Gender and Military Research Papers (original) (raw)

The focus of inquiry of this chapter is the research process in the military setting. Its approach draws on reflexivity as a method of examining and interpreting reality, combining the analysis of: a) oneself as researcher, b) the research relationship c) how both affect the research process and its outcomes.
By re-reading and re-interpreting their longstanding research experience with the Italian Armed forces through a gender sensitive perspective, the authors discuss two issues of great methodological relevance - the positionality of the researcher and the asymmetry of the researcher-researched relationship - showing their distinctive character in the case of women researching the military.
In male-dominated military settings, the outsiderness of female researchers is twofold, deriving from them being both civilian and women. Moreover, gender identity of female researchers often prevails over their professional identity. Thus, the usual power relationship between researcher and researched in the fieldwork appears reversed, with the researcher being perceived as the weakest and non-threatening part. These distinctive features may not necessarily hamper women’s work on the field, but may actually convert it into an advantage, thus facilitating the research process and revealing the “dark side” of the military institution.
The chapter starts by discussing how otherness in the research relation is context-dependent and gender becomes of specific relevance in gender-typed settings, determining flexible and often contradictory power relations. It then explores these issues through a retrospective examination of the authors’ concrete research experiences and stories, using research notes, anecdotes, and biographical memories . Firstly, it illustrates the construction of otherness of female civilian researchers, from access to the field to the fieldwork (observation, interviewing etc.). Secondly, it examines the researcher-researched relationship in terms of an asymmetrical and variable power setting, where gender plays a fundamental role in attributing and recognizing status.

- by and +1
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- Gender Studies, Gender and Military, Gender and Methodology in Social Research

Against the backdrop of an unprecedented number of women deploying
in a new array of roles in the so-called "global war on terror" and
the official opening of combat arms units to women in the United
States military, menstruation has served as a key idiom in debates
about what it means for women to wage war. In this article, I explore
what public curiosity about and military anxieties over soldier menstruation
can tell us about the banal and bodily nature of women’s
militarization as a deeply affective, sensorial, and embodied process,
and the tensions these anxieties reveal within liberal promises of
a gender-integrated US military. Drawing on discourse analysis and
ethnographic interviews, I examine efforts within US military medicine
to hormonally regulate women soldiers’ menstrual cycles as a matter
of military operational concern, alongside public narratives by women
soldiers who deny the significance of menstruation to the work of
soldiering. I argue that both of these discourses enact a conflation
between womanhood and menstruation in the debate over women’s
role in and at war, in a manner that circumscribes the possibilities of
what we can apprehend – and feel – about war and soldiering as
gendered experience.

- by Jocelyn L Chua
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- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Phenomenology of the body, Menstruation
- by Sharon Geva
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- Military History, Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Israel Studies

This article augments and complicates Nelson's claim that "we talk our way into war and talk our way out of it" (Dedaić & Nelson 2003, p. 459). Military endeavors require verbal legitimation, but militarizing participants and wide swaths of the civilian population requires more than just a stated rationale. It requires the complex construction of acquiescent selves and societies through linguistic maneuvers that present themselves with both brute force and subtlety to enable war's necropolitical calculus of who should live and who can, or must, die (MacLeish 2013, Mbembe 2003). War also involves vexed, stunted, and deadly forms of communication with perceived enemies or civilian populations. And those who are victims of military deeds, including civilians and sometimes service members themselves, are often left with psychic wounds that they cannot talk their way out of, for such wounds resist semantic expression and may emerge through more complex semiotic forms.

- by Teresa Jopson
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- Social Movements, Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Social movements and revolution
- by Lorraine Bayard de Volo and +1
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- Air Force Studies, Rape Culture, Gender and Military, Military Sexual Assault
- by Stephanie Szitanyi and +1
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- Militarism, Critical Discourse Analysis, Military, Militarism and militarization

The United States has opened all combat roles in the military to women through a groundbreaking decision made by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter in December 2015. The historical move by the Pentagon has garnered controversial reactions among men and women speculating if women are capable or “good enough” to serve on the frontlines in the toughest combat positions. The transition to a more gender-neutral military by lifting the combat ban was made after lengthy research and recommendations from all levels in the Army, Navy, Air Force and US Special Operations Command. Those in support of the inclusion of women such as Defense Secretary Carter and President Obama have emphasized that as long as women meet the required high standards of service positions, they will be fully integrated in to all aspects of the Armed Forces. However, a variety of issues remain surrounding the gendered-masculine standards to which women will be measured against and further, how equipped a male-dominated military is to actually meet the needs of women who are soldiers.

- by Andrea Ackerman
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- Gender Studies, Gender and Security, Gender and Military, Women in Combat

This article brings gender into the two-solitudes debate in Canadian foreign and defence policy by analyzing English- and French-Canadian newspaper coverage of women in combat in Afghanistan. We argue that there are no “two solitudes”—no national divisions are apparent between Quebec and the rest of Canada (ROC) when it comes to media representations of women in combat. Our findings confirm what other scholars have recently argued, which is that differences between the two solitudes on issues of defence policy may be less significant than often stated. The narrative of female combat soldiers presented in the media helps construct a pan-Canadian identity around the idea of Canada’s progressiveness on military gender integration. We also found that the extent to which the death of a female combat soldier received media attention was largely based on her origin from Quebec or the ROC. These differences lead us to conclude that a selective heroization of soldiers on the basis of their origins affects Canadian media coverage of the war.

In 2014, the Norwegian Special Operations Commando (NORSOC) established a pilot project named
“Jegertroppen” (the Hunter Troop) to recruit more women for operative military service. This unusual
approach, integration of women by separating men and women during education, brought national and
international attention, including admiration and wonder. This article explores why NORSOC segregated
male and female operators, and assess the effectiveness of the segregated approach for recruiting, selecting,
and retaining female operators.
Keywords: Recruit, Jegertroppen, Norway, NORSOC, female operator, gender, diversity, segregation, integration

- by Nina Rones
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- Military Sociology, Gender and Military

ABSTRACT Western military institutions are reforming to enhance gender inclusion. This imperative is driven by the need to sustain a volunteer force in a society with rapidly changing values coupled with a recognition that sustainability and legitimacy requires diverse representation from the community from which they draw their human resources. Our recent research has considered the changing character of the Australian Defence Force (ADF)’s disposition towards women, and discourse of gender and gender reform. In this paper we critically evaluate these discourses on gender equality across the ADF and outline the salient ideas and claims within institutional reviews and in academic papers written by ADF soldier–scholars. Our purpose is to interrogate current ways of framing and articulating key ideas on gender, sexuality, and equality to scrutinize the implications for the ADF’s stated purpose of creating a gender-inclusive workplace. We find that the driving functional imperative of military effectiveness limits and shapes the extent to which the ADF can become a genuinely gender-inclusive workplace.

- by Huei-yao Yao
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- Gender and Sexuality, Taiwan Studies, Heteronormativity, Gender and Military

The article aims to answer the question: what explains the absence of gender policies in official Brazilian defense documents? Therefore, it suggests that such absence is also a result of military influence in politics. That is, the challenges faced by Brazilian military women, such as limited access to certain weapons and specialties, restrictions on forms of entry, infrastructure problems and the lack of legislation to support them, are reflections of the interests of political elites and their relationship with the military leaders, who do not always have the political will to put the issue of gender on the agenda, striving to keep the organization unscathed from social changes. The article employs the process tracking technique, with a special focus on the search for empirical evidence.

- by Natália Schwether
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- Gender Studies, Gender and Military, Gender and the Military

O que explica a ausência de políticas de gênero nos documentos oficiais da defesa brasileira? Para responder, o artigo emprega a técnica de rastreamento de processo, com especial enfoque na busca de evidências empíricas. Sugere-se que tal ausência é resultado, também, da influência militar na política. Isto é, os desafios das mulheres militares brasileiras, como o acesso limitado a certas armas e especialidades, restrições nas formas de ingresso, problemas de infraestrutura e a inexistência de uma legislação que as ampare, são reflexos dos interesses das elites políticas e sua relação com os líderes militares, os quais nem sempre possuem vontade política para introduzir a questão de gênero na agenda, esforçando-se para manter a organização imune das mudanças sociais.

Kefi-Chatzichamperi, E., Kamberidou, I., & Patsantaras, N. (2018). PROMOTING A GENDER NEUTRAL-INCLUSIVE MILITARY SOCIETY THROUGH COED SPORTS - ΠΡΟΩΘΩΝΤΑΣ ΤΗΝ ΕΜΦΥΛΗ ΟΥΔΕΤΕΡΟΤΗΤΑ ΣΤΙΣ ΕΝΟΠΛΕΣ ΔΥΝΑΜΕΙΣ ΔΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΚΟΙΝΗΣ ΣΥΜΜΕΤΟΧΗΣ ΑΝΔΡΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΓΥΝΑΙΚΝ. «Η Kοινωνιολογία και ο δημόσιος ρόλος της στην εποχή της μεταμόρφωσης του κόσμου»- 6ο ΣΥΝΕΔΡΙΟ ΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΟΛΟΓΙΚΗΣ ΕΤΑΙΡΕΙΑΣ. HELLENIC SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY (HSS) - ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΟΛΟΓΙΚΗ ΕΤΑΙΡΕΙΑ (EKE). Copy at http://www.tinyurl.com/y5pshz93

- by Marta Havryshko
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- Gender and Military
- by Marta Havryshko
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- Sexuality And Culture, Women in the Military, Gender and Military

What is ViTTa? NSI's Virtual Think Tank (ViTTa) provides rapid response to critical information needs by pulsing a global network of subject matter experts (SMEs) to generate a wide range of expert insight. For the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Future of Global Competition and Conflict project, ViTTa was used to address 12 key questions provided by the project's Joint Staff sponsors.

Since women participate in combat positions which were exclusively male domain until contemporary militaries, I intend research whether contemporary militaries ask for non-traditional gender gender configurations? The aim of this paper is to address the aforementioned question through the analysis of types of masculinity and femininity and their relationship with contemporary militaries' tasks. I use critical feminist discourse analysis to study this relationship on the example of Serbian Military. The paper concludes that the nature of post-modern military tasks facilitate the patriarchal gender configurations in contemporary militaries, despite the possibility of women to participate in combat positions.

- by Andrej Cvetić
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- Feminism(s), Patriarchy, Gender and Military

Стаття присвячена проблемі домашнього насильства у мілітарних партнерствах, зокрема тих, де обидвоє подругів є військовими і перебувають у зоні воєнного конфлікту. Підкреслено "невидимість", замовчуваність цієї проблеми у суспільному... more

- by Marta Havryshko
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- Gender and Military, Women and Militarisation

Em torno da discussão sobre o papel feminino na sociedade atual, e com o trabalho elaborado por diversas organizações, como as Nações Unidas (a nível global) ou a Comissão para a Igualdade de Género (a nível nacional), um dos casos incontornáveis é o das Forças Armadas. Tendo em conta o seu papel na sociedade portuguesa, e a sua dualidade entre instituição militar e instituição “politica”, é interessante tentar perceber que discursos regem a integração feminina, principalmente em especialidades operacionais (vulgo, de combate), os seus aspetos politizados e as suas bases biológicas, nunca descurando a história dessa mesma presença e as experiências de outros países.
Assim, torna-se necessária uma investigação plural, multisituada e multidisciplinar, que tenha em conta as particularidades físicas do serviço militar, particularmente em especialidades operacionais, onde o combate direto (que envolve a mobilização, localização, engajamento e destruição de um inimigo/objetivo) é uma realidade, e que como tal requer dos participantes capacidades físicas acima da média. Neste trabalho é feita, então, uma discussão e avaliação entre dados biológicos (desde publicações cientificas peer-reviewed, a opiniões publicadas em revistas militares), publicações e trabalhos sociológicos, a um trabalho de campo feito pelo próprio autor do presente trabalho, através de entrevistas semi estruturadas e não estruturadas.

- by Jorge Baptista
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- Civil-military relations, Gender and Military
- by Christine (Tina) Taitano DeLisle and +2
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- Japanese Studies, Indigenous Studies, Pacific Island Studies, Sociology of the Military
- by Mile Bjelajac
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- Gender and Military, Serbian Army

Presentation delivered at the Workshop on Feminism and Militarism at the University of San Francisco (USF), San Francisco, USA, 2016
I link militarisation with security and the body and argue that while in conscription societies the body was militarised for the provision of sovereign security, in post-conscription society the body is militarised for its own security qua house of life. In post-conscription societies the militarisation of the body is effected through a diffuse form of power that operates through normative discourses. I identified three discourses: the discourse of freedom, whereby one freely chooses to join the military and in doing so they can acquire moral and social status; the discourse of risk, whereby the body of those who join the military is guaranteed to be exposed to minimal risk; the discourse of pleasure, whereby civilians militarise their bodies because of the pleasure it provides.

- by Federica Caso
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- Militarism, Security Studies, Feminism, Militarism and militarization
- by Constance R Sutton
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- Sexuality, Gender, War, Peace

How do we account for the dearth of female contributions to UN peace operations (UNPOs)? For answers, this study examines conditions that led the United Nations to move to reduce the gender imbalance in UNPO personnel and provides descriptive evidence that points to the continuing underrepresentation of women in these operations. To interpret this evidence, the study presents theoretical explanations for the varying contributions of personnel to UNPOs—including the political and socioeconomic character of the contributing states, international reputations and norms, and various demand-side influences exerted by missions—and then tests these explanations with a cross-sectional time-series model that accounts for female personnel contributions to each mission in the 2010–2011 period. Although offering significant support for domestic political explanations, the findings indicate that gender diversity is not a primary goal of most contributors and is largely a by-product of force sizes.

- by Armed Forces & Society
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- Gender Studies, United Nations, Gender, Peacekeeping