The Question of Gender Equality in the Armed Forces free essay sample

This study draws on qualitative data and secondary research to analyse the themes of gender, militarism, violence and war. Paying particular attention to women’s experiences in the British Military throughout the study, the ideologies of gender within the armed forces are examined with examples from history. The effect of women’s increased integration into militaries is analysed for both ideological and policy changes to the armed forces, and the effects on the women’s own identities. Focusing on the military as a labour market and as a means to citizenship rights allows for discussions of equality for women within militaries, finally leading to theoretical discussion of the ethics and impact of violence and militarism, exploring the subjectivity of knowledge and the possibility of imaging alternative orders. INTRODUCTION Rationale and Literature Review That we have to talk about ‘women and the armed forces,’ shows the deeply gendered nature of our understandings of militaries and war. The fact that it is necessary to specify ‘female combatants’ indicates their historical rarity, and symbolic position as unconventional figures. Traditionally, war has been perceived as a masculine endeavour for which women may serve as victim, spectator, or prize. Perhaps, as Francine DAmico suggests, the abundance of feminist analysis of the subject is precisely a result of women’s positioning within wars, and the silencing of their war stories. 1 Perhaps our scrutiny is a fascination for the unknown. Perhaps we need to reclaim an erased identity, to legitimize our ability to speak within heavily masculine arenas. The question raised by this study is whether we must participate in war to claim that voice? Cynthia Enloe reminds us to question all which seems most natural, inevitable, or traditional to us. Masculinity and femininity are two categories which demand such attention, and the work of feminists and gender theorists have formed increasingly strong cases which reveal these distinctions as having been made through particular decisions, by specific people. 2 By this understanding, the involvement of women in state militaries is never random. 3 Robert W. Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity refers to a particular set of masculine norms and practices that have become dominant in specific institutions of social control. To become hegemonic, cultural norms must be supported by institutional power. Hence, hegemonic masculinity is a set of norms and practices associated with men in powerful social institutions. 4 Once a particular set of behaviours has been established as the norm for appropriate conduct within any institution, it becomes difficult to critique, partly because normativity makes certain practices appear ‘natural’. As Annica Kronsell argues in her study of the Swedish Military, in the history of most military institutions, â€Å"masculinity has been normalized and regularized. †5 This study will draw particularly from existing research about the British context. In a relatively short time, the armed forces of the United Kingdom have made significant advances to integrate women within their military, for various organisational, political and social reasons. 6 Reflecting the political trends in global security and developments towards non-traditional military operations (for instance peacekeeping, peace enforcement and humanitarian intervention), the international movement has been towards an extension of military roles for women, and at present women play a more active and visible role in the armed forces than ever before. 7 â€Å"The increase in the proportion of women in the Armed Forces raises practical and policy issues for the decision-makers within the armed forces. It also raises cultural questions about how gender is understood within the Armed Forces; the challenges which the presence of women in increasing numbers bring to military culture8 and how these matters circulate within and beyond the military into the British society and the international arena as whole. The extent to which women are integrated into the armed forces will be discussed in relation to ideological processes generated by security elites. In the process by which elites in any state conceptualize ‘security,’ the decision-makers must compare threats and enemies, and in doing so, some concerns are prioritised, and others ignored. Such ideological procedures inevitably affect the validity of alternative defence strategies, and again, these are ranked according to their ability to maintain the current order. It is the defense and maintenance of the structures of public authority in the face of either domestic or external challenge which will receive most attention. While constructions of masculinity and femininity are always circulating in and around militarism and war, women -and their bodies- are primary considerations for military and state leaders. The ideological processes that shapes a state’s uses of women in the armed forces are determined by the structures distinguishing and reconciling women’s many roles and ‘natural’ characteristics within that society. 9 One of our goals will be to uncover the process by which gender ideologies are modified, contested and renegotiated by war and militaries. How has war shaped what the culture accepts as ‘natural’ or ’true’ about men and women? And how are men and women shaping militaries and the war-system? Does war result in increased sexual equality? By exploring the conditions under which states include women in the militaries, we contribute to the mounting social science literature and theory concerned with women’s military roles cross-culturally and historically. Research into women’s contemporary military roles, and how gender is constructed within the armed forces is of course, not new within the social sciences, nor is the study of the military experience oriented towards understanding construction of gender identities. There is a growing body of work on femininities and the military experience, with Cynthia Enloe’s work regarding the militarisation of women’s lives providing fresh insights for the Post-Cold War years. Nira Yuval-Davis’ examinations of the links between gender, militarism, and national identities; Christopher Dandeker and L. P. Peach’s cross-national comparative work on combat exclusion; Juanita Firestone and Carole Pateman’s studies on occupational segregation and Segal’s exposition of a broader cross-cultural theorization of women’s military roles, have all contributed to broader theories about the social construction of gender, and have provided the discussion about gender and the military experience with much insight and diversity of theory. Philosophers Hannah Arendt and Jean Bethke Elshtain provide great insight into deconstructing violence and militarism with the purpose of exposing the temporal and subjective nature of political Realism, and its excessive focus on war. The subject of women’s relationship with the military has created intense debate amongst many protagonists, reflecting the controversy and the importance of the issues involved. 10 They may be briefly sketched according to their basic orientation on this issue of combat, ranging from those who are strictly opposed to any utilization of women in the armed forces, to those who ardently support complete access for women. Both military traditionalists and the pacifist feminists, for example, are opposed to women in the armed forces in general and in the combat arms in particular, but their reasoning could not be more opposed. The military often portrays women soldiers as disruptive in combat situations, by exposing the military gender system and therefore damaging the efficiency of the masculine war machine. 11 Feminist observers, on the other hand, tend to regard women soldiers role in a wider debate, as either serving or harming women’s interests. 12 As Orna Sasson-Levy points out, the ongoing debate regarding women’s military service tends to view women soldiers as â€Å"pawns in a bigger game. †13 The most dominant question in this debate is whether military service is a venue for equal citizenship for women or a reinforcement of masculine concepts of security and power. Thus, the contemporary debate on women in the military tends to remain on the macro level and ignores the gender experience of women soldiers themselves. I find that the most interesting arenas for studying gender are those where the ideologies of masculinity and femininity are central to the organisation of social activity, and identity. In these more extreme settings, gender becomes a crucial distinction for stratifying society, and deciding how roles and responsibilities should be assigned. The inclusion of women in ultra-masculinised arenas can simultaneously expose the prioritisation of masculinities within cultures, and calls into question the gender identity of the women themselves. As women represent what has been conceptually and physically denied from masculinised institutions, women’s presence in these spheres reveals the shapes and forms of gender power within such organizations. 14 The narratives of the women become integral to the study, as their agency is often disregarded within the debate as a whole. It is also interesting to analyse how institutions that embody these understandings of gender, also play a dominant role in broader cultural meanings of gender. I find the consequences of this, and the processes by which ideologies of gender become naturalised fascinating, and especially seek to locate these debates within international and epistemological contexts. Theoretical Framework The complex nature of women’s location in institutions of hegemonic masculinity presents a challenge to researchers. Feminist standpoint and postmodernist theories support the argument that the individual woman within these institutions can generate important insights about systems of control, and the effects of gendered hierarchies. Meghana Nayak and Jennifer Suchland have shown that by analysing practices carried out in different sites within hegemonic institutions, highly abstract notions of masculinity can become concrete. The narratives of military women reveal the highly complex operations of hegemonic masculinity. 15 Nancy Harstock’s argues that in this respect, that â€Å"one can only know and appropriate the world (change it and be changed by it) through practical activity. †16 Thus, it is not only what women experience as they go through life, but the insight or consciousness they can gain from their activities and interactions in a gendered world, that produces knowledge. This approach is particularly useful when looking at the effects of militarism on women, and Enloe’s extensive work on this subject prioritises their voice, and their knowledge. I would argue, however, that standpoint theory’s focus on ‘women’s knowledge’ and ‘women’s lives’ as a privileged position for making knowledge claims has tended to essentialize and universalize deconstruct the category ‘woman. ’17 The stability of the category ‘woman’ in standpoint theory has been contested at length by theorists such as bell hooks, along lines of class, sexuality and ethnicity. 18 Since all societies are stratified by class, ethnicity, race, access to natural resources as well as gender, hooks and others argue that there are no ‘women’ standing outside these stratifications. As such, I also utilise feminist and postmodern conceptualizations of identity as relational and situational specific, constructed through everyday repetitive practices. 19 Following much of Judith Butler’s theory, gender identities are analyzed as a â€Å"never-ending series of performative practices, which are repetitive imitations of an imagined gender identity. †20 This theory is extremely useful when analysing identity practices within militaries, as it espouses open and changeable notions of gender. The contrast between the approaches of standpoint and postmodern feminism will help to evaluate whether the possibility of mutual or common political interests between women are possible, despite the unstable and shifting the status of the category ‘woman’. They will also enable us to evaluate the subjectivity of knowledge gained from the various sources of this study. Methodology Theorists of Feminism and International Relations Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland regard a feminist epistemology a simply meaning that gender is a key element to the theory and practice of research. 21 They argue that â€Å"The lens of gender offers not just an alternative vision of the world, but one that is more whole and more representative of the spectrum of experience out of which international conflict and cooperation arise. It offers the possibility of an escape from one of the major sources of fragmentation and distortion in our discipline. †22 The extent to which a methodology is feminist, however, stretches beyond the theory which underpins the study. Helena Carreiras reminds us of the importance of â€Å"analysis† exclusively based on the ‘subjective’ dimension of women’s perceptions and representations†23 This study focuses on the subjective gender experience of women soldiers in military roles and the meaning of those experiences at both the microlevel of women’s lives and the macrolevel of the military and state â€Å"gender regimes†. 24 The primary qualitative data for this study will be collected by a small sample of semi-structured interviews informed by feminist interview techniques, with women from the British Military, focusing on prioritising the voice of the research participant throughout the study. Semi-structured interviewing is more flexible than standardised methods such as the structured interview or survey, and a feminist interview method encourages a more reflexive approach that aims to neutralise the hierarchical, exploitative power relations that were claimed to be inherent in the more traditional interview structure, which has traditionally marginalised, inadequately represented, and even excluded womens experiences. Contemporary feminist approaches acknowledge gender inequality and seeks to incorporate an awareness of gender relations through a reflexive approach to interviews. Ann Oakley’s methodology addresses these issues, and she argues that, â€Å"In most cases, the goal of finding out about people through interviewing is best achieved when the relationship of interviewer and interviewee is non-hierarchical and when the interviewer is prepared to invest his or her own personal identity in the relationship. †25 The feminist researchers primary motivations are to empower women and to restructure the imbalance of equality in understanding womens experiences, and so feminist research challenges both the knowledge which is produced and the methods of producing knowledge. Through social research, feminist methods go beyond studying women as objects of investigation. Rather they seek to challenge gender inequalities in social research and to motivate emancipatory, political change of womens experiences in society, engaging with them and recognising the role of the researcher and the influence this has upon the study. In their study of feminist methodologies, Judith A. Cook and Mary Margaret Fonow emphasise the need to challenge the norm of objectivity that assumes that the subject and object of research can be separated from one another and that personal and grounded experiences are unscientific. 26 One way in which feminist researchers have addressed this is through treating the interview as co-constructive. Ann Oakley’s feminist paradigm for interviewing aims to minimize objectification of the subject as data by viewing the interview as an â€Å"interactional exchange. †27 Feminist researchers claim that developing a rapport with interviewees is an essential part of establishing trust, respect and maintaining an empathetic position, and gathering knowledge not just ‘for the sake of it’, but for the women who are providing the information too. Oakley advocates that answering the questions of interviewees humanizes the researcher and places the interaction on a more equal footing. 28 This research method rejects the positivistic ideal of producing an impersonal and objective account of experience. Although the interviewer in this technique will have some established general topics for investigation, this method allows for the exploration of emergent themes and ideas rather than relying only on concepts and questions defined in advance of the interview. Cook and Fonow note that a further aspect of feminist methodology requires investigation into professional gate-keeping practices, including the influence of gate-keeping on topic selection and research funding and the formulation and implementation of alternatives to the present gate keeping system. 29 The relatively closed nature of the military can make it difficult for an interested researcher to secure access to this field. As such, interviews will be arranged with individual women from the Royal Navy, the Royal Airforce (RAF) and the Army through personal recommendations. Despite these connections, the concern for ethical implications of the research are central to the study, and correct ethics procedures will be maintained throug hout the study, with participants being reassured of their anonymity, the availability of copies of the final draft, and security that the information provided will only be used for the purpose of this dissertation, without any view for publication. Studies such as Pamela Cotterill’s concerned with the subject of interviewing women have highlighted the problem that ‘public’ and ‘private’ divisions have their equivalent within language. 30 I have been conscious of the language I have used in this study so as to avoid subordinating women through my research. 31 The experience of individual women, does not, unsurprisingly, produce analogous understandings of gender patterns and feminist theories. Therefore, consciousness about any particular experience must be connected to a wider set of gendered power relations that structures those experiences. We must contextualize individual experiences and isolated events and an important role for the feminist academic is to become a ‘mediator’ between knowledge gained through women’s and men’s daily experiences and knowledge of global gender relations gained from ‘outside. ’32 Despite my focus on the British experience, the case studies and secondary readings used in this research project provide rich empirical material from countries and cultures across the globe, with examples selected which combine both variations and similarities which are sufficient to engage in and develop my research. The standpoint and postmodern theories employed in the approach the semi-structured interviews and their analysis will develop my understanding of whether identity practices reflect a human agency capable of negotiation, renewal, and change and the extent to which they are limited and conditioned by the structure of social relations. 33 Thus, focusing on identity practices enables me to comprehend more fully â€Å"the complexities of structural demands versus human agency, without unduly privileging one over the other† 34 Informed by Sasson-Levy’s interview style in her study of Israeli soldiers, I can analyze how subjective meanings are created at different locations within structures of inequality. 35 As such, I address questions at both the macro- and micro-level, focusing both on the interaction between state institutions and identity practices. CHAPTER ONE THE MILITARY AND IDEOLOGIES OF GENDER â€Å"What we do we often do somewhat unthinkingly, repeating inherited patterns, reconstructing familiar identities, re-encoding traditional scripts. †36 Jean Bethke Elshtain In contrast to Clausewitzs description of war as a continuation of politics by other means, philosopher Hannah Arendt questions the historic transformations and practices that have made possible â€Å"a consensus among political theorists from Left to Right to the effect that violence is nothing more than the most flagrant manifestation of power. †37 Revealing the war system and militaries in this light, demands that we pay attention to the conceptions that allow for this current order. War is understood within an international system and state culture that bases its conceptions of political community on the premise that men’s membership in certain kinds of political collectivities, is related to their preparedness to sacrifice their lives for national security or state interest. 38 The pervasiveness of war in history, and our expectation that men will take part in war has profound consequences for our understandings of masculinity and femininity, and in her work Women and War, Jean Bethke Elshtain has argued that women’s social roles can only be understood when the significance of war and militarism within our societies is fully realised. Thus, for both men and women, ‘gender’ and ‘war’ are inescapably bound together in the history of western thought and practice. There is a close connection between state-making and war-making. Max Weber defines the state precisely by its monopoly over the legitimate use of force, which forms the basis of the coercive power from which states rule particular territories and people. 39 Following this, Nira Yuval-Davis notes that establishing a ‘people’s army’ or introducing national draft has historically been one key method of legitimating particular regimes and governments in various cultures and eras. 40 Gendered and feminist analyses reveal that the state is in almost all cases male dominated, and is in many different ways a masculinist construct. Jan Jindy Pettman argues that â€Å"It is simply not possible to explain state power without explaining women’s systematic exclusion from it. †41 Cynthia Enloe articulates that the military is â€Å"not just another patriarchal institution,†42 but is the institution most closely identified with the state and its particular ideologies. In her historical and cross-cultural study of women’s military roles, Mady Wechsler Segal confirms that the armed forces have traditionally been defined as the most prototypically masculine of all social institutions. 43 It follows that for women to participate in this manly endeavour, either the perception of the armed forces must have changed to make it more amenable to women and femininity, or women have to be perceived as changing in ways that make them more compatible for military service. Segal notes a third option, that the security situation could be so extreme that the ideological concerns are less of a priority than that of national defense. 44 Analysis of the various interrelational factors influencing women’s relationship to, and conceptions of, the armed forces will bring us closer to understanding whether a state’s greater emphasis on ascription by gender limits womens military role. The apparent malleable nature of women’s involvement in the military indicates that conceptions and ideologies are not objective, but socially constructed, and require constant redefinition over time, as the priorities and demands of the armed forces change, and as other structural influences also evolve. Women’s experiences of war, therefore, whether they are treated as actors or subjects, are susceptible to the construction of gender, but also race, class national and political structures operating in and around their lives. Cultural norms about gender have a profound impact on how women are regarded in relation to war, what is expected of them in times of national crisis, and the strength of the repercussions suffered for acting outside the accepted gender boundaries. 45 Developing Segal’s arguments, Darlene Iskra et al. argue that social values about force, power and domination particularly determine how the military is perceived in the society and how the society is able to imagine conflict, and conceive of its resolution. 46 The further into the study of gender relations we explore, particularly with regard to military policies and ideologies, the more apparent it seems that we should not concern ourselves with any objectively ‘true’ or ‘neutral’ knowledge. Rather, this study begins only with the understanding that the discourse of gender and importantly, gender differences, have presently in most societies, great importance attached to them. This has resulted in profound consequences for women and men’s lives. I look to analyse how the interpretation of these ideologies is contextual and changeable, and the effects of these processes are made visible in sites of contention, such as the military. Which particular ideologies of gender have allowed for war to be elevated to its current position within our realist international security agenda? And how are women’s experiences of military life affected by preconceptions of gender roles capabilities? Examining the extent to which wars depend on ideologies of gender and gendered power relations in order to function and evaluating the effect of social, national and political influences on women’s integration into the military will help us to theorise about the constructions of gender implicit to these policy debates, and what this will mean for women’s future military participation. Social Construction and Prevailing Notions of Gender The meanings of sex and gender are socially and historically contingent, and as such, not concepts that are easily definable. Feminists and gender theorists interrogate the essentialist categories of man and woman; male and female, that we use to understand both sex and gender. 47 Even the distinction of ‘sex’ as a purely biological classification, and ‘gender’ as a socially constructed phenomenon is problematic, and excludes those people who identify themselves as asexual, intersexual, transsexual and hermaphroditic. We must also interrogate the dominance of gender as mode of identity formation. Postmodern feminist theory has challenged the universal application of gender, and the perpetuation of its discursive effects, focussing on the category of ‘woman’ in its ability to represent and initiate feminist interests and goals within the discourse. Judith Butler explores the concept of representation as a normative function of a language which is said to â€Å"reveal or to distort what is assumed to be true about the category of women,†48 primarily as this approach pre-empts who is included, and importantly, who is misrepresented or entirely excluded from that category. This undermines the stability of the term ‘women’ and following this argument, the subjects of feminism are themselves regulated, defined and reproduced by the discursive structures which determine them to be ‘women’ in the first place. Whilst the collapse of the category of ‘woman’ would indeed signify a real change to the present gender order, the primacy of gender roles in war and militaries must be attended to if social change and equality are to be realised. It is useful to consider the dynamic construction of sex and gender by theorising about masculinities and femininities broadly, conceptions which Laura Sjoberg describes as â€Å"stereotypes, behavioural norms and rules assigned to people based on their perceived membership in sex categories. †49 I support the approach that gender is not static, but a contingent and changing social process. Connell’s interpretation of gender as a set of discourses which represent and construct and have the power to alter meaning and power within our cultures shows the importance of gender as an analytical concept. 50 This approach enables us to understand the diverse, and sometimes conflicting nature of gender representations, whilst also acknowledging the prevalence of gendered discourses in both international politics and interpersonal identity formation. Following Connell’s approach, social structures such as labour and power are all implicated in any society’s ideas of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’. These structures ideologically construct ‘women’ and ‘men’ in terms of certain characteristics. Zarina Maharaj notes that a certain type of sexuality and a certain possession or lack of authoritative, decision making capacity are regarded as gender identity markers in this way. 51 The extent to which particular roles and norms are seen as appropriate to each gender is therefore socially determined,52 and the division of social activities, responsibilities and capabilities are made along the lines of ‘male’ and ‘female. ’ The degree to which a society exaggerates or minimises the importance of sex differences is reflected in the fabric of its institutions, the history of its traditions and cultures, and the perceptions of its citizens. Therefore, it is my belief that the social roles of men and women, the extent to which deviations to these roles are tolerated, and the boundaries which confine our understandings of gender and sex, are regulated by states and elites in decision-making positions. It follows then, that these definitions are subject to change and due to the activities and knowledge produced by the women’s movement of the past decades, gender roles have indeed been widely discussed in society at large and, have resulted in the establishment of different, non-traditional role models for women. The feminist actions of women themselves are not, however, the only source of change where ideologies of gender are concerned, and in Segal’s model for theorising the women’s involvement in militaries, she argues that political, international, social, cultural and military pressures all influence the level of integration in a state’s armed forces,53 and furthermore, the causal links between these influences and the structure of a society are not always clear, but operate in a interrelational fashion. It is important to understand that the military plays a significant role in determining the degree to which women have become integrated within the armed forces, and economic, political and technological changes have all affected the physical and ideological positioning on women in regard to the military, and in response to its particular requirements. The Status of War Anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt concludes that with war, as with â€Å"all matters cultural, the society shapes natural human capacities and potentialities to it’s accepted purposes, reinforcing some and suppressing others†¦by systematically rewarding and punishing, by indoctrinating youth, creating role models to be emulated, and honouring those who perform well. †54 Behind any war is a system of beliefs that permits them to occur. Standing militaries, training and defence funding take up large proportions of almost every state budget, directly impacting on society, its institutions and its culture. This reflects the global â€Å"predisposition to resort to violence†55 to resolve conflict or pursue interests. This constructivist argument frames war as a human activity and there is much space within it for imagining alternatives to the war system we know. The same capabilities could be applied in a different culture, into non-warlike practices. However, in his study of war and gender, Joshua Goldstein maintains that the connection between the two is â€Å"more stable, across cultures and through time, than are either gender roles outside of war or the forms and frequency of war itself. †56 This can be explained by taking the approach that war is not a natural endeavour for neither man or woman, but in an effort to convince men to lay their lives down for national causes, state ideologies have connected the most highly regarded forms of masculinity with soldiering and war. Goldstein contends that the war system as we recognise it has been shaped and adjusted but that the selection of men as combatants and women as supporters has been consistent across cultures and through time. 57 This tradition is evident in classical social contract theories, where the legitimation of violence, and the accordant citizenship rights attached to this, are exclusive masculine privileges, and this responsibility been utilised by states to divide its citizenry into active and passive halves. 58 This structure is not limited to the national context, and in the anarchical international system which dominant political realists imagine, Tickner confirms that power, autonomy, self-reliance, and rationality are all necessary characteristics of state behaviour, and all of these attributes are ones we associate with a socially constructed ‘ideal-type’ masculinity. 59 In the same way that men within societies have traditionally born the physical duty of defending their nati