Armed Forces: Progress and Challenges
Women have historically faced barriers to full participation in the military, with progress only arising in the recent decades. Traditionally confined to non-combat roles, societal norms majorly restricted their contributions to nursing and administrative tasks. However , the world wars marked a turning point, as women began to take on more active roles, paving the way for future integration. Despite these advancements, women in today’s European armed forces still encounter significant challenges such as gender bias, discrimination and limited access to leadership roles. Achieving full equality requires not only policy reforms, but also cultural shifts within military institutions.