Women, Warfare and Representation: American Servicewomen in the Twentieth Century 9781474238038, 9781474238144, 9781474238045

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Women, Warfare and Representation

War, Culture and Society Series Editor: Stephen McVeigh, Associate Professor, Swansea University, UK Editorial Board: Paul Preston LSE, UK Joanna Bourke Birkbeck, University of London, UK Debra Kelly University of Westminster, UK Patricia Rae Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada James J. Weingartner Southern Illinois University, USA (Emeritus) Kurt Piehler Florida State University, USA Ian Scott University of Manchester, UK War, Culture and Society is a multi- and interdisciplinary series which encourages the parallel and complementary military historical and socio-cultural investigation of twentieth- and twenty-first-century war and conflict. Published: The British Imperial Army in the Middle East, James Kitchen (2014) The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars, Gajendra Singh (2014) South Africa’s “Border War,” Gary Baines (2014) Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan, Adam Broinowski (2016) The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery During the China and Pacific Wars, Caroline Norma (2015) Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan, Adam Broinowski (2016) Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War, Gerben Zaagsma (2017) Forthcoming: Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway: Narratives of History and Memory, Lizzie Oliver (2017) The Franco-Algerian War Through a Twenty-First Century Lens: Film and History, Nicole Beth Wallenbrock (2017) Picturing Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia: Atrocity Images and the Contested Memory of the Second World War in the Balkans, Jovan Byford (2018)

Women, Warfare and Representation American Servicewomen in the Twentieth Century Emerald M. Archer

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Emerald M. Archer, 2017 Emerald M. Archer has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-3803-8 ePDF: 978-1-4742-3804-5 eBook: 978-1-4742-3813-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Archer, Emerald M., author. Title: Women, warfare and representation: American servicewomen in the twentieth century/Emerald M. Archer. Description: London, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Academic, [2017] | Series: War, culture and society; 17 Identifiers: LCCN 2016054510 | ISBN 9781474238038 (hbk.) | ISBN 9781474238137 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: United States–Armed Forces–Women–History–20th century. | Women and war–United States–History–20th century. | Sex role–United States–History–20th century. Classification: LCC UB418.W65 A74 2017 | DDC 355.0082/0973–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016054510 Series: War, Culture and Society Series design: Clare Turner Cover image: A US Marine Aviator of Marine All Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 121 prepares to board her craft © Getty Images Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our newsletters.

For Lynne

Contents List of Figures viii List of Tables ix List of Graphs x Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii 1 Introduction 2 History of Women’s Participation in the US Armed Forces 3 Comparative Histories: Women’s Participation in the British, Canadian, and Israeli Armed Forces 4 Stereotype Threat Theory and Women’s Marksmanship Performance: A Social Psychology Experiment 5 In-Depth Interviews and Revealing Patterns of Sex-Role Stereotyping in the US Marine Corps and US Air Force 6 Women’s Representation in War Photography and the Perpetuation of a Grand Narrative 7 The RMA Debate: Gender Perspectives and Women’s Integration as Military Innovation 8 Conclusion

1 19 65 93 107 141 167 191

Notes200 References209 Index227

List of Figures 2.1 Female active-duty military personnel 4.1 Ability effects (“recent marksmanship score”) on female Marine qualification score 4.2 Ability effects (“recent marksmanship score”) on male Marine qualification score 6.1 Republican militiawoman training on the beach outside Barcelona, August 1936. Photograph by Gerda Taro. © International Center of Photography 6.2 The Home Front in Britain during the Second World War. © IWM (C 1869) 6.3 Drivers from the French Ambulance Corps near the Front, waiting to be called, 1944. Photograph by Robert Capa. © Magnum Photos 6.4 Military kiosk counter, Shaare Avraham, Israel, 2004. © Rachel Papo 6.5 U.S. Infantry soldier wins game of rummy after being injured by roadside bomb, 2009. © Erin Trieb 6.6 U.S. Army readies armored vehicles for withdrawal at Bagram Air Base. © Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

20 102 102

154 155 157 159 161 163

List of Tables 2.1 Women’s level of participation by line service during the Second World War 2.2 Introduction of women’s service programs 2.3 Military women in the Persian Gulf War by service 4.1 Recruit marksmanship qualification data 5.1 USMC and USAF female participants 5.2 USMC and USAF male participants 5.3 In-depth interview questions 6.1 Women’s participation in conflict in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries 6.2 Conflicts most frequently documented in the photography sample 6.3 Categories of women’s action 6.4 Categories of men’s action 7.1 Possible RMAs and driving forces 7.2 RMAs precede and are subsumed by military revolutions 7.3 Difference between gender RMA and mainstream conceptualizations

29 30 56 97 113 114 115 146 149 149 150 170 173 180

List of Graphs 6.1 Women’s general representation in war photography in the twentieth century 6.2 Women’s changing representation in war photography over time (1910–2015)

151 151

Acknowledgments I am indebted to a number of people and institutions for providing support while I worked on this project. This book would not be possible without the critiques of trusted colleagues, the financial support of Woodbury University, the steady encouragement of Bloomsbury editors, and the patient love of my friends and family. I would like to first thank my colleagues and friends at Woodbury University. Doug Cremer, Will McConnell, Rossen Ventzislavov, Douglas Green, and James Robertson reviewed chapters in various stages of completion and provided a critical eye that was invaluable to the finished product. Thanks are due as well to the Woodbury library staff for expediting inter library loan requests and to Astrid Virding for editorial commentary. Their generosity will not be forgotten. Woodbury University supported this project financially in two critical ways. First, Woodbury provided me with a semester sabbatical that supplied uninterrupted time to write this book. Second, the university awarded me with a Faculty Development Grant that enabled research trips early on in the process. Many other professionals in many places require thanks. This work would not have been possible without the stewardship of Rose McDermott, M. Kent Jennings, Arpad Kadarkay, and David Sherman. Their fine mentorship throughout my graduate studies is reflected in many of the chapters of this book. This project has profited from intellectual exchanges that have taken place at American Political Science Association conferences. Great insights on the topic of women and militarism were also gathered during conversations with colleagues at the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces & Society conference. Without Nancy Wilson’s generous transcription of interviews, the synthesis of copious amounts of information would not have been possible. Stephen McVeigh, the series editor, and Claire Lipscomb at Bloomsbury were patient with my countless questions and made the process of writing my first book more enjoyable than I could imagine. A special debt of gratitude is owed to my family and friends, whose support made it possible to carry on in moments of doubt. I am particularly grateful to my mother who supports me in all things and provides sober council when I am in need. Ross Davis’ influence on this project was profound and I thank him from the bottom of my heart. His enthusiasm made it possible. I am thankful for the conversations I’ve had with my grandmothers, Jean Sayles and Barbara Elwell, who experienced the Second World War on different sides of the Atlantic. Although Barbara Elwell did not live to see the finished product, her words of encouragement were deeply meaningful. To Nathan Crockett, my love, thank you for believing in me when I did not. Your unconditional love, generosity, humor, and kindness pushed me over the finish line. Kate Sojda, Andrea Hatch, Cate Roman, Linda Parks, and Lisa Cooper were constant

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Acknowledgments

sources of levity over the course of this project. Such strong women are a wellspring of encouragement. Finally, thank you to each and every one of the Marines and Airmen who offered their time and insight to this project. I am grateful for their patience, support, and participation. While there was not enough room to share all insights provided by every service member, it is my hope that those who participated see their voices collectively reflected in the pages of this book. Emerald M. Archer Pasadena, CA

Abbreviations AAF ANG ATS AVF BDU CAMC CATS CF CHRT CNO COIN CREW CST CWAAF CWAC DACOWITS DADT DI DoD ETO FANY FET FOIA GAO IDF LGBT MABWIFC MCWR MOS MP MRAP MTI NAP NATO ODS OSD POW QMAAC

Army Air Forces Air National Guard Auxiliary Territorial Service All-Volunteer Force Battle Dress Uniform Canadian Army Medical Corps Canadian Auxiliary Territorial Service Canadian Forces Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Chief of Naval Operations Counter Insurgency Operations Combat Related Employment of Women Cultural Support Team Canadian Women’s Auxiliary Air Force Canadian Women’s Army Corps Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services Don’t ask, don’t tell Drill instructor Department of Defense European Theater of Operations First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Female Engagement Team Freedom of Information Act Government Accountability Office Israeli Defense Force Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Minister’s Advisory Board on Women in the Canadian Forces Marine Corps Women’s Reserve Military Occupational Specialties Members of parliament Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Military Training Instructor National Action Plan North Atlantic Treaty Organization Operation Desert Storm Office of the Secretary of Defense Prisoner of war Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Crops

xiv RAF RCAF RCAMC RCN REO ROTC RMA RN SEA SES SOF SPARS ST SWINTER SWPA UAV UN UNEF UNSCR USAF USMA USMC VAD WAAC WAAF WAC WAF WASPs WAVES WD WPS WRAC WRAF WRCNS WRNS

Abbreviations Royal Air Force Royal Canadian Air Force Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps Royal Canadian Navy Registration for Employment Order Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Revolutions in Military Affairs Royal Navy Southeast Asia Socioeconomic status Special Operations Forces US Coast Guard Women’s Reserve Stereotype threat Service Women in Non-Traditional Environments and Roles Southwest Pacific Area Unmanned Aerial Vehicle United Nations United Nations Emergency Force United Nations Security Council Resolution United States Air Force United States Military Academy United States Marine Corps Voluntary Aid Detachment Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps Women’s Auxiliary Air Force Women’s Army Corps Women in the Air Force Women Airforce Service Pilots Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service Women’s Division Women, Peace, and Security Women’s Royal Army Corps Women’s Royal Air Force Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service Women’s Royal Naval Service

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Introduction

This book arose from a set of interrelated and interdisciplinary questions. What are the various ways American servicewomen have been represented? What are the various types of records and approaches that shed light on how those representations are created? How do those representations impact the narratives we tell about servicewomen and the roles they are permitted to inhabit? How do these narratives reveal and obscure the presence of women in the military context? It sets forth an argument that the combined result of these representations and narratives is that servicewomen are symbolically misrepresented in ways that alter and obscure the narrative of their actual roles. Additionally, the critique of their resulting predicament requires an interdisciplinary inquiry into the various modes of representation and the distorted narratives they produce. Indeed, representation is the organizing principle that unites all chapters of the book. The book also makes the argument that interdisciplinary inquiry is indispensable to approaching questions that lie at the intersection of gender and conflict. There have been several edited volumes focused on gender and security that have made similar claims (Carden-Coyne 2012; Carreiras 2006; Sutton et  al. 2008). However, this book showcases the adoption of interdisciplinary thinking by a single investigator to understand how women have historically been represented in the military and how those representations have changed over time. Through the use of various methodologies, each chapter aims to understand a different layer of representation. As the reader will see, in-depth interviews are employed to understand how servicewomen represent themselves and their peers (individual level of analysis). Experimental analysis is applied to understand how deployed gendered representations (stereotypes) can undermine particular performances of the servicewoman and, therefore, perpetuate certain narratives about her (organizational level of analysis). The photographic record, too, promotes a certain type of representation about servicewomen that impacts the way society visualizes women’s roles and contributions in the armed forces (systemic level of analysis). The intellectual capital of political science, history, sociology, art history, women’s and gender studies, and military studies are united to model the types of investigations that are possible when considering how differing representations affect various narratives about servicewomen across time and space. The historical and interdisciplinary perspectives that are provided here, I hope, advance greater

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clarity and new understandings of the representations and narratives concerning women in twentieth- and twenty-first-century conflicts. Although this monograph is focused on women’s recent experience in the American Armed Forces, it incorporates a historical and cross-national dimension to better visualize the arc of experience and the diversity of expression across selected Western militaries. By engaging discussions of women’s past and present military service, the way women’s lives have been affected politically, socially, culturally, and personally comes into focus. The discussion of past and present naturally leads to considerations of the future. Imaging what the future looks like for a military that takes seriously women’s integration and gender perspectives is an important exercise. The book concludes with an argument that militaries that adopt gender initiatives (e.g., gender mainstreaming, women’s integration into combat arms) will become more competent forces in the twenty-first century. The histories presented in this book begin at the turn of the twentieth century, despite the fact that women have attended to militaries as long as warfare has existed. In the American context, this history starts with a 1901 bill to establish the Army Nurse Corps that informed the language included in the Army Reorganization Act of 1901. As important as this early service was for establishing women’s utility in times of crisis, the American and cross-national histories consider the First World War to be the pivotal moment during which time women’s mobilization moved from specific locations (nursing) to mass mobilization, giving rise to women’s participation in various paramilitary and auxiliary organizations. Furthermore, millions of wounded and disabled veterans returning from war found caretakers in their sisters, wives, and daughters. This dynamic cultivated gendered discourses taken up in government, military, and social circles that would eventually justify women’s mass mobilization in the next world war. Women’s participation in the Second World War inspired much optimism with regard to women’s expanding opportunities, but postwar pressures to reestablish gender roles were strong. Resistance to the permanent inclusion of servicewomen in a traditionally maledominated sphere and a retraction of women’s roles sprung forth at the end of the Second World War. This resistance appeared in various forms: whisper campaigns, harassment, and the appeal to gendered stereotypes that were incompatible with military tradition. Narratives that such resistance furnished in this period would affect how generations of servicewomen were perceived inside and outside of the military. Although the shift from conscription to the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973 was the structural change that ultimately expanded women’s roles and their representations in the American Armed Forces, these changes were generally out of step with the post–Second World War attitudes held broadly by society and by military leadership. Members of Congress and the public had difficulty locating women close to combat or giving them access to essential mission elements. Congress members had the same preoccupations about women’s utility in 1990 as they did in 1940— specifically, women should remain wives and mothers and that their femininity, and men’s masculinity, may be degraded through their participation in warfare. While this new AVF structure may have required women to volunteer to sustain its numbers, the cultural values, ideas, and references to women’s location in war have remained

Introduction

3

relatively stable over time. In sum, the Second World War and the wars that followed (e.g., Vietnam War, the Cold War, War on Terror) have profoundly affected the social conflicts over the construction of gender in the military. Great strides have been made in the twenty-first century to take on issues related to gender and security. The United Nations (UN) Security Council recognized the importance of mobilizing women to bring about peace and stability through the passage of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 in 2000. Armed conflict has increased since that time and “in 2014 the world witnessed the highest battle related death toll since the Cold War. Belligerents increasingly target civilians, and the  global displacement from conflict, violence, and persecution has reached the  highest level ever recorded” (O’Reilly 2015: 1). The pressures that led to the creation of the AVF and increased participation of women are nothing if not greater. Inclusive security,  or approaches that consider the concerns of all stakeholders involved, is required now more than ever because everyone is touched by such tragedy. Women’s service—either as conflict mediators or as members of security forces helping attain a secure  environment—is formally recognized as a force multiplier necessary for  successful missions in this context. Despite this recognition, women continue to confront stereotypes, sex-role expectations, representations, and narratives that produce different treatment in the military. Servicewomen have made significant progress in dispelling these false  representations, as this book will show, but there is still much work to do so that their value can be fully realized.

Thinking about gender and militarism The concept of gender and, relatedly, the concepts of masculinity and femininity must be understood as applicable to men and women alike. While this book focuses primarily on gender as it relates to women and femininity in the armed forces, the complementary notions of men and masculinity are engaged throughout. How masculinity and femininity are constructed during times of war, and reconstructed during times of peace, is of great import to the questions taken up in this book. In this text, gender refers to the perceived differences about men and women and what is considered masculine and feminine (Rose 2010). The perceptions that exist around these concepts are socially constructed—that is, what is male or female is shaped by rules, norms, and expectations that are products of culture. These perceptions, in turn, inform our understanding of stereotypes that reinforce representations of groups. Gender differs, then, from the concept of sex, where sex references the biological or natural difference between men and women. However, it is worth noting that gender is often considered natural and oppositional—specifically, “men are regarded as instinctively aggressive … and women, therefore, as naturally passive. When people do not abide by these seeming laws of nature, they have broken both natural laws and social rules, and may incur censure, ridicule and even punishment” (Carden-Coyne 2012: 3). Masculinity and femininity are terms used to identify the characteristics, values, and meanings related to gender. Reiterating the Carden-Coyne quotation, masculinity is often associated with combative attitudes and physical fitness and

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femininity is often associated with passivity and a nurturing disposition. Indeed, as will become apparent, conceptualizations about men and masculinity and women and femininity have changed little from the First World War forward, and women who have chosen to serve their country have frequently faced shame, harassment, and hardships in negotiating careers in a hypermasculine environment. However, gender is a malleable term that is contextually and temporally dependent. The reader will see that in times of manpower shortages, militarized femininity has been embraced such that the military can call on women to serve without transgressing ideas regarding the appropriate sphere for men and women. With regard to the military context, the book engages the particular concepts of martial femininity and the hegemonic warrior model. Martial femininity is a type of femininity that is viewed as compatible with the military but does not transgress gender lines. This might be best modeled by the military nurse who can reflect on a long history of women’s military service through the Army and Navy Nursing Corps that were established at the beginning of the twentieth century. Having such deep roots connected to militarism, nurses established a kind of martial femininity early on where they assumed the traditional caretaker role, but did so in an explicitly dangerous and militaristic fashion. Their understanding of themselves did not disturb cultural assumptions made about men and women’s work. This did not require a reevaluation of fundamental beliefs on the part of men. Thus, there are various types of femininities one can embody rather than one universal type. Alternatively, the hegemonic warrior model recognizes that there is a privileged type of masculinity in the military c­ ontext—specifically, military masculinity—that differs from other constructions of masculinity. While there are different masculinities within the US Armed Forces, there is a military masculinity that constructs the “military man” as unemotional, brave, psychologically fit, and ready for action. Some men might not see that description as applicable to themselves, but they recognize it as an ideal and are complicit in reaping the rewards of the militarized masculine ideal since they do not challenge the model (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). The hegemonic warrior model may be partly responsible for the constant appeal to gender stereotypes of women even in the face of superb—and often contrary to stereotype—performance by servicewomen. Gender mainstreaming is critical to understanding the future capabilities of militaries and further reinforces the notion that gender is about both men and women. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) engagements in Bosnia (1995) lead to the realization that conflict is experienced differently by men and women. These lessons, along with the adoption of UNSCR 1325 focused on women, peace, and security, resulted in new Alliance practices (e.g., use of gender advisors) and training, culminating in a gender mainstreaming policy that is described as “a strategy for achieving gender equality by assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, polices, and programs in all areas and at all levels, in order to assure that the concerns and experiences of women and men are taken into account in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic, and social spheres” (Hunt and Lute 2016: 12, emphasis added). Thus, gender perspectives require both men and women to look at

Introduction

5

an area of operations through a new lens that expands what is traditionally considered important. Social, cultural, religious, political, and economic practices emerge as sites to explore regarding the distribution of resources and power across groups. Analyzing a situation from these multiple vantage points can change the way military units’ address problems. For example, when the notion of violence is expanded beyond traditional understandings to include sexual violence targeted at civilians, a gender perspective could shape the tactics employed by militaries. Behavioral changes of servicemen and women along patrol routes and consultations with local community members may stabilize an operational area more than traditional methods could (Egnell 2015). Merging gender and security in this way is transformative for militaries around the world and this revolution will become visible as gender initiatives are implemented. Gender studies and military studies are disciplines that necessitate an interdisciplinary approach because they themselves are interdisciplinary. Scholars interested in gender and security will engage different types of history (e.g., cultural history, feminist history), sociology, communication (e.g., media), political science, and literature in order to grapple with their particular question. Indeed, interdisciplinary research “integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research practice” (National Academy 2005: 39). This mode of inquiry allows scholars to break from their native discipline to “probe the question of continuity and change, or to imagine the deeper and longer patterns of gender and conflict operating in a particular social, national and cultural context” (Carden-Coyne 2012: 7). It also allows scholars to think about varying levels of analysis. For example, sociologists and anthropologists often try to understand an issue from within communities and individual perspectives, rather than from the distance of time and place that a historian uses to orient himself/ herself around a question. These mergers have allowed scholars to reconsider “the social and political in relation to the representational and discursive—the world of signs and communications invokes power systems, implicating class, gender, and embodied experience” (Carden-Coyne 2012: 7). Similarly, interrogating 115 years of war photography makes visible and visual the representations of women in conflict. When combined with histories and cultural analysis that include in-depth interviews and field experiments, one can begin to understand how representations of servicewomen have evolved over time and if gendered representations in particular have impacted the daily experience of women in the armed forces. Ultimately, the concepts of representation and narrative unite the chapters of this text that seemingly have distinct identities. The Oxford English Dictionary defines representation as a “description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way or as being of a certain nature” (OED 2016). Representation, then, can be statistical and symbolic. While this book includes information on women’s numerical representation in various branches of the armed forces over the years, I am more concerned with discussing how symbolic representations, and the narratives they help generate, have changed over time. That is, what representations of servicewomen emerge when the historical record is studied? Do women in different service branches

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think about, or represent, themselves in different ways? Has the representation of women in war photography changed over the years to reflect the changes in their service? Are the resulting narratives, or stereotypical understandings of women in a particular service branch, powerful enough to affect the performance of women in the military context? Approaching representation of and narratives about women as a distinct set of practices (e.g., art, testimony, theory, history) that are mutually informing allows the investigator to produce a more complete picture of women’s experience in war. With this understanding of representation in mind, this book can be considered an interdisciplinary history of women’s representation in the American Armed Forces.

Scholarly influences Groundbreaking scholarship from various disciplines informs my approach to and understanding of women’s military history and representation. Most significant for this analysis is the work of Joan Scott and Cynthia Enloe, who pushed women’s history forward by interrogating the concept of gender. Their work communicates that what it means to be male or female, to be represented as masculine or feminine, has a history. Considered to be gender historians, they think deeply about how differences between men and women are historically produced and evolve over time. Moreover, they and other gender historians understand these differences by studying the variations of perceived differences between the sexes and the nature of their relationships in particular historical contexts (Rose 2010). Gender historians like Scott and Enloe analyze the impact of gender on political and historical events and processes, and vice versa. Gender history developed from the critique of women’s history in the 1970s. The  scholarly field of women’s history resulted from second-wave feminism that extended the belief that men and women should have equal basic human rights. The  contention that woman should have the same opportunities as their male counterparts justified scholars to tell the histories of women, explain why they experience subordinate status with respect to men, including considering why women’s histories were rarely told. Bridenthal and Koonz’s edited volume Becoming Visible: Women in European History (1987) sought to “restore women to history and to explore the meaning of women’s unique historical experience” (1). While many scholars worked in the spirit of this restoration project, it was Kelly-Gadol and Davis who a decade earlier called for a more transformative approach to writing history. Kelly-Gadol (1976) placed the interaction of men and women at the center of feminist history and Davis (1976) believed that this reconceptualization would “promote a rethinking of some of the central issues faced by historians—power, social structure, property, symbols, and periodization” (90). Gender as an analytical category was presented by Newton, Ryan, and Walkowitz (1983) for the first time in order to trace the systemic ways in which the differences between men and women pierce society in such a way that women become the bearers of subordinate status. This evolution

Introduction

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in scholarship culminated in Scott’s theoretical assessment that would have a lasting impact on the future of gender history scholarship. Scott’s “Gender: A Useful Category for Historical Analysis” appeared in the American Historical Review in 1986 and argued that in order to move past simply recovering women’s histories and understanding how social relationships between men and women influence historical knowledge, gender must be understood in a theoretically rigorous way in order to differentiate masculinities and femininities. Scott’s primary concern revolved around the ways in which “the subjective and collective meanings of women and men as categories of identity have been constructed” (Scott 1999: 6). She elaborates: If identities change over time and are relative to different contexts, then we cannot use simple models of socialization that see gender as the more or less stable product of early childhood education in the family and the school. We must also eschew the compartmentalizing tendency of so much of social history that relegates sex and gender to the institution of the family, associates class with the workplace and the community, and locates war and constitutional issues exclusively in the domain of “high politics” of government and states. Since all institutions employ some division of labor, since the structures of many institutions are premised on sexual divisions of labor (even if such divisions exclude one sex or another), since references to the body often legitimize the forms institutions take, gender is, in fact, an aspect of social organization generally. It can be found in many places, for the meanings of sexual difference are invoked and contested as part of many types of struggles for power. Social and cultural knowledge about sexual difference is therefore produced in the course of most of the events and processes studied in history. (Scott 1999: 6)

Perceived differences between the sexes are mutable and yet they appear to endure because the politics required to establish them have been concealed. Additionally, Scott maintains that history’s representation of the past ultimately aids in the construction of gender in the present. Scott’s analysis of gender as a way of exposing how power is expressed and legitimated is easily applied to the military context. Understanding the early representations of women through the rhetoric, practices, and customs of the military apply not only to women’s contemporary military history but also to women’s history more generally. Cynthia Enloe, a political scientist and feminist, has written a collection of work that has informed this book in a multiplicity of ways. In The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (1993), she considers the question, “where are the women and what are they doing?” (105). This question stemmed from three observations that are still relevant today: (1) that war accounts often minimize or make invisible the roles women inhabit and the contributions women make in conflict, (2) that the discourse of conflict treats men and women in different ways, and (3) even when men and women perform the same duties in the military context, they continue to be understood in different ways (Sjoberg 2014). Enloe (1991) also suggested that war accounts often bracket women and children together

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Women, Warfare and Representation

as “womenandchildren,” representing them squarely as outsiders and victims of war, an important perspective in analyzing war photography. Furthermore, two of Enloe’s books are dedicated to exploring the impact of militarization on women’s lives. In Does Khaki Become You? (1983), she claims that the armed forces reply upon, and exploit, women who contribute to meeting the stated goals of the military. She “seeks to expose the character and operations of the military as an institution, not by concentrating on the usual topic—male s­ oldiers—but by focusing on those women most subject to military exploitation: military prostitutes, military wives, military nurses, women soldiers, women defense industry workers and ‘civilianized’ defense workers” (9). Overall, Enloe exposes the military as a patriarchal institution where women are encouraged to resist their desires for equal status. Maneuvers (2000) serves as an extension and elaboration of Khaki, exploring militarization further by claiming that militarization happens to a wide variety of people—that is, employees of toy, food, and clothing companies as well as film studios and advertising agencies. She states that because militarization is blind to issues of gender, militarization is a transformation (of an individual, organization, etc.) reliant upon traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity. Taken together, Khaki and Maneuvers illustrate that the project of militarization affects not only men but also women playing central and peripheral roles. Her research also implicitly considers the work stereotypes do in the management of traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity. She describes the military conceptualizations of masculinity and femininity as a “package of assumptions: women are distractions, women lack physical stamina, women are unaccustomed to complex technology, women require special facilities. Whether they are wives, prostitutes or soldiers, women ‘slow down the march’” (Enloe 1983: 151). Believing these assumptions, or stereotypes, perpetuates an idea of women as second-class actors (admittedly, they now have central roles) whose participation in the military compromises the overall mission. Enloe’s work largely seeks to illustrate why militaries are so reliant upon traditional ideas about femininity and masculinity. Thinking about the representation of women in conflict generally and of servicewomen specifically requires the study of how gender dynamics manifest in conflict and how those dynamics can be understood as hierarchal, where the value of “certain gender-based characteristics over others serves to cement axes of differentiation, discrimination, oppression, and violence” (Sjoberg 2014: 8). Feminists consider gender to have multiple layers—that is, it is profoundly social, understood as an expression of power, and considered an organizing principle of warfare (Sjoberg 2013). Many works written over the past twenty-five years, beginning with Holm’s Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution (1992), which offers the most comprehensive and historical survey of women in the American Armed Forces, ground much of my historical discussion of the American case. Meyer’s Creating GI Jane (1996) considers the nexus of power, sexuality, and the female soldier to reveal cultural understandings of women involved in the Women’s Army Corps during the First World War. Burke’s Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-Tight (2004) drives the discussion on militarization forward by pointing out that the myth of the male warrior that has sustained the military as a professional organization is

Introduction

9

actually weakening in the digital age and is applicable to the discussion revolving around women’s military participation in the twenty-first century. Noakes’s Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex, 1907–1948 (2006) investigates how women’s military participation in the army was largely viewed as problematic during the First and Second World Wars. British women, like their American counterparts, challenged traditional conceptualizations of gender through their presence. Grayzel’s Women and the First World War (2002), Summerfield and Bird’s Contesting Home Defense: Men, Women, and the Home Guard in the Second World War (2007), and Robert’s works (1997, 2013) regarding the constructions of gender and militarism in the First and Second World Wars in the British context are essential. Dundas’s The History of Women in the Canadian Military and Toman’s An Officer and a Lady: Canadian Military Nursing and the Second World War (2007) are critical to thinking about the representation of servicewomen in the Canadian context. Finally, important edited volumes must ground any thoughts on the interdisciplinary approach to questions of interest. Elshtain and Tobias’s Women, Militarism, and War: Essays in History, Politics, and Social Theory (1990), Caforio’s Social Sciences and the Military: An Interdisciplinary Overview (2007), Carreiras’s Gender and the Military: Women in the Armed Forces of Western Democracies (2006), and Frodeman, Klein, and Micham’s Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (2010) have grounded this work.

Methodology, structure, and content The complexities of representations and narratives surrounding American servicewomen require an interdisciplinary approach that this book provides. Chapters 2 and 3 set up the historiographical discussion of representation and stereotypes and present a historical analysis of women in various armed forces. Chapter 2 analyzes the American case, while Chapter 3 presents case studies of international military histories to which the American case can be compared. Chapter 4 tests how these embedded historical narratives, configured as stereotype threat (ST), affect servicewomen’s performance, specifically in marksmanship qualifications. Chapters 5 and 6 signify a continuation of this contemporary testing ground for the persistence of and challenges to the stereotypes, sex-role expectations, representations, and narratives that emerge in the historical studies. These chapters show how militarized women confront stereotypes, understand their roles relative to the sex-role stereotypes placed upon them by military and social institutions, and how they are represented through imagery to society. These chapters give readers an understanding that issues involved in representation and stereotype are dynamic and, as a result, hard to overcome. Chapter  7 takes these findings and attempts to locate women in the Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) debate for the first time, considering what women’s integration and the employment of gender perspectives can offer the military of the twentyfirst century. Specifically, the chapter looks to the future of women’s involvement in and integration into the American Armed Forces, and links women’s increasingly comprehensive military competency to transcending stereotypes and narratives that have located them in a subordinate position. This book, then, traces the idea of

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Women, Warfare and Representation

representation over a 100-year period and mobilizes the concepts and methods of various disciplines to think about representation and narrative from different vantage points. The principles of interdisciplinary research are embedded throughout this book. Formulating and answering questions involving women’s integration and representation in armed forces internationally requires an interdisciplinary approach since “sociology, history, political economy, psychology, cultural anthropology, juridical science, gender studies, organizational science and political science” inform— to a major or minor extent—questions about women’s military activity (Nuciari 2007: 238). Interdisicplinarity should be thought of as a means to greater comprehension and ability to creatively solve problems. Integration and the combination of ideas, theories, and methods from different disciplines are the hallmarks of interdisciplinary practice, “but success at integrating different perspectives and types of knowledge—whether for increased insight, or for greater purchase on an societal problem—is a matter of manner rather than method, requiring a sensitivity to nuance and context, a flexibility of mind, and an adeptness at navigating and translating concepts” (Frodeman, Klein, and Mitcham 2010: xxxi). Equally important to understanding interdisciplinarity as a process is to see that there are many ways to practice interdisciplinarity. Interdisciplinary research can be collaborative or applied, and approaches can take on a variety of scales. This book includes interdisciplinary thinking that builds in complexity from the employment of one primary discipline to frame interdisciplinary questions to creating a balanced relationship between two or more disciplines such that they work in concert to produce new knowledge. Since military studies are inherently interdisciplinary and cross-national in character, the book presents three manifestations of interdisciplinary research that fall along a continuum of complexity from most basic to most complex: (1) the discipline stands on its own, but the design of the central question is interdisciplinary in nature, (2) a core discipline is prioritized while the methods from a second and/or third discipline are used to enrich the analysis, and (3) two or more disciplines are in dialogue such that there is a balance among the disciplines. The histories of women’s military involvement (Chapters 2 and 3) represent the most basic form of interdisciplinary research found in this text. Chapters 5 and 6 investigate women’s representation in the armed forces by considering methodologies or objects of study that cross disciplinary boundaries. This approach illustrates the type of interdisciplinary inquiry where a core discipline is prioritized, but is enriched by infusing a style or methodology from a separate discipline. Higher still in complexity are investigations that are equally responsive to two or more disciplines; Chapters 4 and 7 meet this criterion. The discussion that follows offers a glimpse at the objectives and findings of each chapter, as well as an explanation of how each chapter fulfills the interdisciplinary promise of the book. Historical writing is representational with reference to the historical record and, as such, Chapter 2 focuses on the history of women’s participation in the American Armed Forces from the turn of the nineteenth century forward. The chapter provides the reader with a historical foundation of women’s participation in the American military and a discussion of how women have been interpreted and represented

Introduction

11

by society (and historians) over time. In order to understand women’s evolving participation in American warfare between the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Persian Gulf War (1990–91), one must understand stories associated with first-wave feminism, women’s status as the temporary auxiliary, the enduring nature of gendered stereotypes that describe women’s value, and military innovation that makes room for women in the services. Furthermore, various voices that supported or resisted the greater utilization of women in the military contribute to the narrative regarding what women can do within the domain of warfare. By braiding these pieces together, it becomes evident that while significant changes for women in the military occurred both institutionally and organizationally between these wars, there was very little change on the part of the American public and military leadership attitudinally or representationally. The changes for women that are highlighted in the chapter were always precipitated by manpower deficits. Furthermore, women’s participation in war throughout the twentieth century was deemed acceptable as long as they occupied traditional roles and understood their participation to be temporary. Major resistance to the utilization of women developed only in moments where women showed interest in nontraditional roles and permanent status. Chapter  3 presents a cross-national historical comparison between the British, Canadian, and Israeli Armed Forces. These histories are presented as case studies and were selected for specific reasons. First, the British military is credited with the early mobilization of women during the First World War and modeled the various ways women could be employed so that they could “free a man to fight.” Organizational structures and doctrine created by the British military were replicated by military leadership in the United States, Canada, and Israel so that they could effectively mobilize women. Since the British system inspired the mobilization of women in other military contexts, it is a useful comparison for thinking about how these militaries diverged as they moved forward. Second, the Canadian military serves as an important case to consider since the Canadian Armed Forces is the most progressive in its employment of women. Due to Canada’s Human Rights legislation, women have been allowed to serve in combat roles since 1989. This case provides an opportunity to think about the cultural and political conditions that created opportunities for Canadian women but precluded them for American and British women. Finally, Israel is an interesting case in which to compare the US, Canadian, and British Armed Forces since the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is regarded as one of the most gender-neutral militaries in the world and continues to embrace the conscript system. While the IDF looks to be gender-neutral and non-discriminating, only 3 percent of women serve in combat roles. The myths, or faulty representations, about IDF women are worth investigating as they compare to representations of the other militaries under study. Despite the fact that American, British, Canadian, and Israeli force structures are different (e.g., size), the comparison is useful when considering the evolving gendered structure of the US Armed Forces. If we visualize these militaries on a spectrum from least progressive to most progressive, Israel is most traditional in their employment of women, Great Britain is middling, and Canada serves as the standard for women’s equal employment and participation in the armed forces.

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Women, Warfare and Representation

When compared to the American experience, Chapter 3 presents striking similarities with regard to women’s military participation in the British, Canadian, and Israeli armed forces over the last century. Consistent with the American history, the primary driver for women’s inclusion into the military in all cases was crisis and manpower shortages; when a crisis was resolved, women have generally been required to return to the roles that they occupied before a conflict. Although there are slight differences with respect to timing of the full-scale employment of women in the cases of Great Britain and Canada due to their early involvement in the Second World War, the American case mirrors the British and Canadian experience. Israel, for its part, was inspired by the British military and created their own Women’s Army Corps, or Chen, in the likeness of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) after it had gained statehood in 1948. Taken together, Chapters 2 and 3 address the historical development of gender perceptions and the role they play in the professional success (or failure) of women in the various armed forces under investigation. In short, women’s military history has so far been treated as a footnote to the sweeping narratives of various masculine military legacies. With respect to the interdisciplinary methodology used in Chapters 2 and 3, history is the most obvious discipline that the political scientist consults when investigating questions related to conflict and the military. Chapter  2 is entirely dedicated to showing the patterns of continuity and change in the American case over a century. Military histories, feminist thought, institutional culture, the legislative record, and technological innovations are woven together to understand the ebb and flow of women’s military participation and status. Without tracing these disparate pieces across the decades, it is difficult to comprehend the reason both military and civilian leadership advocated and resisted women’s participation in the American military. Women’s lives and service are rarely considered with any depth in military histories that adhere strictly to conventional disciplinary approaches, and as a result, are impoverished (Ackerly and True 2010). The rich and oftentimes confounding history of women’s military service would be lost if scholars were bound to one disciplinarily approach or methodology. Chapter  3 continues the study of women’s military history in a similar vein, but in less depth. Cross-national investigations such as this highlight the continuities and breaks across cases, which can offer new insights to understanding militarized women. Cross-national study is also indispensable to questions related to gender and security since militaries no longer operate in isolation in the twenty-first century. In cases where organizations and militaries from different states are deployed in the same environment, a narrow national perspective will do little to enhance our understanding of the integrated operational space. While the discipline (history) largely stands on its own in these early chapters, the questions the histories answer are profoundly interdisciplinary. Chapter  4 considers how the representations of servicewomen embedded in historical narratives can affect personal performance when it comes to military competencies. Rather than attributing women’s underperformance in some military domains to their inferior skill set, the chapter seeks to show that societal and institutional expectations based on gendered representations of the servicewoman could have detrimental effects on her performance. The impact of ST, or the concern that an individual may be at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s own

Introduction

13

group, is examined in the United States Marine Corps (USMC) domain. An on-site experiment reveals the extent to which ST affects the performance of female Marines in marksmanship qualifications on the M16 service rifle. Results indicate that the most competent female marksmen are, in fact, vulnerable to ST. Because this phenomenon can negatively affect female Marines, it is probable that other military minorities may have similar experiences. This is the only chapter that intentionally looks at one service branch, rather than making comparisons across service branches or militaries. The marksmanship qualification and affiliated gendered stereotypes, as the chapter will describe, are only applicable to the USMC. The other American services differ profoundly in terms of culture, sex composition of the force, and history. The value that this chapter brings is that it clearly illustrates a direct relationship between performance and gendered stereotypes, which are rooted in gendered representations of the servicewoman. This relationship could not be understood without experimental methods. The highest level of interdisciplinary integration is showcased in this experimental chapter. Rather than one discipline taking priority over the other, theories, methods, and concepts from both (or several) disciplines have equal relevance to the question. The balanced treatment of social psychology and military studies combines previously unconnected elements to create new theory and knowledge such that one can understand why women may underperform in some military tests relative to their male counterparts. Through the use of ST theory and experimental analysis, the investigation shows that women’s underperformance is driven by pressures associated with societal gender-role expectations. Without the application of social psychology experimental design, one would not be able to discern whether women’s underperformance stems from societal cues or ability. The use of experimental methods that privilege the scientific method and statistical analysis allows the investigator to present results with a high degree of confidence. Compared to qualitative data analysis that is hard to reproduce, the method in which the experiment was conducted is transparent such that another investigator can attempt to reproduce the results. Similarly complex interdisciplinary methods will be employed again in Chapter 7. Chapter  5 explores how men and women represent themselves when thinking about their service contributions and how they might represent their peers. Two primary questions are examined in the chapter: (1) whether male and female Marines and Airmen perceive one another as different and (2) whether those differences are detrimental to the experience and performance of female Marines and Airmen generally. Sixty-seven (thirty-five Marines and thirty-two Airmen) service members were interviewed regarding their experience and four themes emerged from the interview analysis that provides answers to these questions. The themes suggest gender-role stereotypes’ influence (1) the perception of servicewomen’s abilities; (2) the initial socialization of Marines and Airmen; (3) the camaraderie and mentorship both female Marines and Airmen do or, as the case may be, do not experience; and (4) cultures rich in leadership double standards. A fifth theme regarding the US Air Force (USAF) combat culture’s impact on women’s experience is also explored since Air Force women continue to serve in combat aviation roles. The perception of women’s abilities

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Women, Warfare and Representation

and initial socialization illustrate that stereotypes inform how women are perceived by their counterparts and how they conduct themselves in various situations. Being constrained by gender stereotypes negatively impacts the dynamic between male and female service members. Furthermore, female Marines and Airmen report feeling less camaraderie and have fewer mentorship opportunities compared to their male counterparts, and they regularly confront double standards due to the application of gender stereotypes. In leadership positions, these experiences can negatively impact not only the subject but also her subordinates. While the interview analysis in Chapter  5 suggests that, despite cultural and numerical differences between the USMC and USAF, female Airmen deal with the same issues that female Marines do, only differing in degree, it also provides information that corroborates the anxieties female Marines may feel that could be detrimental to their performance evidenced in Chapter  4. Moreover, the chapter compares the most progressive American service branch (USAF) to the most conservative American service branch (USMC). It is through this comparison that one can isolate the structural and cultural attributes that make the female airman’s experience profoundly different than the female Marine’s experience. It is worth noting that the opportunities for camaraderie and mentorship reported by servicewomen, along with the habitual application of double standards, are also felt by women in civilian contexts. Though these issues may be amplified in the military context, this continues to be a problem across non traditional professions (Davies-Netzley 1998; Ibarra, Ely, and Kolb 2013; Monroe and Chiu 2010; Oakley 2000). Chapter  6 considers representations and narratives of female service members through the medium of photography. Indeed, the reproduction and consistent consumption of war photography reinforces in our minds which actors are located in war and what actions they are permitted to take (e.g., combat vs. support). War photography is a novel source to interrogate the issue of representation because it offers a narrative on the nature of masculinity and illustrates to viewers how militarized femininity might manifest in the American servicewoman. The chapter investigates how representations of men and women differ in war photography, if there is a significant difference between the representations of women in modern war photography (e.g., the Second World War) and contemporary war photography (e.g., War on Terror), and if representation of women has changed over the last century given their formal participation in Western militaries. Content analysis is applied to 741 photographs from five different photography collections to answer these important questions. The narrative generated from this analysis suggests that women occupy support roles more than combat roles and are represented more often as victims of war than instigators or perpetrators of war. Three important findings emerge in Chapter  6. First, men and women are represented in vastly different ways that align with gender-role expectations. Men are overwhelmingly characterized as heroic soldiers and women are largely depicted as victims of war or supporters of conflict. Second, when women are depicted in photography, they are doing gendered activities and their femininity is emphasized relative to the job they take up. Finally, although women were not underrepresented in war photography during the Persian Gulf War, uniformed servicewomen were more

Introduction

15

likely to be underrepresented in war photography during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This chapter demonstrates that the representations and narratives of women differ from their actual experience and participation in warfare. Servicewomen have occupied active roles as combatants (e.g., interpreters assigned to combat units) and perpetrators of violence (e.g., female Abu Ghraib prison guards) that depart from traditional representations, especially in recent photography documenting the War on Terror. Methodologically, Chapters 5 and 6 showcase mid-range complexity in interdisciplinary treatment, where a core discipline is primary and a separate discipline is integrated to enrich the analysis, whether it is the integration of methods or objects of study. Chapter 5 is grounded in political science to discuss how stereotypes can affect women’s performance in the USMC and USAF, but draws on insights from social psychology (ST theory) and methodologies that originate in anthropology and sociology (qualitative in-depth interviews). An example of the creative employment of different methodology to illustrate sophisticated interdisciplinarity is illuminating. Where a political scientist might choose to use survey data to consider questions of military performance if she were compelled to adhere to disciplinary practices, in-depth interviewing allows an investigator to think deeply about how the context, individual aspects of experience and training opportunities, and socialization have impacted the participants view of stereotype deployment in the military environment.1 For example, a survey that asks about stereotypes experienced and the degree to which respondents feel that they are held to that standard would never reveal the moments of explicit and implicit stereotype confrontation or how some women overcome gendered stereotypes and are eventually invited into the “brotherhood.” This deep qualitative methodological approach can reveal more about the perceived environment than survey analysis would. Moreover, in-depth interview analysis allows the author to confirm findings that are borne out of quantitative data collection. The in-depth interview analysis presented in Chapter 5 as it relates to the experience of female Marines corroborates the experimental findings presented in Chapter 4. Additionally, the way war photography is used to think about narratives regarding women’s service in the armed forces is another variation of using one disciplinary lens to enhance another. In the case of photography, images, or objects traditionally studied in media studies or art programs, are coded and analyzed by content analysis, a methodology popularly used by political scientists. Content analysis allows the investigator to code sources—be they newspaper articles, political comic strips, archival materials, or photographs—for variables of interest. In this case, Chapter 6 focuses on whether the way women have been represented over 100 years of war photography has changed substantially over time, mirroring the changes in their military roles and integration into armed forces. Codes as simple as a description of the women featured (e.g., civilian or combatant) and as complex as the action she is doing in the photograph (e.g., training for combat or grieving the loss of a comrade) are recorded for each picture and then statistically analyzed for trends and changes over time. While content analysis is an obvious quantitative choice for the political scientist interested in narrative creation, the object of study (photographs) departs

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Women, Warfare and Representation

from traditional objects taken up in political science investigations. The use of nontraditional objects presents a creative way to think about political questions related to gender that have not been previously explored. Chapter 7 takes a theoretical turn to critique the existing literature and theories associated with RMA in light of recent international gender and security initiatives (e.g., UNSCR 1325) and the findings of the previous chapters in this book. No current conceptualization of RMA takes seriously the issue of gender. This chapter is the first attempt to reconceptualize RMA to show that women’s integration into Western militaries and the employment of gender perspectives constitute a new, cultural RMA. The way servicemen and women are represented in this new RMA breaks from the traditional representations of the past. Indeed, Western militaries become more competent and have more capabilities because of the integration of such gender initiatives. Technological innovation, a new relationship between the state and war, evolving conflict type, and progressive social norms are four areas of convergence that create this new RMA. Examples featured in the chapter that model this convergence are the Female Engagement Teams (FETs) and Cultural Support Teams (CSTs) operating in Afghanistan and Iraq. The integration of women in areas previously off limits, along with more fluid understandings of performance and gender, allows the military to harness new capabilities (FETs/CSTs), which in turn gives the government a new menu of capabilities from which they can draw to achieve political ends. This cultural RMA is just emerging and will not be totally evident until women are fully integrated across combat specialties and mainstreaming of gender perspectives across operations is achieved. National Action Plans (NAPs) developed by Western militaries include the mainstreaming of gender perspectives, but they are just beginning to practice this in the field. Likewise, at least where the American military is concerned, the combat exclusion rule was lifted in January  2016 and now servicewomen are permitted to join formally all-male combat units. It will take some time for women to surpass token status in these communities, but I argue in this final chapter that the military will enjoy new capabilities, more dynamic soldiers, and improved operational effectiveness once they do. Like the experimental approach featured in Chapter  4, this chapter showcases the most complex interdisciplinary approach in the book as it brings together previously unconnected ideas, concepts, and elements to build a new theory that takes gender seriously. This chapter attempts to locate women in the RMA debate for the first time by thinking about how women’s integration into combat arms and the inclusion of gender mainstreaming practices change the capabilities and ways armed forces operate in the twenty-first century. While the theoretical framework of RMA originates in military studies, concepts and theory that emanate from women’s studies (e.g., UN 1325 and other international mandates focused on gender and security), political science (e.g., changes in the relationship between the state and war, or civilmilitary gap), history (e.g., how technology has changed the way armed forces fight), and cultural anthropology (e.g., shifts in societal and military culture) inform a new understanding of RMA that conceptualizes gender initiatives as revolutionary. This book makes several contributions to scholarship on women’s representation in the armed forces of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. First, this research

Introduction

17

reveals a strong relationship between representations and narrative, between individual vignettes, impressions and images, and the collective stories we tell (and are told) about women and the military. The interplay of these instances and trends is essential to understanding the persistence of certain values and their influence in decision making. Analyses produced by this interplay have resulted in novel findings. For example, social psychology experimentation in the military context reveal that gendered representations (stereotypes) may negatively impact the female Marine’s performance on firearms. Diminished marksmanship scores that result from ST reify the old narratives that women are ill-equipped for combat, and so the narratives endure. The novel rethinking of RMA also engages the interplay of technology, new conflict types, and the continued negotiation of masculinity and femininity to show that the incorporation of gender initiatives could produce a smarter, more efficient armed force in the future. Second, the interdisciplinary approach to studying gender and security questions is advanced through the various chapters of this text. The complexity of contemporary issues related to gender and security demands an interdisciplinary, multilayered approach. Many edited volumes that have been critical to advancing arguments about gender and security have provided multiple viewpoints offered by respected thinkers; this book has incorporated the findings of such contributions. However, the fact that representations and narratives are interrogated by one author with regard to different levels of analysis and diverse methodological and conceptual approaches is new. Indeed, this book presents a synthesis of disparate lenses and approaches that keeps the various parts in tension and refuses to homogenize as it synthesizes. It is only through employing distinct disciplinary lenses in a novel, combinatory methodology that one can fully understand women’s regress and progress in the American military.

2

History of Women’s Participation in the US Armed Forces

The history of women’s participation in the US Armed Forces involves the weaving together of complicated and disparate stories. In order to understand women’s evolving participation in American warfare between the Spanish-American War and the Persian Gulf War, one must understand stories associated with first-wave feminism, women’s status as the temporary auxiliary, the enduring nature of gendered stereotypes that describe women’s value, and military innovation that makes room for women in the services. More than this, one has to recognize the various voices that supported or resisted the greater utilization of women in the military. By braiding these stories together, it becomes evident that while significant changes for women in the military occurred both institutionally and organizationally between 1898 and 1991, there was very little change on the part of the American public and military leadership attitudinally. The changes for women that are highlighted in this chapter are always precipitated by war generally and manpower deficits specifically. Furthermore, women’s participation in war throughout the twentieth century was always acceptable as long as they occupied traditional roles and understood their participation to be temporary. Major resistance to the utilization of women developed only in moments when women showed interest in nontraditional roles and permanent status. Three major themes characterize women’s experience prior to the 1940s: (1) women’s newly won suffrage and civic participation, (2) the recognition of the special nature of women predicated on gendered stereotypes, and (3) women’s auxiliary military status modeled on the nurses serving in the Spanish-American War. First, winning suffrage in 1920 brought to bear women’s participation in governance. Women’s new civic participation suddenly linked to new understandings of the citizen solider where the opportunity to patriotically perform became very real. According to the citizen-soldier tradition, military service and civic participation are two sides of the same coin.1 As democratic citizens and the civic equals of men, women share in military service that is necessary to protect the United States from forces threatening to undermine its democratic values. From the civic perspective, then, there is nothing uniquely masculine about the soldier (Snyder 2003). Once women secured the right to vote, it was only natural that women would want to demonstrate their citizenship through military service. Second, as first-wave feminism is dedicated to abolition, temperance, and social reform, the early stages of the movement cemented an image of women as caretakers that endured long after the 1940s, but is particularly

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Women, Warfare and Representation

representative of their experience prior to the Second World War. The third theme of women’s experience prior to the 1940s is their status as auxiliaries, or modern days “temps.” Just as today’s temp fulfills the needs of an office when necessary and only for a limited period of time, so too were women utilized by the military on a provisional basis as the need arose. Ultimately, the long nineteenth century (1789–1914) set the stage for the development of women’s experience prior to the Second World War.2 What characterizes women’s experience throughout the long nineteenth century is quickly disrupted by total war and associated manpower needs, along with technological innovations that make women’s participation in aviation, a nontraditional and risky career field, possible. As is always true, technology becomes a driver for change and a newly formed air force becomes the leading edge of innovation. What eventually cracks the long nineteenth century status quo is not simply the massive numbers of women mobilized in the Second World War or the support for servicewomen’s integration into the military made public by congresswomen but the work of servicewomen themselves in the women’s military programs. The agency that women created by their actions, successes, and abilities broke early patterns set for them by the military and American society. As history makes clear, the Second World War was exceptional because of its physical and diplomatic breadth. It involved virtually every part of the world, and the United States had not experienced warfare on a similar scale prior to that period and has not since. The arguments for women’s expanded participation during the Second World War, then, are also exceptional. Women’s participation in the Second World War inspired much optimism with regard to women’s expanding opportunities, but postwar pressures to reestablish gender roles were ever present. Wars after the Second World War and prior to the creation of the AVF in 1973 created very little sustaining momentum for change in women’s roles. Thus, the Second World War was exceptional for its utilization of women. Figure 2.1 illustrates that women’s military employment was the exception to the rule of a small female token force.

Figure 2.1  Female active-duty military personnel Source: National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics (2011).

History of Women’s Participation in the US Armed Forces

21

The narrative of women’s utilization up to the Second World War is positive overall. The story of women’s temporary employment is one of progress, albeit slow, that is driven by necessity. The narrative of women’s experience in the Korean War forward is less positive—it is primarily a story of demobilization, retraction of women’s roles, and resistance to the permanent inclusion of servicewomen in a traditionally maledominated sphere. The debate around women’s inclusion and participation in the military was renewed, yet again, with the transition from a conscripted military to the AVF. Women’s necessity as permanent members of the military could not be denied in an era where fewer men volunteered their service. American military strategy became increasingly dependent on technological advances of the 1970s and 1980s that gave women additional access to military jobs. The introduction of the AVF, along with the inclusion of women in the military’s sacrosanct service academies, signifies the tipping point where all prior understanding of women’s participation is problematized. In this context, women’s temporary status melts away. Women are educated and groomed to be military leaders alongside their male counterparts in the academies, where they can pursue the c­ itizen‑soldier ideal, civic participation, and gratifying careers. For the military, the goals of first-wave feminism were achieved during the second-wave era. President Kennedy aptly noted in 1961 that American women always have, and will continue to, serve and defend their country in various and hazardous ways (Kennedy 1961). While women’s participation in war was tied to manpower deficits in the first third of the twentieth century, it is only in the last third of the century that women really asserted themselves as citizen-soldiers. It is through the dedicated work of civil servants, military leadership, and the women themselves that women’s military experience in the twenty-first century is possible.

The starting gate: Women of the Army and Navy Nurse Corps Prior to the First World War, there was little need for women in the military as warfare was limited in scope and, thus, did not require more manpower than a nation could produce through the employment of its men. The Industrial Revolution opened up possibilities to change warfare since it became highly mechanized and organized. The Industrial Revolution would also change the lives of many women. In 1910, 25 percent of adult women worked outside of the home (Painter 1987). By the First World War, many women were employed in American factories and businesses as typists, telephone operators, and clerks. Despite the fact that women were taking up nontraditional roles in a society that believed a woman’s place was in the home, there remained substantial doubt regarding women’s value to the military. However, cultural norms and tradition would converge in 1901 when a bill was introduced to Congress to establish a permanent Army Nurse Corps. Historically, the US Army hired groups of civilian women as nurses, laundresses, and clerks as early as the eighteenth century. Nurses were so important to the Revolutionary War that in 1775 General George Washington was granted

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Women, Warfare and Representation

authorization by the Second Continental Congress to create a hospital department for the US Army where civilian nurses were paid for their service (Sarnecky 1999). It wasn’t until the Civil War and the Spanish-American War that military leadership began to notice inefficiencies in medical care that was believed to be symptomatic of the fact that there were no unified, official nursing corps. However, there was significant opposition to the idea of admitting women into the US Army and it was not until 1901 when the US Army officially recognized the exemplary work of nurses in the Spanish-American War that Congress considered a bill on the matter. The Surgeon General, George M. Sternberg, celebrated women’s achievements in his 1899 annual report. He said: “American women may well feel proud of the record made by these nurses in 1898-99, for every medical officer with whom they served has testified to their intelligence, and skill, their earnestness, devotion and self-sacrifice” (Collins 1981: 12). As a result, Sternberg asked Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee to write a bill to establish a female Army Nurse Corps.3 The bill passed on February 2, 1901, and would provide the language for Section 19 of the Army Reorganization Act of 1901. Nurses were considered contract employees who were appointed to the regular army for three years. The authorized strength of the Army Nurse Corps was fixed at 100 nurses, which remained the threshold for ten years. The Army Nurse Corps had a female superintendent and as many nurses that was necessary (not to exceed 100) for efficient care. The status afforded to women in the Army Nurse Corps, along with the organizational structure, would be used as a model for the creation of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) years later. Presley Marion Rixey became the Surgeon General in 1902 and one of his intentions was to establish a female Navy Nurse Corps. Plans were developed for integrating women’s skills into the US Navy. Congress considered bills for five years but did nothing due to the internal resistance of senior command officers. Rixey later appealed to the Secretary of the Navy, Victor H. Metcalf, on February 29, 1908, listing the importance of immediate action on the Navy Nurse Corps. He recounted the shortage of male nurses in the hospital corps and the needless deaths that occurred due to inadequate nursing care. Based on Metcalf and Rixey’s correspondence, Metcalf forwarded a strong recommendation to establish the Navy Nurse Corps to the House Committee on Naval Affairs. The committee amended the bill and both houses of Congress passed the measure on May 13, 1908. The Army and Navy Nurse Corps gave women access and a clearer connection to the military organizations they served. Both corps would later serve as models for the development of the female line services,4 or non-nursing women’s programs, in a context of global conflict where women would be mobilized due to dire manpower shortages during the Second World War. The earliest mode of representation regarding women during the First World War is the natural pacifist. In April 1917, approximately 2,000 female volunteers served as enlisted, noncombatant members of the US Navy. A year later, that number grew to an astonishing 11,880, where women served Naval Districts throughout the United States in clerical roles. These “Yoemen (F)” would be brought into the US Navy temporarily because Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, anticipated manpower shortages. The US Navy required significant clerical help and women were an untapped resource with such skills. Yoemen (F) were vital to the war effort as their participation “freed

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a man to fight”—specifically, they took on the secretarial duties of male sailors who would assume combatant roles should the United States enter the war.5 Due to heavy losses faced by the USMC in France during the summer of 1918, the USMC decided to enlist women for the first time. Four months prior to the end of the war, 305 women enlisted and served the USMC as “Marinettes,” where they were employed as secretaries, radio operators, and naval shipment supervisors (Monahan and Neidel-Greenlee 2011). In 1917, women fluent in French were given training by the United States Army Signal Corps to serve as telephone operators in France. These “Hello Girls,” as the Signal Corps called them, were thought competent to take up this task due in large part to the expert work done by British women running switchboards and performing more nontraditional duties in a war zone. “Hello Girls” often commanded the same pay as their male counterparts, but they had to supply their uniforms at their own expense as they were considered contract civilian workers rather than military members with rank. Despite the fact that legislation to enlist able-bodied women had been introduced to Congress in December  1917, the War Department would not give women full status and establish a women’s service corps within the US Army. In May 1918, after receiving a critical December 1917 memoranda from Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, the War Department’s official stance on the matter was made public: “The enlistment of women in the military forces of the United States has never been seriously contemplated and such enlistment is considered unwise and highly undesirable” (2011: 19). The War Department’s assessment was made, in fact, when female nurses were most visibly part of the early First World War effort both at home and aboard. Where women’s representation is concerned, 403 army nurses were on duty when the United States entered the war on April 6, 1917. By June 1918, that number escalated to 12,186, “including 10,186 reserve nurses called to active duty [who took] care of wounded and ill military personnel. Of 12,186 army nurses, 5,350 were serving overseas” (2011: 12). By the end of the First World War, American women who answered their country’s call were expected to return home and take up the traditional roles they once occupied. Women’s service in the First World War certainly added to the validity for arguments granting women’s national suffrage but did little to advance the notion of equality. For example, Representative John McKenzie (IL-R) introduced a bill “that excluded all women except military nurses from collecting the bonus … awarded to veterans of World War I” (Monahan and Neidel-Greenlee 2011: 15). The bill McKenzie called into question tried to award all veterans with a bonus, but McKenzie’s bill inserted the word “male” in front of veterans in the original bill, which denied the right to Yeoman (F) and Marinettes. McKenzie’s blatant exclusion of women was founded on the fact that Yeoman (F) and Marinettes made more money serving than they had in their entire lives, which deemed them ineligible for the veterans’ bonus. Women’s long history and admitted aptitude in nursing positioned them early for placement in the militarized corps and was a first small step toward full membership in the armed forces. However, the military and the American public would not be prepared to seriously entertain the notion of a Women’s Army Corps

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(WAC) until war created shortages in manpower that precipitated women’s direct involvement. The theme of war precipitating women’s involvement will appear over and over again in this American history.

A period of peace and apathy for the militarized woman: The 1920s and 1930s Once women were granted suffrage in 1920, the US Army grew concerned that women’s supposed pacific nature would result in a call for the abolition of the military. The US Army sought to educate women on the purpose of the military because of this anxiety. In 1920, Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker, created a new position, Director of Women’s Relations, that would bridge the War Department and American women to ensure their cooperation by “explaining to them that the Army was ‘a progressive, socially minded human institution’ and that women voters should not ‘fantastically demand the dissolution of a ruthless military machine’” (Treadwell 1954: 11). Anita Phillips took the position and was vocal about her job dissatisfaction in periodic memoranda citing the War Department’s failure to support her commitments or to give her military rank. Her dissatisfaction was driven by the fact that headquarters division failed to consult her on items related to women’s organizations, the army’s generals ignored her guidance, and her prepared studies replete with recommendations were filed without action. In the face of significant resistance, Phillips secured a tentative approval for a plan that brought the support of the most powerful American women’s organizations in line with the Secretary of War by creating a system of civilian aides to each secretary. This plan was publicly announced on February  25, 1929, and a barrage of criticism from senators and clergymen followed. Male civilian aides threatened to resign if women were given such a designation. Just two weeks later, Secretary of War James W. Good assumed office and contacted the representatives of women’s groups already agreeable to Phillips’s outlined plan to inform them that the War Department would not move forward with development of female civilian aides. This, Phillips believed, alienated the women’s groups she tried to mobilize early on and she made a final appeal in 1930 to define her duties as Director of Women’s Relations in light of this development. By 1931, Phillips’s failing health and the appointment of a new Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur, resulted in the termination of her position. He  thought her duties to be of no military value. Before Phillips’s departure, plans were written and reviewed in at least two cases. First, Phillips was the first to propose a women’s service corps as part of the US Army. She envisioned full military rather than auxiliary status. Her suggestion was based on evidence of women’s utilization in the First World War that considered the opinions of the British military, Congress, the US Navy, and various US Army commands. The British Army first tested women’s auxiliary status, which proved to be undesirable. Phillips proposed instead that “women be fully trained and assigned only in units under the command of women officers, with not less than a squad at any station and no individual billeting allowed. All Army regulations were to apply,

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plus special regulations for women as needed” (Treadwell 1954: 12). The General Staff rejected Phillips’s proposal in 1926 and objections ranged from costs associated with women’s housing to difficulties in transportation and the construction of personnel policy. With Phillips’s study thought to be only used as a basis for further research on the utilization of women in the military, Major Everett S. Hughes was appointed as the chief Army planner for a women’s corps in 1928. Major Hughes, an eternal pragmatist, noted that women would necessarily play a role in the next war, but suggested that an attempt on detailing how to utilize them be tabled until the situation was understood. However, Hughes called for education for both men and women before an impending ­crisis—that is, women should receive training on army process and thought, while army men should have some understanding of the obstacles associated with the militarization of women. Hughes maintained that women’s ignorance on army protocol, combined with men’s intolerance of militarized women could be fatal to preparing for the next war. While the Hughes plan discussed the exclusive militarization of women overseas, he also stated that it was detrimental to have separate organizations (male and female) for economic reasons. He thought “that qualified women could be integrated into the men’s army, with a similar uniform and privileges. He argued against camouflaging rank by odd titles such as Deputy Controller, which spared the male ego but confused the employing agencies” (Treadwell 1954: 14). Ultimately, the Hughes report was lost among files that would not be recovered until after the creation of the WAAC. The  Phillips and Hughes reports represent the whole of peacetime military planning for a women’s corps, but they were never referenced in 1939 when planning for women’s integration resumed under General George C. Marshall’s leadership as Chief of Staff.

Women’s early military participation as debated in Congress in the 1940s American servicewomen were represented in a variety of ways in congressional debate during the 1940s. Edith Nourse Rogers became a champion of women’s military status when she accompanied her husband, John Jacob Rogers, a Massachusetts Congressman, to France in 1917 to serve in the Foreign Affairs Committee. Edith Nourse Rogers worked for the Women Overseas Service League attending to ill military personnel and was captivated by the work of British women on loan to the US Army and the US Navy. She found that the British women enjoyed full military status and protections that their American counterparts did not. When Rogers was elected to Congress to replace her husband after his death in 1925, she served faithfully to continue her husband’s work. Rogers’s experience abroad in 1917 demonstrated how important women’s participation in the First World War was to the victory. Despite this, she saw firsthand that gender discrimination left women with zero protections should they be injured while serving, nor were they provided veterans’ benefits after their service. She involved herself in legislation to fight for the financial compensation of women who had suffered health problems as a result of war service (Monahan and Neidel-Greenlee 2011). This, among other issues, inspired Rogers to introduce

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a House bill (HR 4906) on May 28, 1941, to establish the WAAC. Rogers recognized that she would receive substantial resistance by proposing a bill that fully integrated women into the US Army. Although the bill designated the WAAC as serving with the army rather than in the army, she thought this bill would eventually lead to legislation giving women equal status, pay, and veteran benefits. The Bureau of the Budget stalled the WAAC bill for months in spite of General Marshall’s personal correspondence that made clear his full support for the legislation. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December was enough to energize the bureau, which provided the impetus to withdraw its objections. The fact that the United States was so quickly and violently thrust into the Second World War was justification enough to ask Congress for the approval to develop a small women’s corps that could be expanded in wartime if necessary. Between the introduction of the bill and its approval in the House in January 1942, Congress members, military leadership, and the American public debated women’s service in the American Armed Forces. Press coverage brought the issue of women’s utility in war to the American dinner table. Narrowly defined understandings of gender roles ruled the day—specifically, men were squarely situated in spheres of war, industry, and governance, while women were limited to the domestic sphere. American society did not believe women’s participation was critical to winning wars. However, it seemed that the War Department understood women’s utility to the military as it prepared to engage in a two-front war. Army General Marshall declared women’s participation vital to mobilization efforts. He said “it is important that as quickly as possible we have a declared national policy in this matter … . Women certainly must be employed in the overall effort of this nation … we consider it essential that their status, their relationship to the military authority, should be clearly established” (Holm 1992: 23). Concerns about men taking orders from women, the anxiety men might have in order to protect women rather than fight, and the impending humiliation men would feel should women be integrated dominated the House debate. For example, Congressman Andrew Somers (NY-D) opined: “A women’s Army to defend the United States of America! Think of the humiliation! What has become of manhood in America, that we have to call on our women to do what has ever been the duty of men?” (Meyer 1996: 13) Representatives also raised concerns about mothers in the armed forces and wondered who would raise American children if their mothers were deployed. Despite the acrimonious debate that ensued over this piece of legislation, the bill was approved by the Senate on May 14, 1942 (38–27 votes), and the WAAC build up was underway. The WAAC accepted American women between twenty-one and forty-five years of age and women experienced an abbreviated version of basic training that introduced them to military customs and company administration. The first WAAC recruits arrived at Fort Des Moines on July 20, 1942. Among this initial group were 440 officer candidates, 40 of whom were African American, and 125 were enlisted female recruits (Morden 1990). After training, a Waac could replace a male counterpart at the training center or transfer to a 150-woman company where she would serve in various support roles. Although this was good news for women, their auxiliary status—temporary and behind-the-scenes replacements—was problematic. As Holm suggests:

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The WAAC was not part of the Army, but it was run by the Army. Its members did Army jobs in lieu of soldiers but were administered under a separate, parallel set of regulations. This legal status was dubious, and there was no legally binding contract that could prevent a woman from leaving anytime she chose to … If they went overseas, [Waac soldiers] did not have the same legal protection as the men, nor were they entitled to the same benefits if injured. (1992: 25)

What’s more, Waac soldiers were not entitled to the same pay as their male counterparts and had no entitlements to dependents or to military rank. While this was not an initial concern because women were eager to respond to their country’s call, this became a point of resentment once the other women’s components were established with full military status. WAAC recruitment rates dropped once relative advantages of the other services became apparent. As a response, a bill was proposed in June 1943 to establish a WAC in the US Army that would afford women full military status. The US Senate passed the WAC bill on June 28, 1943, and it was signed into law on July 1, 1943. Oveta Culp Hobby was sworn in as director and colonel, where she coordinated the transition from WAAC to WAC. Waac soldiers were offered the option of either joining the new WAC or separating from the military. The WAAC was officially transformed into the WAC on October 1, 1943. The US Navy did all that it could to stay on the sidelines while Congress fought over women’s status in the US Army. However, how the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES) became a legitimate organization within the US Navy is connected to the construction of the WAAC through the dedicated work of Representative Rogers.6 In December  1941, Rogers approached Admiral Chester A. Nimitz, Chief of the US Navy’s Bureau of Navigation, to see if he would consider establishing a women’s organization within the US Navy in anticipation of manpower shortages. Most of the bureau chiefs agreed to move forward with a woman’s organization for pragmatic reasons after consultation. Rather than have a navy bill mirror the WAAC bill proposed by Rogers, Nimitz felt that the bill’s parameters should be set by the US Navy rather than civilians (Godson 2001). Joy Bright Hardcock, who would eventually become the WAVES director, described Nimitz’s actions in the following way: The creation of a women’s reserve was taken up by the Navy because its leaders feared that if they did not move, Mrs. Rogers and others on the Hill would, and the Navy would be entangled in legislation of a character it could not administer. This fear, rather than any firm conviction as to the need of women, moved them to action, reluctant though it was. (Monahan and Neidel-Greenlee 2011: 38)

Representative Melvin Maas (MN-R) introduced his bill (HR 6807), only at the request of Dr. Margaret Chung, that created a Women’s Auxiliary Reserve that would be part of the US Navy.7 Representative Maas requested that Senator Raymond E. Willis (INR) introduce an identical bill (S 2388) in the US Senate. He did this on March  19, 1942, where several senators on the Naval Affairs Committee noted that women’s membership in the armed forces “would destroy their femininity and future standing

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as good mothers” (2011: 39). Pressure mounted to create a navy auxiliary corps and criticisms were ignored only after Mrs. Roosevelt spoke to the president about a letter she received from Harriet Elliot, Dean of the University of North Carolina and member of the Women’s Advisory Council, stressing the importance of women’s full military status.8 It was at this point that President Roosevelt gave the Navy Secretary carte blanche on moving forward with a Women’s Naval Reserve. The Senate passed a revised bill in  July  1942 to establish a women’s reserve in the US Navy with the following revisions: women in the naval reserve would not serve outside the United States; women would not serve aboard naval ships or in combat zones; women could not be placed in command of men; women in the naval reserve would replace naval personnel and not civilian personnel; women would receive the same pay as male sailors of the same military rate or rank; and if women in the naval reserve were disabled by injury or illness while serving, she would receive disability pay from civil service and not from the navy. (Monahan and Neidel-Greenlee 2011: 38)

Due to these amendments, the new bill was returned to the House for a vote. Despite objections from Representative Beverley M. Vincent (KY-R) that were steeped in sexism and gender-role stereotypes, the bill was approved in the House on July 21, 1942, and signed into law (PL 689) by President Roosevelt on July 30, 1942. The law established the Women’s Naval Reserve and guaranteed that volunteers who served would be part of the US Navy rather than associated with it. The bill established the WAVES, or Navy Reserve, and also covered the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve (MCWR) and the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve known as the SPARS.

The Second World War buildup and draw down Less than a month after the WAVES legislation passed, an officer training school was established at Smith College. Mildred McAfee, President of Wellesley College, was sworn in as a Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander of the WAVES in August 1942, where she would become the first woman commissioned as an officer of the US Navy. While the WAVES could not serve aboard combat ships or aircraft and their service was limited to the US mainland, they were authorized to serve in specific US possessions and in Hawaii late into the Second World War. Within the first year of building up the WAVES program, over 27,000 women joined the organization. Most WAVES performed clerical duties, but some accepted positions in areas that disturbed gender-role expectations (e.g., aviation, medical, communications, and technology communities). The US Navy established low recruitment goals as the Bureau of Personnel had initially estimated needing a total of 10,000 women to fill clerical roles. However, the Bureau of Aeronautics demanded 20,000 women by itself, which led the personnel chief to increasing the US Navy’s recruitment goals to 75,000 enlisted women and 12,000 officers (Hancock 2013). By the end of the Second World War, the WAVES consisted of approximately 8,000 and 80,000 female officers and enlisted

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women, respectively. The WAVES numbers alone are impressive. Table 2.1 illustrates the comparative mobilization of women across line services during the Second World War. The Coast Guard and Marine Corps followed the US Navy’s lead in building their own women’s programs. Once the legislation authorizing a Coast Guard Women’s Reserve passed in November  1942, the SPARS were born.9 The SPARS served the same purpose as the WAAC and the WAVES did—that is, to release fit corpsman from secretarial and shore duty to be deployed abroad. Twelve WAVE officers left the US Navy to accept commission in the Coast Guard, which ensured that competent leadership was in place to build up the SPARS. Among them was Dorothy C. Stratton, appointed as Lieutenant Commander and Director of the SPARS on November 26, 1942. The SPARS had more modest recruitment goals than the other organizations due in large part to having fewer shore establishments than the US Navy. The commandant was conservative in reporting how many women they could employ and set recruitment goals of 1,000 female officers and 10,000 enlisted women (Weatherford 2010). Although the MCWR was authorized on July  30, 1942, the organization was hesitant to bring women in to free a man to fight.10 The USMC battles in the Pacific created a need for female Marines in much larger numbers than they originally appeared in the First World War. The USMC Commandant, Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb, had concerns about women’s integration creating new problems, but eventually succumbed to the pressures of his staff due to the heavy losses the USMC suffered during the Guadalcanal campaign and the anticipated losses in future operations in the Pacific. The USMC had run out of options in the face of mounting manpower demands. When he recommended to the Secretary of the Navy that as many women as possible be recruited into noncombatant billets to release men for combat duty, the MCWR was formally established in February 1943. Table 2.2 shows the timing of integration for each established women’s service program. Having a well-established model now in the WAVES and the SPARS, nineteen WAVE officers were transferred into the MCWR, and Ruth Cheney Streeter was named director of the organization and awarded the rank of major (Stremlow 2013). Recruitment goals “were first set at 500 officers and 6,000 enlisted women, [and] were Table 2.1  Women’s level of participation by line service during the Second World War Service Women’s Army Corps (WAC) Navy’s Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES) Coast Guard Women’s Reserves (SPARS) Marine Corps Women’s Reserve Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) Army Nurse Corps Navy Nurse Corps Source: The National WWII Museum (2015).

Total number (officers and enlisted) 150,000 100,000 10,000 23,000 1,074 60,000 14,000

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Women, Warfare and Representation Table 2.2  Introduction of women’s service programs Women’s service Army Nurse Corps Navy Nurse Corps WAAC WAVES WASPs SPARs Women Marines Reserve

Date of formal establishment February 2, 1901 May 13, 1908 May 14, 1942 July 30, 1942 September 14, 1942 November 23, 1942 February 13, 1943

soon raised to 1,000 and 18,000, respectively, because of requests from commanders for women and the favorable recruiting climate” (2013: 33). While the first female Marine officers were trained at WAVE schools, they constructed their own training program at Camp Lejeune Marine Base, North Carolina. The aviator components of the services are thought to be the most progressive and innovative in their employment of women during the Second World War. Aviation units expressed enthusiasm publicly for women’s participation in the military. This is often attributed to the progressive sentiments of aviation leaders at the time. Holm recounts: Less tradition bound in attitude, most of these leaders made no bones about their support for women and their views that the women were an essential, integral part of their organizations. For this reason, the aviation components usually were willing to open technical fields and to integrate the women more fully into their organization. In the Army Air Forces (AAF) under the leadership of Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold and his staff, no measure was neglected that might impress upon the public and his commanders the AAF’s real need for “Air-WACs” and its cordiality toward them. Lt. Gen Ira Eaker, Air Commander in Chief in Europe, and Lt. Gen. George C. Kenney in the Pacific had similar views. No AAF schools were closed to women, except combat and flying schools, and no noncombat jobs for which they could qualify were closed. Approximately 40,000 women served as Air-WACs at bases all over the world—they included nearly half of all the women in the Army. (1992: 64)

The air force’s progressive posture toward the utilization of women was, in part, due to the fact that aviation itself was innovative and emerging at that time. The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) were integrated into an environment that was a proving ground for masculinity and their early involvement in aviation “directly questioned the purportedly natural and expected status of men within the military by serving in one of the most desired roles [(piloting in noncombat jobs)]” (Merryman 1998: 3). WASPs found empowerment as they experienced jobs that were top secret and risky; their participation in the air force was both necessary and their skills as aviators were in high demand in this new era of technological development. The air

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force set itself apart from the other services and became the leading edge in employing servicewomen in nontraditional jobs. Approximately 1,000 women in the WASP program were hired as civil service aviators to ferry military aircraft, fly cargo and secret weapons, tow air gunnery targets, and serve as test pilots (Scrivener 1999). The WASPs achieved almost 300,000 flying hours in the three years that the organization ran. Jacqueline Cochran, Director of the WASP, rivaled some of the best aviators in the industry. By 1944 when the WASP was eliminated, the female aviators had flown almost all aircraft in the AAF inventory and twenty-eight died while serving. As with all women’s components at the time, their role was to release male pilots for combat duty. The WASPs never received full military status despite their exemplary record. Some WASPs were later commissioned in the armed forces, but they were never recognized as pilots. WAVES and female Marines also played a significant role in aviation related to their service branch during the war years. More than 23,000 WAVES served in naval aviation jobs. They served as noncombatant crew members or taught various aspects of aviation, from instrument flying to celestial navigation. Women Marines worked in Marine Corps air commands packing and inspecting parachutes, while many worked in air control tower operations. Almost one-third of Women Marines served in aviation during the Second World War. As the aforementioned demonstrates, women occupied and performed a variety of military jobs by 1944. The early assumption was that each service would identify “women’s jobs” and integrate the required number of women to fill those vacancies. However, as manpower problems emerged, pragmatism drove women’s movement into nontraditional career fields. It was at this time that “women were serving in virtually every occupation outside of direct combat—as control tower operators, Link-trainer instructors, radio operators and repairmen, parachute riggers, gunner instructors, naval air navigators, engine mechanics, celestial navigation instructors, areophotographers, and the like” (Holm 1992: 60). Women were also trusted to work on highly classified projects for the first time. SPARS were assigned to work in Long-Range Aid to Navigation (LORAN) stations, Wac soldiers were assigned to the Manhattan Project, and WAVES participated in the super-secret night-fighter training program. North Africa and the Mediterranean Theater, Europe, and the South Pacific marked some of the first deployments for women in the Second World War. The first group of enlisted women to deploy in early 1943, at the request of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, were Waac soldiers of varying skill and experience. The success of the first WAAC deployment is often credited to General Eisenhower, the Commander of the North African Theater of Operations at the time, who thought American women could be employed in the same way British women were during the war. He noted that he and his colleagues were first trepidatious about bringing women on, but that they realized women were highly qualified for the job later. General Eisenhower said that “from the day they first reached us, their reputation as efficient, effective corps continued to grow” (Weatherford 2010: 318). Servicewomen and their expert performance ultimately won over the most traditional military leaders in the North African Theater.

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The largest deployment of women in the Second World War served in various capacities in the European Theater of Operations (ETO). In January  1943, the first servicewomen deployed to North Africa served alongside the Allied Forces throughout the war and many were assigned to the Signal Corps, the 12th Air Force, and General Mark Clark’s 5th Army. The Wac soldiers followed as closely as twelve miles behind combat troops moving up the Italian peninsula, “acquitted themselves well and turned down offers for rotation to the rear” (Morden 1990: 22). Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker, Commander of the ETO Air Force, insisted that an entire battalion of women were prioritized and shipped to serve under his command because women had fewer disciplinary problems and were often more efficient than their noncombat male counterparts. After a year in the ETO, the Wac soldiers went where they could be most useful. Specifically, they “moved into France aboard LSTs (landing ships, tanks) during the invasion of Normandy. They followed closely behind the fighting forces, slept in the field under shelter halves or in tents on Army cots, ate field rations, and washed in their helmets with cold water” (Holm 1992: 84). Women’s morale was high in the North African and European theaters. They enjoyed their jobs immensely and they were often less of a liability than their male counterparts as the official history shows that men were 89 times more likely to go AWOL, 85 times more apt to get drunk, and 150 time more apt to commit offences. The differences may have been due at least in part to greater off-duty supervision of the women and in part to the constant pressure exerted by the women peer group to uphold the standards of conduct. (1992: 85)

The second largest deployment of women, at approximately 5,500, landed in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) in May  1944. Women’s experience in this theater was much less favorable than that of North Africa or Europe. The first women in the SWPA were requested and arrived in Manila soon after organized enemy resistance ended. Adequate infrastructure for women was nonexistent and they lived within compounds under armed guards. There was no recreation for women and the underlying motives for these restricted living conditions are not entirely clear. Some suggest that these measures protected the virtue of the women serving or, alternatively, protected the men from the “corrupting influence” of military women. Regardless of the issues unique to the SWPA, women’s morale was generally good and the SWPA commanders regarded the WAC deployment as a success. Lieutenant General George C. Kenney, Commanding General of the Allied Air Forces, stated that each Wac went far beyond just replacing a solider to flight. General MacArthur also praised women as his “best soldiers,” claiming that they were more disciplined, affable, and harder working than his male soldiers (Morden 1990). However, some commanders questioned women’s utility and had trouble identifying their contributions to the military. Nurses are recognized as being the first on the ground in Bataan and Corregidor even before the Wac soldiers landed in Algiers. The 5,000 army nurses who arrived in Algiers cared for the wounded in North Africa, Sicily, Naples, and Anzio. Army nurses followed closely in support of the fighting men. Holm (1994) report:

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They waded ashore on Anzio beachhead in Italy five days after the invasion, and four days after the invasion at Normandy, the nurses arrived with the field and evacuation hospitals. They endured relentless bombing and strafing on land, torpedoing at sea, and antiaircraft fire in the air. They assisted in the development of a new concept of recovery wards for immediate post-operative care that would save countless lives. As flight nurses, they provided care on air evacuation flights, a concept employed for the first time in World War II. (13)

Nurses who served in the ETO gathered in various locations in Great Britain where they would spend two years organizing their units and training amid nightly blackouts and enemy bombing. Ten thousand nurses were in the ETO by D-Day and nurses assigned to field and evacuation hospitals went ashore at Utah and Omaha Beaches on June  10 and 11, 1944, respectively. The vanguard of army nurses kept pace with advancing combat lines. As war continued in Europe, army nurses also served in the South Pacific where they followed the allies from island to island as they drove out Japanese forces. Navy nurses were instrumental in providing care for wounded soldiers on hospital ship and evacuation flights in the Pacific theater. Navy nurses assigned on the hospital ship Relief were charged with transporting causalities to shore hospitals. While under enemy attack and typhoon warnings, they assisted in the safe transport of 691 patients onto the ship in one hour (Sarnecky 1996). Navy nurses were assigned the land-based hospitals around the world and also participated in the flight nurse program. While the army nurses were the pioneers of flight nursing, several navy nurses went through the Army School of Air Evacuation. In early 1943, the US Navy introduced its own program, the Naval Air Transport Service, that carried medical supplies and whole blood to the Pacific and would ferry causalities back to land-hospitals on return flights (Anonymous 1944). Both army and navy nurses contributed to the care and rehabilitation of wounded soldiers during the Second World War. However, their participation in various theaters did not protect them from real danger. Five navy nurses became prisoners of the Japanese on Guam and were repatriated on the exchange ship Gripsholm early in the war. Eleven navy nurses and sixty-six army nurses were also interned in the Philippines and remained prisoners of war (POW) for thirty-seven long months (Godson 2001). The Army Nurse Corps suffered the most causalities with a loss of 217 nurses. For their courageous efforts, approximately 1,600 nurses were awarded decorations that include the Commendation Medals, Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars, and Distinguished Flying Crosses. The end of the Second World War came faster than anticipated with the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945. At this time the military did not have demobilization plans in place that were agreeable to the American public and Congress. While a large majority of the service members were committed for “the duration of the emergency and six months,” there was much uncertainty among the women. With the exception of nurses, there were no requirements for them in a peacetime military. With just fewer than 300,000 women serving the military by the summer of 1945, the assumption was that all but several hundred nurses would leave the services and

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the women’s components would be dissolved. Recruitment efforts ceased for women and all married servicewomen were released, causing a major reduction in women’s representation. As massive demobilization efforts were undertaken, military leadership from all service branches started to question decisions to release women with organizational skills that would be critical to a smooth transition. Military leaders openly commented on the positive impact women had in their units. Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations, praised the WAVES for their professionalism and competence by saying that they became “an inspiration to all hands in Naval uniform” (Cherpak 2008: 193). The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Alexander A. Vandergrift, credited women with “putting the 6th Marine Division in the field; for without [them] filling jobs throughout the Marine Corps, there would not have been sufficient men available to form that division” (Nelson 2011). Likewise, the US Army came to appreciate the skilled participation of women. Initially, army leadership believed that women could not adapt to army life, but they were proven wrong and would subsequently lead the effort among the services to find a permanent place for women in the regular army. The US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps decided to retain women beyond the final demobilization date. The Coast Guard was the only service that dissolved the SPARS on schedule and they were disbanded in June 1946. There was less resistance from both the public and military leadership to grant permanent status to the nurse corps. Few could argue against the essential value and importance of nursing in the peacetime military. Congress passed the joint ArmyNavy Nurse Act of 1947 (PL 36–80) in April, which established permanent status for both service nursing corps (Morden 1990). In September  1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 that created the Department of Defense (DoD), along with separating the Army Air Force from the US Army itself, creating the USAF. Upon separation, the Women in the Air Force (WAF) was created and a number of Wac soldiers “continued serving in the Army but performed [air force] duties” initially since the WAF was still under Army command (Sarnecky 1996). In 1948 many Wac soldiers chose to transfer to the WAF when transfer was made possible and the air force established an Air Force Nurse Corps that rounded out an interesting constellation of women’s service components in 1949. That is, the WACs, WAVES, WAF, and MCWR endured, three nursing corps (army, air force, and navy) were supported, and two women’s medical specialist corps (army and navy) were constructed. Congress passed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948 (PL 625) on June 2, and President Truman signed the bill on June 12, 1947, ending the debate about women’s permanent placement in the American Armed Forces. The act retained restrictions on women’s service: The Women’s Armed Services Integration Act prevented women from commanding men or serving in combat roles and placed a 2% cap on the proportion of troops that could be women. Other provisions limited the allowable number of female mid-level officers and prohibited all women from attaining flag rank. Precisely 1 woman per service was allowed to serve as a temporary, 4-year

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full colonel/Navy commander at any time. The Act required automatic discharges for pregnant women and women with minor children. (Lockwood 2014)

At no time was the 2-percent limit ever approached, even during the military buildup related to the Korean War. A February  1950 Joint Chief of Staff policy statement is revealing as the DoD planned “to utilize the greatest number of women possible recognizing at the same time the physical differences between women and men and the prevailing ambivalence about the utilization of women’s skills” (Witt et al. 2005: 63). It was not until the 1960s that women exceeded 1 percent of military strength.

The Korean War and demobilization: 1950s–1960s Women in the military were subject to similar treatment, restrictions, and perceptions during the Korean War as they were throughout the Second World War. In response to the communist North Korean invasion of the Republic of Korea, President Truman ordered US naval and air forces into South Korea to protect its ally. On July 1, 1950, army troops were on the ground and the United States was at war again. When hostilities broke out, the military worried about the possibility of an unlimited war becoming a more general war and considered options to ensure there was enough manpower to deal with the fallout. The DoD announced that it would double the size of the armed forces through use of select reserves and increased draft calls. Increasing resistance to the draft and the thought of operating under the pressures of another manpower shortage inspired General George C. Marshall to form the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) in June 1951 (Goldstein 2001). The committee included women of prominence and it was charged with publicizing the career opportunities for women in the military and communicating the prestige of such opportunities. In September  1951, the committee suggested the launch of a DoD-sponsored campaign to recruit female volunteers such that fewer men would have to be involuntarily drafted. The DoD committed to a recruitment program in October that aspired to add an additional 72,000 women to the armed forces by July 1952. This plan failed due to poor timing and execution as the recruitment drive was launched without any real assessment of success probability. While the committee’s early work was not fruitful, DACOWITS would prove to be a powerful ally for military women in future decades. There were 22,000 women on active duty when the Korean War broke out, and approximately one-third of those women were nurses. In other words, the roughly 15,000 women in the WAC, WAVES, WAF, and MCWR represented less than 1 percent of the military’s total force. By June  1951, the WAC, WAVES, WAF, and MCWR grew to 28,000, “but despite goals to mobilize another 500,000 to 1 million women, recruitment efforts barely kept up with attrition” (Murdoch et al. 2006: 6). The services absorbed enough men to meet the overall strength requirements set by the DoD. Decrements in women’s interest to serve may have had to do with a variety of issues such as the general attitude about women serving in the military, bad timing,

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low pay and standards of living, and exhaustion from participating in the Second World War. The number of women in the military during the Korean War peaked at 48,000 in October 1952 but dropped off significantly—to just over 35,000—by June 1955. During this period, women’s service amounted to a small token force where advancing a military career was improbable. Where once they had the opportunity to serve in nontraditional roles to make available more men for combat, women were increasingly used for nursing and clerical roles during the Korean conflict, conforming to societal and military gender-role expectations. The Korean War experience raised serious doubts about the value of women’s programs to the peacetime defense forces. Attitudes held by military leadership regarding servicewomen in the decades following Korea were influenced by the failure of the women’s program expansion and almost zero pressure to utilize women generally, new Cold War military strategy, the continued use of the all-male draft, and societal attitudes regarding women’s militarization. Pressure was largely different this time because the American public or servicewomen did not recognize the Korean War to be a true national emergency. Outside of nurses, servicewomen were practically invisible because there were so few of them. In sum, their service during the Korean War was not as critical to the military establishment as it had been during the Second World War. Witt et al. (2005) suggest that “as long as the draft could produce the varying quantity of raw manpower needed, servicewomen seemed little more than a dispensable vestige [of the Second World War]” (245). Military and civilian leadership did very little to challenge this perception.

The slander campaign, lost femininity, and sexual deviancy The years leading up to the Second World War and throughout the Korean War marked a time of serious debate about women’s roles in the military. Congressional debate on legislation that would give women access to permanent military service is replete with references to gender complementarity and expectations for the proper role of women in American society. Even though some congress members saw value in opening the services to women, others saw it as a major disruption to American values, the structure of the family, and a humiliating gesture with respect to the male soldier. This is not unlike the debate around women’s participation in twenty-firstcentury combat. Attitudes about women’s participation in a traditionally masculine institution were largely negative. The slander campaign, negative feelings by military leadership (both men and women) about women’s participation, changing military customs, and integration efforts to include women were understood to be detrimental to the military. As is already evident, the sheer number of women brought into the military was quite significant in the face of these obstacles. General staff officers understood the positive effects women brought with them into their respective service lines, but this praise was lost in a cacophony of slander. Witt et  al. (2005) detail how this praise was drowned out by louder groups:

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Spread largely by word of mouth in neighborhoods and on Army posts nationwide, occasionally picked up by the white mainstream press, and repeated and reinforced by members of Congress and the Army, this whispering campaign had far-reaching consequences for military women as it sculpted a series of sexual images of female soldiers that shaped popular perceptions of the Corps during and after the war. (35)

The anxieties felt by military men spreading these rumors were real, but the rumors themselves had no basis in reality. It is also telling that while women integrating into the US Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and air force were met with resistance, American nurses were revered for their contributions in all levels of the military. This reverence for their important work dovetailed with the expected value of women as nurturers and caretakers and, thus, did not threaten the primary role of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in the fleet. This dichotomy shows the power of gendered stereotypes and how civilians and soldiers could interpret one group of women as so vastly different. The issue that was most critical to early formation of attitudes about women joining the line components was the slander campaign of 1943.11 As American women were signing up for the WAAC, WAVES, WASP, and SPARS to “free a man to fight,” women were met with varying degrees of acceptance and contempt. Even in the most progressive units, a SPAR described her reception as ranging from “enthusiasm through amused condescension to open hostility” (McGlen and Sarkees 2004: 333). Women entering these units in the early 1940s understood quickly that wholesale acceptance by her male counterparts was futile and that with each new task, she would have to continually prove her value to the unit. Competence was never assumed despite technical skills she might have for the job and she would be made to prove this time and time again. The attitudes of military men at this time were likely influenced by the fear they felt about participating in combat. All recruiting for women’s components throughout the Second World War was built on the premise that women’s participation in clerical roles would release able-bodied men for combat. While many men would never admit to fearing combat, some preferred the relative safety of those jobs and started to begrudge women who could replace them. This resentment was focused, of course, on military women and may have inspired or even exacerbated the slander campaign. The slander campaign allegations focused on women’s sexuality and promiscuity were so fierce that it affected the daily lives of many servicewomen in the early 1940s. Dirty jokes, snide comments, obscenities, and lewd cartoons aimed to humiliate and demoralize women who understood their participation in the military as their patriotic duty during a time of national crisis. The campaign became so worrisome that the president, in conjunction with his wife, and the service secretaries attempted to stop it. Holm describes: The President accused the press of a “deliberate newspaper job.” The First Lady claimed that the rumors were Nazi propaganda and that “Americans fall for Axisinspired propaganda like children.” The Secretary of War stated that “sinister rumors aimed at destroying the reputation of the WAACs are absolutely and

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Women, Warfare and Representation completely false. Anything which could interfere with their recruiting or destroy the reputation of the corps, and by so doing interfere with increase in combat strength of our Army, would be of value to the enemy.” (1992: 52)

Army Intelligence, in consultation with the FBI, investigated the matter and found no enemy involvement. After tracing scandalous rumors to their sources, the aforementioned agencies found that enlisted men and high-ranking army officers were responsible for the accusations.12 In the hyper masculine setting of the military barracks, “where women and sex are a primary topic, military women had become fair game. Having joined what was a masculine domain, the women were ‘asking for it.’ The underlying motive was to degrade military women and to drive them out of the ‘man’s world’” (1992: 52). Waac soldiers were the primary focus of the slander campaign, but other military women were negatively affected by the rumors. Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb, the Commandant of the Marine Corps in 1943, was so concerned about this negatively impacting his service and the morale of women Marines that he reminded his commanding officers of their responsibility to curtail ill-mannered behavior in male Marines. He said: Information reaching this Headquarters indicates that in some posts and stations officers and men of the Marine Corps treat members of the Women’s Reserve with disrespect … . In some cases, coarse or even obscene remarks are being made without restraint by male Marines in post exchanges, moving picture houses, and other places in the hearing of members of the Women’s Reserve … . This conduct … indicates a laxity in discipline which will not be tolerated. Commanding officers will be held responsible to this Headquarters. (Treadwell 1954: 275)

Marine Corps commanders concern for this misconduct had two sources—namely, commanders were concerned about the disregard for discipline among the male Marines and the negative effect such remarks would have on women’s recruitment during a manpower crisis. In order to mitigate army misconduct, Hobby suggested a campaign to reeducate male personnel on matters of women’s integration. Her proposal was not taken seriously and Army General Marshall responded in the same way Lieutenant General Holcomb had after he saw disparaging material about the Wac soldiers circulating through Army instillations. Appealing to all generals and army commanders, he wrote: The Women’s Army Corps is now an integral part of the Army and a highly essential part of our war effort … . However, reports indicate that there are local commanders who have failed to provide the necessary leadership and have in fact in some instances made evident their disapproval of the Women’s Army Corps. The attitude of the men has quickly reflected the leadership of their commander, as always.

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All commanders in the military establishment are charged with the duty of seeing that the dignity and importance of the work which women are performing are recognized and that the policy of the War Department is supported by strong affirmative action. (Stremlow 2013: 12)

This slander campaign ultimately affected the recruitment of Wac soldiers in 1944. Army recruiters had a difficult time attracting women, which was attributed to the attitudes of enlisted men as well as civilians. One eligible Wac reported that “the trouble lies with the U.S. men. The average serviceman absolutely forbids his wife, sweetheart, or sister to join a military organization, and nearly all U.S. women are in one of these categories” (Treadwell 1954: 689). At this time, a constraining factor on women’s choices was their deference to the men in their lives. The changing attitudes and customs of the military due to women’s integration was another issue that engendered and reinforced traditional gender roles. Women’s entrance into the militarized sphere challenged existing customs. Because women did not naturally fit within the customs of the military, they were forced to adapt to the values and rules of military life. The services made some adjustments to accommodate women (e.g., policies unique to women), but it was women who had to fall in line by adhering to gender-role expectations in order to survive the experience in a male dominated domain. Not unlike the experience of military women in the twenty-first century, there was significant pressure to meet the existing standards of professionalism and conduct applied to male soldiers. Male norms of performance set norms for female performance in many ways.13 Any deviation from this norm would not be tolerated since one woman’s poor behavior reflected badly on all women. In fact, before the establishment of the WAC, harsher standards of conduct were often applied to Waacs. For example, “the original WAAC Code of Conduct, in addition to the usual enjoinders against mutiny, riot, fray, desertion, and disrespect, also made it an offense to be found drunk in uniform or otherwise to bring discredit upon the Corps, either being grounds for various punishments including discharge” (Treadwell 1954: 498). The pressure for women to adhere to these standards worked, and the construction of women’s barracks were instrumental in supporting professionalism among them. Women’s barracks were the only space that was designated for women and served as a safe space free from the sexual harassment that appeared in almost every other context.14 Women also had to show exceptional judgment in dating military men. Women had to carefully consider how to turn down prospects such that they would not retaliate with unkind rumors about women’s sexual deviance (e.g., labeling them lesbians). Moreover, the fraternization rules that came to pass because of women’s entrance into the military pitted women against women in some cases. Holm (1992) claims: Few aspects of military life caused so much dissention among military women as this social caste system. Enlisted women were especially resentful during the war, not only because most of them were qualified to be officers, but also because by American social customs, women tend to date and marry up while men tend to

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Women, Warfare and Representation marry down. American women do not take lightly the suggestion that they are not socially good enough to associate with whomever they please. (75)

The rules set up by each service capped the number of female officers, which made it impossible to move up the ranks despite intelligence, competency, and desire to build a career. The intention to restrict women to subordinate roles by the military, mirroring society in the 1940s, was a frustration that limited their possibilities for courtship. Careers were severely limited as well. Military women were understood as modern-day “temps,” where they would be utilized on an emergency basis. There was more criticism than acceptance of women by the services. The disparaging remarks about women in the military made by the American press, Congress, and military men dwarfed the progressive sentiments of a small group of general staff officers, congress members, and soldiers whose opinions changed after working closely with servicewomen. There was acceptance by some military leadership for women and commanders were willing to lend their name to communicate women’s relevance both stateside and abroad. This chapter has cited evidence that women were believed by many officers to be an asset to the war effort as long as their service was temporary. However, when the country considered the Women Armed Services Integration Act of 1948, servicemen openly denounced the idea of retaining women in a peacetime military. More than this is the fact that none of the women’s line component directors made any attempt to support the idea of women’s continued presence in this context. The public apathy that men displayed, along with the silence from the female line directors that can be interpreted as implicit agreement, did major work toward the maintenance of gendered stereotypes. It is of particular importance to stress that the story of women’s integration into the armed forces closely parallels the integration of African Americans into the American military. While the Women Armed Services Integration Act (hereafter “Integration Act of 1948”) was enacted into law on June 12, 1948, President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948, that led to the desegregation of the American Armed Forces. Like white women, black women have served in some capacity in every American war. The position of black women in American society was a precarious one in the 1940s, but the position of a black woman in the armed forces made her life three times harder. In 1942, the WAAC recruited black women to the extent that it made up 10 percent of its force. The US Navy and Marine Corps refused to welcome black women into its ranks until 1945 and 1949, respectively (Litoff and Smith 1996). For enlisted women and female officers, segregation was the rule. Black women lived in separate barracks, ate in specific sections of the mess hall, and participated in segregated social functions. Although black officers and enlisted personnel confronted similar prejudice, black female officers had a unique experience. For instance, WAC policy assigned black female officers to black WAC units. Yet many black male units were commanded by white officers. This disparity often created an isolated experience for black female officers because they were often the only black officer at a given station. This isolation was further exacerbated by the racial policies observed by black servicewomen who could not attend officers’ clubs or social functions due to segregation (Meyer 1996; Weatherford 2010). Black

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women who were deployed also had different experiences relative to those of their white counterparts. For example, white servicemen in New Guinea stations held white servicewomen in protective custody because theater authorities insisted that such precautions were required to prevent rape of Wac soldiers by black troops stationed there. Although this precaution was protective rather than disciplinary, it is not clear that black Wac soldiers received the same “protections” since they were segregated from white Wac soldiers. The executive order did not solve problems of prejudice faced by black Wac soldiers or end deeply rooted institutional racism. Likewise, the Integration Act of 1948 was not a fix-all solution that would eradicate prejudice toward women or institutionalized sexism. As Holm points out, “the chief difference between the two, however, is that segregation and discrimination based on race are officially banned while that which is based on sex remains institutionalized in laws and official polices” (1992: 79). Institutionalizing difference when it comes to black and female service members is one way to protect white male privilege, especially when tied to the ideal of the citizen-soldier. As mentioned previously, the US Army and the US Navy moved forward aggressively to establish a permanent Women’s Reserve in March  1946. The Marine Corps, the smallest service and the most hyper masculine, wanted no part of a permanent Women’s Reserve. Brigadier General Gerald C. Thomas, USMC Director of Plans and Policies, said: The opinion generally held by the Marine Corps is that women have no proper place or function in the regular service in peacetime ... . The American tradition is that a woman’s place is in the home … women do not take kindly to military regimentation ... . During the war they have accepted the regulations imposed on them, but hereafter the problem with enforcing discipline alone would be a headache. (Williams 1989: 22)

Eventually, the USMC Commandant reluctantly supported the initiative to allow women in the regular Marines. His support for women’s integration resulted from the pressure he felt by leadership in all other service branches to include women in the regular establishment. Most interesting is the fact that the wartime female directors of the WAC, WAVES, SPARS, and MCWR were silent on the issue of the permanent status of women. The directors believed that women should serve as “temps” and that the line services should be dissolved as quickly as possible once hostilities ended. They played a large role in shaping ideas of masculinity and femininity in the military. All of the women’s line directors were similar in class and distinction—they all came from upper-middle class American families and held positions of privilege at Ivy League universities. The understanding of women’s roles in male-dominated professions were upheld by the attitudes and culture shared by these women. Moreover, every director expressed this view by resigning in 1945–1946. Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby resigned as director of the WAC in July  1945 and Colonel Ruth Cheney Streeter, Director of the MCWR, resigned in December of the same year. At the beginning

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of 1946, Captain Mildred McAfee and Captain Dorothy C. Stratton relinquished control of the WAVES and SPARS, respectively. There is some speculation as to why these women directors remained silent on the issue of integration: It has always been something of a mystery why the wartime women’s leaders did not support the permanent retention of women in the armed forces or even their retention in the immediate postwar interim force. The directors did not appear before congressional committees during the 1947–48 hearing on the Integration Act, presumably to avoid undercutting the women who favored the legislation. There are indications that the wartime directors had deep reservations about the long-term utilization of women in the armed forces, which they were reluctant to express publicly for fear of seeming to deride the women’s wartime efforts. (Holm 1992: 107)

The opinions of the directors, however, were articulated in the Commission on the Organization of the Executive Branch of Government report in 1948. They expressed their major concerns about the steps the services should take to protect the wellbeing of servicewomen. The military rules and operational procedures were written by men and for men. Any accommodations to include women were seen by many as unnecessary because it might signal special privilege for women in the armed forces. Because there were so few women in military at the time, they were “almost without exception expected to make the entire adjustment to men’s standards of dress, privacy, cleanliness, and recreation” (1992: 103). The directors were primarily concerned about the long-term effects of constantly adjusting to a masculine environment that would not make accommodations. Any resistance to the integration of women in the American Armed Forces seems to have been rooted in adherence to nontraditional gender roles. Women were often marginalized in cases where they took on nontraditional tasks or jobs. In cases where they completed tasks that were aligned with traditional gender roles, they were celebrated. The nurses deployed during the Second World War were considered a special case where men appreciated women’s integration. Because nurses were tasked with caring for wounded soldiers, they were never far from battle. General MacArthur recognized the risks nurses took on in order to care for wounded soldiers. He said “the Army nurse is the symbol to the soldier of help and relief in his hour of direst need. Through mud and mire, through the muck of campaign and battle, wherever the fight leads, she patiently, gallantly, seeks the wounded and distressed. Her comfort knows no parallel. In the hearts of all fighting men, she is enshrined forever” (Bloomfield 2004: 51). The gratitude MacArthur felt pervaded the military at this time. A letter crafted and signed by hundreds of military men best exemplifies the attitudes men held in October  1944. The letter was published in the Stars and Stripes newspaper, which in part, read: To all Army nurses overseas: We men were not given the choice of working in the battlefield or the home front. We cannot take any credit for being here. We are here because we have to be. You are here because you felt you were needed.

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So, when an injured man opens his eyes to see one of you … concerned with his welfare, he can’t but be overcome by the very thought that you are doing it because you want to … you endure whatever hardships you must to be where you can do us the most good. (Yellin 2004: 198)

Women were accepted institutionally as long as they adhered to their culturally proscribed roles and accepted their status as temporary service providers. Reference to gender norms and second-class status emerged as soon as their talents and the needs of the service converged in nontraditional ways (e.g., aviation, translation). Women’s role as nurses were comprehensible to their male counterparts because it aligned with expected sex-role stereotypes—namely, nursing was understood broadly as a calling for them.15 Female exceptionalism was tolerated by necessity rather than a goal of the armed forces.

Vietnam, the preservation of femininity, and tokenism The Integration Act of 1948 did not fulfill its promise of generating real growth in the women’s programs. In fact, the Vietnam Era was a time when women’s participation and recruitment languished. Attitudes about women’s place in the military referenced 1950s sex-role stereotypes. Women’s participation in programs prior to the escalation of the Vietnam War was restricted because of the military’s two commitments: infusing the concept of martial elitism into the force structure, thereby applying double standards to women, and the preservation of femininity among military women to an obsessive degree. These commitments marked women’s exclusion within and from the military, where messages always communicated that women were tolerated rather than accepted in the institution. Military men may have tolerated women because the scarcity of volunteers called for their inclusion, but their utilization in this period was not enough to question or change the dominant paradigm of the all-male military where double standards persisted. The source of resistance may be that actual inclusion would require reframing and rethinking long accepted norms of identity and behavior, which are hard to change with any speed even in the best of conditions. The transition out of the 1950s into the 1960s brought change on several fronts. First, flexible response replaced massive retaliation as a strategy in 1961 under the new Kennedy Administration. In order to combat the communist threats that Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Southeast Asia (SEA) posed, the new strategy would be to use a variety of political, military, economic, and diplomatic options to deter conflict. Due to these increasing confrontations, Kennedy enhanced the defense budget, sought congressional approval for calling up the reserves, and sent several thousand troops to West Berlin in June  1961. By 1965, approximately two million Americans were in uniform. The new military strategy, coupled with the services’ expansion, did not generate additional recruitment for women at the time. By 1965, 30,600 women filled the ranks of the line services, which was a smaller representation of women than was in the Korean War. Rather than consider recruiting women to fill its ranks in these initial years, the military relied on the draft to provide more men.

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Although the military was making strategic changes in order to combat new threats, American society confronted new ideas related to second-wave feminism.16 The feminist movement gained some traction, but did very little to bring awareness to women’s issues or experience in the military. One might expect feminism to serve as a catalyst to further integration and policies that ensured equal treatment for uniformed women. However, it did not work that way. In fact, institutional segregation and prejudicial treatment emerged out of the 1948 Integration Act itself. After Congress amended the act in 1967 to remove grade ceilings (HR 5894), “the House Armed Services Committee said that there could not be complete equality between men and women in the matter of military careers” (Holm 1992: 178). The tide of feminism would soon catch up to the military during the Vietnam Era, but the military would remain entrenched in its discriminatory behavior until then. Patriarchy, power, and martial tradition were perpetual sources of significant resistance at this time. As mentioned earlier, there were two major themes of discrimination in the 1960s—specifically, the application of double standards (martial elitism) to women and preserving women’s femininity at all costs. First, higher standards were applied to female recruits than to their male counterparts in the mid- and late 1960s. Despite the constant failure of the services to meet their recruiting goals during this time, the application of higher standards was thought to be justified since fewer women were required and the services believed they could be selective in order to attract the most competent women. There was never any attempt to meet the 2-percent ceiling for women’s recruitment authorized by law and the services continued to express the importance of higher standards for women because it resulted in fewer personnel problems later. This argument was never applied to male recruits. In fact, the DoD chose to authorize the enlistment of approximately 300,000 males with low aptitude scores before they considered growing women’s numbers and, yet, extraordinarily high educational standards were also applied to women at this time. Jobs that required specific skills would necessitate more education and higher aptitude such that women could absorb the military on-the-job training. While this inequality was frustrating, most women were placed in jobs that did not require skills afforded to them through higher education. Thus, boredom, job dissatisfaction, and low morale undermined the retention of servicewomen. Elitism transcended education and applied to standards of beauty as w ­ ell— specifically, the most attractive women were called on to fill the ranks of all service branches. Standards of beauty remained paramount in each service. A 1964 study on expanding the MCWR concluded that quality must be privileged over quantity and reported that “in accordance with the commandant’s desires, [Women Marines] must also be the most attractive and useful women in the four line services” (Holm 1992: 181). It is interesting that Women Marines had to be both attractive and useful. To be both is an expression of USMC elitism and a possible way to minimize the number of female recruits entering the Marine Corps. Alarmingly, the Air Force Chief of Staff mandated that recruitment select more attractive WAF recruits. For the air force, “physical appearance became the chief criterion in the selection process: each applicant was required to pose for four photographs: front, side, back, and full face. Civil rights leaders assumed the photographs’ purpose was to determine

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race, but this was not the case—it was a beauty contest, and the commander of the Recruiting Service was the final judge” (1992: 181). The preoccupation with women’s physicality applied to all service lines. Indoctrination and training programs looked like ladies finishing schools. Any training that involved masculine tasks (e.g., weapons familiarization, map reading and navigation, living in the field) were eliminated and replaced with programming to enhance feminine appearance. Any fitness training was done with the intent to keep women slim and improve their posture. Physical training was unnecessary since restrictions applied to women’s programs blocked them from nontraditional jobs carried out by their female predecessors. Barrier after barrier made women’s roles in the military more circumscribed in the late 1960s, which led to women’s segregation from the mainstream military. The role and status of women in the military would shift again in the 1970s with the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in both the House and in the Senate and the push for the AVF.17 As men were sent into Vietnam, the military looked to growing the women’s programs due to yet another manpower shortage—this time men were reluctant to volunteer for service as they had been in previous conflicts. While the draft continued to pull men into SEA, the DoD announced plans to add 6,500 women to the existing line services. Women were only considered after all other strategies were implemented to increase men’s voluntary service—specifically, military pay and benefits were substantially increased and enlistment standards for men were significantly lowered. This signified the first major departure from the status quo since the Korean War and would initiate the growth and expansion of women’s roles that continued through the 1970s. The need for additional women was driven by the demonstrable need for soldiers that was created exclusively by war. Plans that included additional women were not based on any principle of equal access or opportunity. Here, again, it is evident that women’s roles only expand in the military as a consequence of deadly conflict. Women’s roles in the military were intimately connected to the fate of the draft. In 1967, Burke Marshall, Chairman of the President’s Commission on the Selective Service, directly referenced this connection when he reported: Particularly at a time when manpower demands are great—such as the ­present— there is a disturbing paradox in this circumstance: Women willing to volunteer for military duty exist in far greater numbers than the services will accommodate; but at the same time there are undoubtedly military tasks suitable for women which are being filled by men who have to be involuntarily inducted. (Marshall 1967: 11)

Accommodations should be made where women could voluntarily be integrated into the military, the report stated, such that the number of men called up for duty involuntarily would be reduced. Marshall saw women, like many of his predecessors, as substitutes for men. Their purpose, in fact, was to liberate men from war. Fierce opposition to conscription ultimately led to the expansion of women’s roles and representation in the military. As manpower issues grew, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed PL  90-130 on November 8, 1967, that amended the US code to eliminate the career restrictions of

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female officers in the line services. This new law was the first major policy change after the 1948 Integration Act and raised fears about women as general flag officers. Both male and female officers expressed concern about women holding senior rank given that they were noncombatants. Concerns about women commanding men were also raised. These concerns were rooted, still, in cultural understandings of gender roles and such a change fundamentally challenged beliefs held by male military officers. The law ultimately allowed the promotion of servicewomen to army colonel and navy captain. In 1968, the WAF and WAC promoted one and seven women to colonel, respectively. The US Navy and USMC followed suit by promoting six and eight line and staff officers, respectively. Almost three years after PL 90-130 was signed into law, the US Army promoted two women to the rank of brigadier general. An additional critical component of the new law was the removal of the 2-percent cap on women’s integration in the armed forces. When this revision was proposed, none of the services believed that the draft was in danger. Approximately 7,500 servicewomen served in the Vietnam War. An astounding 6,250 of those women served as nurses. Although approximately 84 percent of women’s service affirmed gender-role expectations, servicewomen challenged the image created for them in the post–Second World War period. In spite of women’s exemplary performance in a combat environment, the line services chose to mobilize far fewer women to SEA based on stereotypical attitudes of women’s roles at the time. Paternalism was an active force keeping women from SEA because the leadership did not want to expose women to the horrors of combat. The services generally did not believe that women could handle basic inconveniences without loss of efficiency. Nurses, conversely, were the first women in the field and represented the largest number of women. Their collective patience, dedication, courage, and willingness to take on unimaginable tasks were constantly referenced because of the types of causalities encountered in the Vietnam War. By the time the American military withdrew from Vietnam, between 5,000 and 6,000 nurses and medical specialists had experienced duty in a combat area (e.g., field hospitals, mobile surgical hospitals, evacuation hospitals, and hospital ships) and their exemplarily contributions were evident to servicemen and women alike. There seems to be a distinction made between nurses and other servicewomen by military men in the twentieth century where nurses are understood as heroic while others are not. It is curious that the understanding of one female cohort did not positively impact other women outside of nursing. The difference in perception between types of jobs likely has its source in representation, tradition, and establishment of some modicum of martial femininity. First, female nurses in Vietnam far outnumbered women serving in jobs outside of medicine. The fact that only 26 percent of women served outside of nursing made those women practically invisible to servicemen. Second, the Army and Navy Nursing Corps were the original contexts for women’s service in 1901 and 1908, respectively. Having such deep roots connected to militarism, nurses established a kind of martial femininity early on where they assumed the traditional caretaker role, but did so in an explicitly dangerous and militaristic fashion. Their self-perception did not disturb cultural assumptions made about men and women’s work. This did not require a reevaluation of fundamental beliefs on the part of men. Third, nursing

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required women to be as close to front lines as possible so they could effectively treat wounded soldiers. The nature of their work, whether it was on a Second World War beachhead or in the jungle of Vietnam, made nurses more exposed and vulnerable and, therefore, more likely to suffer the same consequences as combatants. It was the nurses who were most exposed and vulnerable in a world seemingly dedicated to the preservation of male chivalry and female virtue. Due to increasing American disenchantment and dissatisfaction with the draft, President Richard Nixon appointed a Commission on an All-Volunteer Force to examine the virtues of an AVF in February  1970. While the report findings said nothing about military women as a potential resource given this structural change, it was unanimous in its reporting that the nation’s interests would be better served through the employment of an AVF (Holm 1992). The end of conscription in 1973 ushered in an era of women’s increased participation in the military. Murdoch et al. (2006) noted: “Goals to increase the number of uniformed women by 170% were met and quickly exceeded. Women’s selection criteria, previously more stringent than men’s, were equalized, and their training and promotion lists were integrated with men’s” (6). The WAC was dissolved on October  29, 1978, as a means to eliminate any sense that women were separate from the regular army and issues exclusively related to women (e.g., pregnancy, marriage, or dependent children) were no longer grounds for military discharge. By 1980, a large number of occupational restrictions on women’s service had been lifted, with the exception of combat roles. What precipitated this change was the need to respond to manpower issues. The new challenges (less volunteerism by men) posed by the AVF made women an attractive source of manpower. Rather than conflict bringing on manpower needs, it was now the organizational structure that demanded women’s inclusion. By the late 1970s, women’s volunteerism sustained the AVF. Had the military not recruited approximately 42,000 women in 1979, all four service braches would have failed to meet their recruitment goals. Overall, adjustments to women’s numbers were driven by the need for soldiers. Although military leadership continued to view women as temporary service providers, the 1980s would reveal tensions between the military’s contempt for women and President Reagan’s military buildup.

Breaking with sex-role stereotyping in the post-Vietnam era Between the creation of the AVF and the Persian Gulf War, the years passed with serious efforts by men and women alike, on all administrative levels, to break sex-role stereotypes applied to women up through the Vietnam Era and prove their competency in more nontraditional military jobs. Congress, DoD officials, and military women themselves worked collectively to accept the goals of second-wave feminism, or women’s legal and economic equality. Dedicated members of these groups saw gradual positive changes to effect this end. Such changes include, but are not limited to, equalized selection criteria, the creation of coeducational training programs, the streamlining of promotion lists and career monitoring for both men and women, and revision to family policy. Moreover, servicewomen were gradually integrated

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into the service staff college, occupied nontraditional roles like drill instructors, and were admitted to the prestigious service academies where the first coeducational class would graduate in 1980. Although there were many groups pushing for these changes, the personnel management needs of each service, in the end, were responsible for this period of inclusion. Recruitment was of dire importance and the absorption of recruits into the military machine required greater flexibility. Women’s utilization patterns shifted considerably, from exclusion to inclusion, during that time with respect to job type. Women experienced greater inclusion in noncombat career fields during that period and some assignments could even be considered straddling the line on what was classified as combat. The need to increase the numbers of women in the new AVF converged with the national push for women’s legal and economic equality. This fortuitous combination of forces precipitated a transformation that started in December 1974 where women were approved to serve in all jobs that had a noncombat designation. However, “women were assigned to only 44 percent of the opened jobs in the Marine Corps, 63 percent in the Army, 70 percent in the Air Force, and 72 percent in the Navy” (Anon 1976: 81). In 1973, the military instituted aggressive programming to achieve a more balanced representation of women in noncombatant jobs. Female quotas were used to fill nontraditional career fields (e.g., mechanical, electronic) with women rather than absorbing them in traditional ways. These directives established some important turning points. In the beginning of 1970, 90 percent of servicewomen occupied traditional roles and by 1980 that percentage decreased to 54 percent. Patterns of migration back to traditional roles (for men and for women) developed in 1975 in spite of significant gains. DoD reporting indicated “that 76 percent of women trained in electronics equipment repair in 1973 had left the field by 1976, compared with 51 percent of the men. In the maintenance fields, the rates were running as high as 90 percent for women and 53 percent for men” (Holm 1992: 276). Even though men were also migrating back to their traditional, more masculine roles on a similar scale, the military deemed this largely a women’s problem. The real problem was a broken job classification system that operated on artificial quotas predicated on gender-role stereotypes.

Military buildup, expanded opportunities, and continued anxiety in the 1980s The 1980s introduced a new foreign policy posture as a response to the Middle Eastern crisis where the Soviet Union moved into Afghanistan threatening the area’s oil resources. In order to demonstrate United States’ resolve after this Soviet Union invasion, President Carter announced that he would reinstate registration for the draft. This reinstatement of draft registration symbolically signaled to the USSR, Carter believed, that the United States was prepared to confront aggression where its interests were threatened. His plans for registration, as an Equal Right Amendment (ERA) advocate, included the registration of women. Carter justified this inclusion by stating:

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My decision to register women is a recognition of the reality that both women and men are working members of our society. It confirms what is already obvious throughout our society—that women are now providing all types of skills in every profession. The military should be no exception … . There is no distinction possible, on the basis of ability or performance, that would allow me to exclude women from an obligation to register. (Carter 1980)

Due to President Ford’s decision to suspend the peacetime registration system, Carter had to request additional funds from Congress in order to reinstate the system. Carter made clear that reinstatement of registration was a measure that would expedite the mobilization of troops in an emergency and that he had no plans to draft Americans or discontinue the AVF. Carter was granted funds to reinstate men, but Congress would not allow for the inclusion of women in the end. Instead, congressional debates resulted in the November  9, 1979, passage of PL  96-107 that required Carter to submit a detailed plan for reforming the Selective Service System. He would have to articulate, among other things, whether women should be subject to registration and induction into the military. Carter’s proposed plan to include women was met with varying degrees of confusion. Feminists believed that Carter seriously misunderstood the movement as it was predicated on pacifism and anti-war sentiments of the 1960s and 1970s. Feminists were conflicted in showing support for the president—while they detested war and the military establishment, they wanted women to enjoy the same benefits as their male counterparts. Politicians, many of them members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who had been advocates of a return to registration were happy with the decision, but faulted Carter of confusing women’s equality with real military issues. Other politicians were confused because they once supported Carter in 1979 in rejecting ideas to reinstate registration. Women in Congress, particularly, were divided on the issue. Congresswoman Marjorie Holt (MD-R), member of the Military Personnel Subcommittee, maintained that women should not be included in registration as long as they did not serve in combat. Representative Barbara Mikulski (MD-D) was deeply concerned about resentment and anger men would feel if women were not included. Representative Patricia Schroeder (CO-D) believed that women should be included in registration despite the fact that registration would not improve the US defense posture. Finally, Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum (KS-D), the only woman elected to the Senate at that time, supported draft legislation “in accordance with a long standing belief that registration has the often-over-looked benefit of reminding young people of their commitment to the nation and its principles. Both equity and national resolve would be best advanced by including women in the registration requirement” (Unnamed Author 1980). The primary arguments against women’s inclusion in draft registration reiterated Representative Marjorie Holt’s (MD-R) feelings and revolved around combat arms. That women could not readily fill all positions in the military and the fact that the most critical jobs in an emergency force are those of the combatant would eliminate women as an immediate concern. While the House and Senate Armed Services Committees were embroiled in debate, the Supreme Court convened to decide if the registration of women was

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constitutionally defensible. Almost immediately after Carter resumed registration, the US District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled on Goldberg vs. Rostker, originally brought in 1973, declaring that the Military Selective Service Act violated the fifth amendment of Constitution.18 In Goldberg vs. Rostker, the government had to convince the court that the total exclusion of women served as an “important government objective,” which it failed to do to the satisfaction of the court. However, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision by a six to three vote and ruled that combat exclusion policies were constitutional (Stiehm 1989). Congress could, ostensibly, discriminate between men and women when it came to matters of national security and defense. The Supreme Court’s ruling likely had some effect on military policy where it seems reasonable to discriminate based on sex in matters internal to each service. If President Carter was thought to be an ally to groups defending the equitable utilization of women in the military, President Reagan was considered a traditionalist that ensured a return of male martial values. For the military, the 1981 transition from the Carter to the Reagan administration meant that initiatives for women’s expansion in the military would stagnate or be entirely reversed. The increasing number of women, military traditionalists thought, had made the military impotent. The failed rescue attempt of the Iranian hostages and concerns about force readiness in the face of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan raised questions about the military’s ability to protect American assets. While experts noted that the military was lacking manpower and was poorly equipped and underpaid, they also opined that women’s integration created more personnel problems than it solved. On February 2, 1984, General John W. Vessey, Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that the single greatest challenge faced by the armed forces during his tenure had been its integration of women and “that a male institution has been turned into a coeducational institution in a very short period, [which] has been a traumatic exercise for [everyone]” (Collier 1991:  3,  4). This “feminization” of the military was changing the character of the institution and was perceived by many leaders as a measure forced upon the military due to the national liberal agenda. The 1980s marked a decade of open disagreement between appointed civilian officials and military leadership on matters of the utilization of women. The  military was apprehensive about the increased inclusion of women, or the process of feminization, because it was starting to threaten military cultures that were previously untouchable—operational areas and service academies. Military leadership became more defensive and more resistant to women’s inclusion as they got closer to principal mission elements. Consistent with the past, the major justification to recruit women to the military in the 1980s was the lack of manpower that would be required to build up the military during the Reagan administration. President Reagan planned to expand the military  by 10 percent, or add an additional 200,000 service members by 1985. This  plan was significant because it would be the largest growth in military members since Vietnam.  While the pool of eligible male and female volunteers was in decline,  there was one major difference between men and women: female interest still exceeded  recruitment demands. The military was nowhere close to exhausting  the market of interested women and American women were a quality

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alternative when  manpower based on volunteerism loomed large. President Carter and Reagan understood this, but the US Army fundamentally did not. Before the Reagan administration had time to assess the manpower issues faced by the military and draw up plans for buildup, army representatives stood before the Senate Armed Services Manpower Subcommittee and stated that the US Army would reduce the number of women they recruited until they fully understood how women’s integration influenced combat effectiveness. Army field commanders felt that women were a fundamental distraction to servicemen. This was a hunch on the part of army field commanders; there was no proof that women negatively affected the US Army’s readiness. The presentation of this plan was an unbelievable end-run by the US Army around the Senate Armed Service Committee when they did not first clear it with the DoD. In response, Deputy Defense Secretary, Frank C. Carlucci, ordered a joint Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD)/service assessment of women’s accession and retention policies on March 19, 1981. The review was to address how readiness and mission capability would be affected by women’s proposed numbers in each service and what the costs associated with the recruitment of additional men to meet required force strength would be if women’s recruitment goals were lowered. The report would serve, as many army officials thought, as an opportunity to argue for the curtailment of female recruitment. In fact, they cut female enlistment goals by 60,000 before the report was made public. The DoD Background Review: Women in the Military reported three major findings. First, the report found that each service program assessment methodologies used to determine strength and accession goals were sound and that they should be trusted to set their own goals for the aforementioned objectives. Second, the recruitment of women to specifically counterbalance shortfalls in the recruitment of able-bodied men would likely approach a point of diminishing returns. Finally, the report concluded that the services did not appropriately document the impact, positive or negative, of women on force readiness and mission effectiveness. Once published, OSD worked with the military and agreed on a five-year enlisted female accession goal, which would bring in 40,000 new women across the services annually. Between an army proposal urging the president to reconsider the draft and the public expression of reluctance regarding women in the military by military personnel and Pentagon officials, Secretary Weinberger made clear where the administration stood on the topic: Military women are a very important part of our total force capability. Qualified women are essential to obtaining the numbers of quality people required to maintain the readiness of our forces. The administration desires to increase the role of women in the military, and I expect the Service Secretaries actively to support that policy. While we have made progress, some institutional barriers still exist. I ask that you personally review your service policies to ensure that women are not subject to discrimination in recruiting or career opportunities. This department must aggressively break down those remaining barriers that prevent us from making the fullest use of the capabilities of women in providing for our national defense. (Rostker 2006: 567)

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Service secretaries were required to follow up with Deputy Secretary Carlucci on actions taken to remove institutional barriers and assess how women’s exclusion from combat affected their military career trajectories. The hardline that the Reagan administration took on women in the military shifted the conversation within the services dramatically. Where once the debate revolved around women’s numbers, now the debate was focused on women’s roles in operational areas and the definition of combat that applied to each service mission. The 1980s was a decade of slow change with respect to where women could serve in each service. The US Army carried out a “Women in the Army” study to consider combat exclusions and the locations where women could be assigned. Women were prohibited from serving in twenty-three Military Occupational Specialties (MOS) based on proximity to combat. Pressure applied to the US Army by DACOWITS resulted in thirteen of the twenty-three MOSs being reopened. As the US Army was assessing what positions women could occupy, the first integrated army units were tested in the 1983 deployment to Grenada. One hundred and seventy-one women served in various roles including military police, “helicopter pilots, crew chiefs and maintenance personnel, intelligence specialists …, signal and communication specialists, truck drivers, and medical personnel with a MASH unit” (Rostker 2006: 567). Women’s outstanding performance drove the US Army’s 1987 choice to open approximately 12,000 positions in the forward support battalions of the US Army’s combat divisions. Because women had already served in so many support and supply jobs critical to combat units, the readiness of combat units might be compromised without their appropriate utilization. There was widespread navy resistance regarding women’s integration into seagoing elements. In a June  1986 exit interview of Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral James D. Watkins, he proclaimed that women had taken some of the desirable jobs from their male counterparts and that he feared that the US Navy had reached a point where women’s recruitment may be detrimental to readiness. This, along with the pressure the US Navy felt to expand recruitment to fill the growing number of ships in various stages of development, led to the December 1986 announcement that the US Navy would add approximately 1,000 enlisted positions aboard thirty-nine ships. While this looked like a promising development for women in the US Navy, it redesignated six ship types as “combatant,” which closed a number of jobs previously open to women. What was won in job increases was lost in the redesignation of ships. Furthermore, two developments deeply impacted the morale of navy women. First, CNO Admiral Carlisle A. H. Trost ordered a hold on women’s enlistment numbers in February  1987 that would be effective until 1991. Additionally, James H. Webb, Jr., a man vehemently against women in the military, was selected to replace John F. Lehman, Jr., as navy secretary. Webb publicized, as one of his first initiatives as secretary, that he would place greater emphasis on selecting and promoting officers who demonstrated excellent performance in challenging assignments such as combat. This, it was assumed, would reduce women’s rate of promotion opportunities and create barriers that would stymie their naval careers. DACOWITS, again, exerted pressure by visiting navy and USMC bases to assess the sentiments of women in the wake of policy decisions and statements made by

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top navy leadership. The DACOWITS report caused such embarrassment for the service that Secretary Webb called for an immediate study on the US Navy’s current utilization of women. The Navy Study Group’s Report on Progress of Women in the Navy was published on December  5, 1987, and led to new policy initiatives that would improve the experience of navy women. Opportunities to serve at sea and as aircrew in shore-based fleet air reconnaissance squadrons grew because the report called for a reassessment of what a “combat mission” meant. Without DACOWITS’ pressure, this immediate examination and reevaluation would not have taken place. The USMC continued to think of itself as an elite fighting force and maintained that of the four services, it was the least able to make accommodations for women. Nonetheless, at the time the 1981 DoD Background Review was compiled, the USMC coordinated its own internal review to establish the ideal requirement for women’s integration. Women made up only 4 percent of the Marine Corps’ total strength, which was a much smaller proportion than the other services. A 1984 report focusing on enlisted women’s utilization and a 1987 report on the classification and assignments of USMC female officers claimed that men and women would have similar opportunities to serve in support units and that female Marines would be assigned to all noncombat occupational fields. This excluded women from infantry, armor, artillery, and other such combat assignments. An additional outcome of these reports was the reclassification of some jobs to include women to the extent that their opportunities more than doubled. For enlisted women, 5,000 opportunities became 12,000, and for officers, 655 opportunities became 1,000. In 1984, female Marines received defensive training for the first time and in 1985 they qualified on an M16 rifle alongside their male counterparts. Real gains for female Marines were won at this time, but the ultraconservative USMC environment made working in the organization tough for women. The same DACOWITS report that embarrassed the US Navy identified that sexual harassment, abuse, and discrimination pervaded the Corps in a way that it did not in other branches. The DACOWITS report recommended that corrective action and revision of policy be enacted from the command level downward. While some policy was revised upon the recommendation to USMC Commandant General Alfred M. Gray, Jr., his hand was ultimately forced in the case of opening Marine Security Force assignments (e.g., embassy guards) by Deputy Secretary Carlucci. Throughout the 1980s, DACOWITS proved to be a formidable ally to women in the armed forces. DACOWITS was successfully able to communicate the needs and concerns of military women to top military leadership such that policy could improve the lives of women at all levels. Without the work of DACOWITS, it was unlikely that senior officials could understand the needs of servicewomen in order to address them. The decade, although superficially looked to be more inclusive of women, proved to be very modest in terms of its employment of women. The air force, in keeping with its tradition of welcoming qualified women into its ranks, was free of recruiting constraints. The air force applied the same recruitment standards to men and women, which resulted in no evident difference between male and female recruits. Women did not have access to aircraft that had a high probability of being exposed to hostile fire, but despite this difference the air force was unfettered

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in its ability to accept women because the skills the air force required aligned with skills prized in civilian industrial organizations. This made it uniquely different from the other service branches. However, the air force worried that it would have to absorb more women in order to leave more male recruits for the US Army after the US Army announced its “woman freeze” in 1981. The fear translated into an air force model that artificially set limits on women’s recruitment. Congress recognized this and mandated that 19 percent of air force recruits be women in 1987. This goal was raised to 22 percent by 1988, but Congress “prohibited the Air Force from setting minimum or maximum gender-specific goals on original enlistments except for duty assignments falling under the combat exclusion law [in 1989] … which establish[ed] what was essentially a free-flow enlistment system in which men and women competed for available openings” (Holm 1992: 419). By 1990, 77,000 women were in the air force and approximately 97 percent of jobs were open to them. As opposed to the smallest utilization of women by the USMC, the air force utilized them the most which was made clear by the fact that 14 percent of the force was women. The domain of aviation was subject to combat exclusion policies for women across the services. Because each service had its own definition of combat based on operational mission typology, there was a confusing constellation of policies that excluded women from aviation. The air force, navy, and army set aside small quotas for women in specific flying programs. The USMC stood firm and continued to ban women from aviation. However, the services felt pressure from OSD, Congress, and some senior commanders to add more opportunities for women by reducing their restrictions. Important gains for women’s advancement were made, but they were difficult to see since women made up such a miniscule number in the flying programs. The air force opened assignments on Airborne Warning and Control Systems aircraft in 1982, approved women’s assignment to crews on KC-10 refueling tankers in 1984, and opened 1,645 positions on aircraft previously off limits (e.g., RC-135 and U-2 reconnaissance aircraft). After women’s deployment to Panama for Operation Just Cause, the air force opened both the C-130 and C-141 to women.19 The US Navy, instead of assessing women’s access to aircraft based on aircraft type like the air force had, aligned restrictions with mission type (e.g., any mission that required aircraft for combat was off limits to women). This gave navy women access to aircraft closed to army women. In the early 1980s, navy women were flying F-4s as test pilots and H-46 helicopters. By 1987, “the Navy opened pilot, NFO (navigator), mission specialist, and aircrew positions in the Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadrons” (Holm 1992: 430). Despite the fact that navy women could fly different aircraft than those in the US Army, they were further limited by restrictions keeping them off of combat ships. For the US Army, it focused on the intent of combat exclusion laws because policies specific to the US Army did not explicitly apply to aircraft. They excluded women “from all fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters assigned combat missions or flying in direct combat support” (1992: 431). Women’s continued exclusion from combat roles was largely tied to societal expectations of women’s participation in war—specifically, American society generally believed that women should never take life and should always be protected from harm. The military services developed regulations for the assignment of

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servicewomen with societal expectations for gender roles in mind. As Putko (2008) states “at no time was ‘capability to perform’ a factor in determining which positions should be open to women. Rather, the metric used to determine the suitability of the assignment was the likelihood of engaging in, or being in close proximity to, direct combat” (28). This understanding of women’s employment in war was not codified until 1988, when the DoD used the “Risk Rule” to standardize assignments for servicewomen. The Risk Rule would prohibit women from areas where the “risk of exposure to direct combat, hostile fire, or capture is equal to or greater than that experienced by associated combat units in the same theater of operations” (Miller 1997: 40). Servicewomen would soon be exposed to significant risk with their deployment in the Persian Gulf and the Risk Rule would lose serious meaning. Overall, aviation brought women closer to combat in nontraditional modalities than ever before. They were competent aviators and the services started to recognize their achievements. Some traditionalists still publicly criticized this new state of affairs, but the Air Force Personnel Chief, Lieutenant General Thomas Hickey, advocated on behalf of women aviators by testifying in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 1990. He claimed that he did not know of a combat job in the air force that women were not equipped to handle. The air force, he said, would be glad to include them in combat roles if the law would allow it (Iskra 2010). While he did not call for a repeal of the combat exclusion law in this testimony, women would soon find another environment in which to prove their worth to the military: the Persian Gulf War.

The tide turns: Women’s representation and participation in the Persian Gulf War The Persian Gulf War was the first large-scale test of women’s participation in combat. Operation Desert Storm (ODS), specifically, was a turning point for women in the military due to the sheer numbers deployed. In this period (1990–1991), the number of female recruits increased from 2 to 9 percent for a total of 40,793 in the theater of operations.20 This dramatic change in female representation captured the American media’s interest and because of extensive media coverage, the American public was witness to the reality of women’s participation in war. ODS brought new questions about women’s compatibility with warfare into the public eye, such that there was increased scrutiny regarding the proper roles of men and women in a genderintegrated military. Beyond the overwhelming success of coalition forces in ODS and the use of technologically advanced weapon systems, the Persian Gulf War is significant for its unprecedented employment of servicewomen in the theater of operations. The Persian Gulf War marked the “largest concentrated wartime deployment of uniformed American servicewomen in American military history” and they accounted for approximately 7 percent of deployed US troops (Sagawa and Campbell 1992). Table 2.3 shows women’s deployment numbers and percentages across service branches.

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Table 2.3  Military women in the Persian Gulf War by service Service Army Air Force Navy Marine Corps Total DoD

Number

Percentage of total deployed

30,855 4,246 4,449 1,232 40,782

9.7 7.0 4.2 1.5 7.2

Source: Department of Defense.

Due to their early deployment, women were used in preparation for, rather than reaction to, the conflict. This makes women’s participation in the Persian Gulf War intentional and, thus, radically different from their employment in previous conflicts. Of the women deployed, “27,000 were active duty and the rest reservists. Women accounted for more than 13 percent of reservists mobilized for the campaign, but less than 7 percent of active duty personnel” (Cordesman 2000). Moreover, the roles women played in ODS were vital to operation success—for example, servicewomen piloted aircraft transporting troops and supplies, flew reconnaissance missions, evacuated wounded soldiers, ran POW facilities, and provided logistical support. While many women still served in traditional roles comparable to their service in earlier eras, women served in substantially different roles during the Persian Gulf War than ever before (e.g., reconnaissance, evacuation). The nature of their participation and missions made it functionally impossible to distinguish between support and combat roles. For example: Air Force women were not permitted to fly fighter planes, but they flew the tankers that refueled the fighters over Iraq. Female Army pilots, excluded from piloting heavily armed attack helicopters, flew soldiers and supplies in the first assault wave fifty miles into Iraq aboard more vulnerable, lightly armed helicopters. Navy women pilots could not be in the cockpits of fighter aircraft, but were flying helicopters from ships in waters filled with mines. (Milko 1992: 1313)

Aviation was the leading edge in terms of expanding women’s nontraditional service opportunities, as it was in the past. This environment put servicewomen, like their male counterparts, in serious danger. Five servicewomen were killed in action, and eight women died in nonhostile situations. Two women were captured and held as POWs. At least nineteen servicewomen were physically wounded due to their participation. Overall, the heroic performance of servicewomen was widely acknowledged and led many to conclude that women should be fully integrated into all areas of military service. The experience of servicewomen serving in ODS called in to question, yet again, traditional justifications for combat exclusion policies. ODS was pivotal in demonstrating that the perceived difference between combat and noncombat roles was to some extent artificial regardless of gender and illustrated that advanced technology did not guarantee the safety of servicewomen when

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relegated to noncombat positions. Like servicemen serving in ODS, servicewomen took great risks and performed superbly in harsh environments. General Norman Schwarzkopf and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney noted their magnificent performance and that the war effort would not have been successful without their service (Binkin 1993). This kind of commentary created a forum to discuss opportunities for greater female participation, leading to congressional debate. It was the realities of ODS—that women did so well in combat environments—that problematized the traditional notions of what women could do in the military and eventually led to the lifting of statutes that limited their participation in fundamental ways. As a point of continuity, it was congresswomen who became agents of change on matters related to women in the military. In a male-dominated congress where masculine martial values persisted, women’s professionalism and ODS performance challenged tradition. In a similar style to her predecessors, Representative Patricia Schroeder (D-CO) was the first to directly challenge the combat exclusion law.21 On May  8, 1991, the House Armed Services Committee adopted an amendment to repeal the exclusionary ban prohibiting women from piloting air force aircraft engaged in combat missions (Sadler 1997). Representative Beverley B. Byron (D-MD) recommended broadening the repeal to include servicewomen in the USMC and Navy. The House removed all restrictions against female combat aviators as part of the Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993, and was passed on May 22, 1991. There was little resistance to the amendment in the House, but the bill was heavily opposed in the Senate.22 The Senate chose to debate the entire gamut of issues related to women in combat (e.g., questions of ground combat, deployed mothers) rather than accepting the House’s proposal outright. Republican and Democratic senators alike argued in defense of the combat exclusion law. On June  18, 1991, all service chiefs opposed opening combat units to women in testimonies delivered to the Manpower and Personnel Subcommittee. Despite these testimonies, there was weak congressional opposition to removing the aviation restriction because no one could show that military effectiveness would be compromised if women flew combat missions. Realizing there would be little support to block the repeal, Senators John Glenn (D-OH) and John McCain (R-AZ) proposed that an appointed presidential commission conduct a study on the issue of women in combat. Meanwhile, in bipartisan support for repeal of the exclusionary law, Senators William V. Roth (R-DE) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) urged their colleagues to support two provisions—that is, repealing the combat aviation exclusion and appointing a presidential commission to review the matter (Muir 1992). The proposal to create a presidential commission passed; however, the Senate refused to table “the Roth-Kennedy amendment repealing the combat aviation restriction and then passed the amendment by voice vote” (Sadler 1997: 85). The House later accepted the Senate version of the legislation and PL 102-190 was signed into law on December 5, 1991. In accordance with the Roth–Kennedy amendment, the new law also stipulated that a commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces examine the issue of women in combat. The Defense Department chose to delay any policy changes until the commission produced a final report. The commission

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report recommended that congress reinstate combat aviation exclusionary policy, but the recommendation was ignored by the newly elected Clinton administration and Congress. It is worth noting that progress on women’s utilization in the military is made with respect only to aviation. Women proved their competence in the area of aviation in ODS and were suspended far enough away from ground combat that made this progress justifiable. As women approached employment in each services’ primary mission elements, the more resistance they felt by military leadership. Flying may have provided just enough distance between women and ground combat that made this acceptable in areas of aviation and objectionable in services more focused on ground combat. The new democratic administration championed greater opportunities for servicewomen. Defense Secretary Les Aspin saw the expanded combat aviation policy as a first step in opening all combat positions to women with the exception of ground combat positions. The outstanding performance of servicewomen on sea duty during ODS could not be denied and provided justification for opening positions on combat ships to women.23 As a result, Aspin demanded that the Navy open as many combat ship positions to women as was practical and work toward developing a proposal to repeal the combat ship restriction (Parham 2006). Congress responded and repealed the combat ship exclusion law in 1993 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 1994. Without hearings in the Senate or much debate, the last exclusionary combat aviation statute was removed. However, women were still prohibited from entering infantry and armor ground fighting units primarily associated with the Army and Marine Corps. There was less enthusiasm by the public and Congress to open ground combat positions to women despite the fact that they served almost everywhere in ODS. Since military personnel were largely opposed to this change and congress was not interested in taking on the issue, the questions regarding opening ground combat positions to women was left to the Clinton administration. The administration decided to draw a clear line between ground combat and all other combat roles, and Secretary Aspin requested that the Army and Marine Corps study possible opportunities for women to serve in assignments such as field artillery and air defense artillery. The committee was charged with reviewing the appropriateness of the Risk Rule and it ultimately recommended that the rule be replaced with a policy on ground combat. Secretary Aspin rescinded the Risk Rule on January 13, 1994, and “approved a new direct ground combat assignment rule which excluded women from units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat” (Sadler 1997: 90). This law went into effect on October 1, 1994. In the face of so much progress, at least two issues continued to restrict women. First, Secretary Aspin mandated all services provide policy that restricts the assignments of women in certain circumstances. Furthermore, in the same legislation that lifted the ban prohibiting women’s service on combat ships, the law stated that any proposed change to ground combat policy must be sent to the Senate ninety days before any change could be made. This requirement demonstrated that congress planned to scrutinize any attempts made to expand women’s future opportunities in the armed forces.

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New gendered dynamics: Sexual assault and disapproval of women in the armed forces The contributions of servicewomen in ODS were certainly reflected in congressional debates and new legislation. The actions of servicemen within the US military, however, did not always represent these sentiments. The sexual misconduct of servicemen against servicewomen at the Tailhook convention, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and within service academies provide ample evidence to suggest that servicewomen were widely discriminated against in the wake of ODS. 24 While the aforementioned incidents may be perceived as isolated cases, sexual assault of women in the military was a widespread problem during the Persian Gulf War. A 1995 DoD sexual harassment survey revealed that 8 percent of female Persian Gulf War veterans reported being sexually assaulted during ODS and Desert Shield. Valente and Wight (2007) elaborate further: Another 34% of female respondents reported a rape or attempted rape during active duty. Many had been raped more than once; 14% reported being gang raped during active duty. However, three-fourths of the women who were raped did not report the incident to a ranking officer. One-third did not know how to report the event, and one-fifth believed that rape was to be “expected” in the military. (260)

Tailhook, Aberdeen, and other sexual assault scandals shed light on widespread problems women faced in the 1990s and continue to face today. The first sex scandal in the gender-integrated military took place at the 1991 Tailhook convention. The Tailhook Association, a private gathering for Marine and naval aviators, met annually in Las Vegas for opportunities to interact with fellow aviators and participate in professional symposia. The 1991 convention was the first gathering since the victory in the Gulf War and approximately 4,000 participants were in attendance. The convention demonstrated incredible hostility toward female aviators, where twenty-six servicewomen, a majority of them naval officers, were sexually assaulted. On the weekend of the gathering, lewd behavior by male aviators occurred in the hotel rooms themselves or in adjoining hallways. Lewd activities included stripper performances, drinking shots of alcohol from women’s navels, “butt biting,” and “ball walking,” where fully clothed male officers walked around with their genitals exposed (Browne 2007). The most notorious of these activities—the “gantlet”—took place within the hotel hallways. The “gantlet” was made of “two lines of men who groped, grabbed, tore the clothing of, and otherwise abused civilians and military women” (O’Neill 1998: 65). What is most alarming is that this assault was organized— specifically, gestures were used to signal specific activities and the assaults were presided over by a “master of ceremonies,” the Pentagon’s Inspector General. Two heroic actions took place despite intense misconduct. First, one hotel suite rented by a helicopter squadron was described as a “safe haven” in the midst of chaos created by male officers. Second, at least one woman retaliated after being attacked. Lieutenant

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Kara Hultgreen, an A-6 bomber pilot, was butt bitten by a visiting British officer, who she knocked unconscious with a single punch. She was able to respond because one individual attacked her. Women who found themselves mobbed in the “gantlet,” like Lieutenant Paula Coughlin, were not so fortunate. An investigation later established that 100 assaults had transpired, for which 140 suspects were identified. The punishments received varied substantially, from punitive letters of reprimand and immunity to nonjudicial hearings. Overall, the morale of the US Navy was severely compromised due to the conduct of its officers, the resulting witch hunt in trying to punish offenders, and the seemingly arbitrary nature of punishments. The US Army soon experienced its own sex scandal. In November  1996, three soldiers stationed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds were charged with numerous sexual offenses based on allegations made by several female trainees. One drill sergeant, Staff Sergeant Delmar Gaither Simpson, was charged with rape and sodomy and later sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. By May  1997, twenty-six more instructors stationed at Fort Leonard Wood were under investigation for fraternizing with female trainees. Of those investigated, two drill sergeants were discharged and sentenced to serve time in prison due to sexual misconduct. Problems associated with Tailhook, Aberdeen, and Fort Leonard Wood illustrate the gendered dynamic of active-duty servicemen and women after ODS. The atmosphere at American service academies after ODS is also instructive when it comes to reinforcing military culture. In training the best future military officers, US service academies failed to eliminate sexual abuse and discrimination within their institutions. Soon after ODS, several studies indicated that female cadets were systematically abused and discriminated against at all US service academies. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) survey “indicated that between 93% and 97% of Academy women experienced at least one form of sexual harassment during academic year 1991” (3). The same report broke down the level of harassment at each academy. Browne (2007) recounts: 50 percent of the female midshipmen at the Naval Academy experienced some form of harassment at least twice a month. The rate rose to 59 percent of female cadets at the Air Force Academy. Leading the pack were female cadets at West Point. Seventy-six percent of young women at the US Military Academy would report recurring harassment to the GAO, giving the female cadets the dubious, but predictable, distinction of being the most harassed women on record at any military college campus in America. (772)

In a 1994 GAO update, harassment got worse. The report indicated that 80 percent of female Military Academy cadets, 70 percent of female midshipmen, and 78 percent of women at the Air Force Academy experienced some form of harassment (3). A 2004 DoD Inspector General survey found that 56 percent of women had experienced some form of sexual harassment while at one of the service academies. Although it looks like the level of sexual assault focused on women is decreasing at the academies, it is not clear if this is the case since the survey data are not comparable across decades.25 The service academies, although small in terms of population, supply the

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military with newly minted commissioned officers each year. Service academies opened to women in 1976, where they made up  6 percent of the incoming class. However, the proportion of female cadets at each academy has just started to exceed 20 percent recently (Drake 2006). Twenty-two percent of West Point’s 2014 class, for example, was made up of women, which was a 6 percent increase from 2013. Likewise, 19 percent of the Naval Academy’s 2015 class was comprised of women. Although women’s integration has more than tripled over the last thirty years, arbitrary caps on women’s admission still exist: The admissions office at West Point, for example, sets a goal for the percentage of women in each class. For many years, that goal was set between 14 and 20 percent of the admitted class, and women constituted around 16–17 percent of each matriculated class. West Point has expanded that goal to above 20 percent, so that the percentage of female graduates would be closer to the percentage of women serving in the Army officer corps—which explains the increase to 22 percent in 2014. Yet, as the West Point board of visitors has noted, this assures that its “demographic future will replicate the Army’s demographic past at best.” (Bensahel et al. 2015: 12)

Such caps are unnecessary as women integrate into combat leadership roles. Continued adherence to these admission standards will signal, as arbitrary caps did in the past, that leadership in respected military academies believe that women’s integration into the military has little advantage to the broader institution. Overall, servicewomen were publically celebrated for the heroic service in ODS, but military culture did not reflect an understanding of greater parity between men and women.26 Sexual harassment and assault pervaded the military at this time. Military change that allowed women access to elite communities and into the sacrosanct service academies was resisted by men who believed the domain of war should remain exclusively male. Military policy changes brought new opportunities to women in uniform, but those opportunities increased the pressure to protect tradition. This is a point of continuity across the slow integration of women in the US armed forces.

Conclusion There is no denying that American women have been real participants in war over the last century. Women have occupied both expected and unexpected roles in every conflict. However, the debate on women’s status within the military did not emerge with intensity until the 1940s, when the United States was on the brink of world war. While much has changed involving war over the last half century, there is startling continuity with respect to women’s military integration across time. In terms of continuity, there are three major themes evident in this chapter. First, women’s military involvement is always precipitated by war and manpower deficits. The Second World War mobilized the greatest number of women because the military faced significant manpower shortages. Women were recruited to “free a man to fight”

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and many of them volunteered for service because they saw it as their civic duty. However, the Second World War was exceptional in terms of utilization of women and in subsequent conflicts—the Korean War and Vietnam War—there were serious initiatives to deactivate the women’s programs or shrink their numbers substantially. When the military could function without women in the absence of a serious conflict, all of the services attempted to roll back women’s status and participation in the military. The idea of returning to a traditional conceptualization of an exclusively male fighting force became seriously disrupted when the United States adopted the AVF in 1973. Second, though there were institutional and organizational changes that expanded women’s roles in the military across the decades, these changes were generally out of step with attitudes held broadly by society and military leadership. Members of congress and the public generally had a difficult time locating women close to combat or giving them access to essential mission elements in a given service. Congress members had the same preoccupations about women’s utility in 1990 as they did in 1940—specifically, no woman’s blood should be spilled in the name of war, women should focus on their roles as wives and mothers, and their femininity, and men’s masculinity, may be degraded through their participation in warfare. Changes positioning women closer to combat were a direct result of the structural change to the AVF rather than the widespread belief that women bring something of value to the services. While this new structure required women’s volunteerism to sustain its numbers, cultural values, ideas, and references to women’s locations in war remained static over time. Third, and finally, women have been accepted by the military as long as those women understood their roles to be traditional and transitory. The temporary nurse electing to serve is the archetype here, where military men of all ranks publically celebrated their abilities to heal and comfort wounded soldiers. When women became interested in permanence and nontraditional positions, they were met with resistance. Resistance, whether in the form of discouraging remarks or sexual assault, appears at different times in every echelon of military society, from service academies to professional officer corps conferences. American women continue to confront resistance in the military in 2016 (Chapter 5). And what of change over the last half century? The history of the American servicewoman is rife with change, but three themes emerge here too: (1) women’s locations in warfare, (2) technology as a driver for the innovative utilization of women in warfare, and (3) increasing patterns of sexual harassment targeting women as their integration became more visible. First, the greatest change is the roles in which women were permitted to inhabit in the 1990s as compared to the 1940s. Originally women were placed in spaces that ensured their relative safety. However, as manpower needs developed and grew, women were increasingly assigned to more nontraditional areas. The WASPs and the MCWR motor transport section are early examples, but with the relaxing of exclusion policies and the adoption of the Risk Rule, women took up opportunities to pilot aircraft and work as part of Fleet Air Reconnaissance squadrons. Relatedly, technological innovations provided new opportunities for women. Like manpower demands, innovation in airpower became a major driver for change. Programs that were focused on air power (e.g., WASPs, WAF, and later the USAF) gave women the most latitude and were the most vocal

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about the inclusion of women  in their ranks. Aviation was both nontraditional and dangerous, and servicewomen  continually demonstrated their professionalism and  exemplary performance in these areas. Elevated over ground combat, technology gave women access to war like never before. Female aviators’ exemplary performance in the Persian Gulf War was critical to women’s deeper expansion. The more American military strategy became dependent  on technology and air power, the greater  opportunities women had in the military. Finally, patterns of sexual harassment  targeted at servicewomen intensified over time. As long as women have  participated in the military, there has been harassment as evidenced by the slander campaign of 1942. Women felt then, as many do now, that they are operating in a man’s  world. However, history illustrates that patterns of sexual harassment and assault have intensified as women’s access to elite positions has grown. With each wave of women’s involvement and as their representation grows, harassment also grows more violent, aggressive, and frequent. The history of women’s participation and representation in American warfare is complex with various victories and setbacks over the last century. The evolution of women’s roles in war has crept along slowly, but what emerges in the twenty-first century is women’s dogged fight for further integration into combat specialties. Whether servicewomen will be victorious is still to be determined as they make their way through combat training schools previously reserved for men, but women’s integration has in some ways fundamentally changed the way the military operates. Women have proven they are strategic assets to the military and, as Chapter  7 will show, their integration is illustrative of a type of RMA.

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Comparative Histories: Women’s Participation in the British, Canadian, and Israeli Armed Forces

When compared to the American experience, there are striking similarities that exist for women in the British, Canadian, and Israeli armed forces over the last century. Women’s early employment in the military threatened the masculine sphere and, as a consequence, whisper campaigns were launched, national debate about women’s utility ensued, and some women—specifically nurses—were identified as more heroic than others. For all cases, the primary driver for women’s inclusion into the military was crisis and manpower shortages; when a crisis was resolved, women have generally been required to return to the roles that they occupied before a conflict. While there are slight differences with respect to timing of the full-scale employment of women in the cases of Great Britain and Canada due to their early involvement in the Second World War, the American case mirrors the British and Canadian experience. Israel, for its part, was inspired by the British military and created their own Women’s Army Corps, or Chen, in the likeness of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) after it had gained statehood in 1948. Israel breaks from its Western counterparts on one point: conscription. Due to its relative size and the bellicose attitude of its neighbors, Israel has had to maintain and project a militaristic posture in order to ensure it is able to respond to any aggressive action from its neighbors. This means that men and women alike are required to serve their country, although this service is far from universal and fraught with gender trouble.

Great Britain Like their American counterparts, British women served the British military in an unofficial capacity long before they were invited into its ranks. Approximately 20,000 women traveled with British troops to the United States so that they might defeat the Americans in the Revolutionary War of 1776. While some of these women were wives of the British soldiers, many were categorized as “camp followers,” a derogatory term synonymous with prostitution (Enloe 2000). Camp followers provided the military with domestic skills—that is, they primarily cooked, cleaned, mended, and cared for the well-being of soldiers in their proximity. Early camp followers provided a model that distanced women from the war they supported. As critical as their work was, their

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services were marginal to its organization and this “peripheral relationship with the army provided a long lasting model of gender relations followed by the British Armed Forces” (Noakes 2006: 20). This model would inform the Canadian and American militaries until the end of the Second World War, as well as the IDF in its early years. Florence Nightingale and her cadre of nurses would be the first group of women to disassociate themselves from this standard during the Crimean War (1853–1856). In the nineteenth century, mass entertainment, literature, and poetry popularized militarism, connected militarism to the notion of chivalry, and perpetuated the relationship between nobility and warfare. Stories focused on the heroic soldiers of empire and novels infused a sense of class distinction where heroic deeds were reserved for social elites (Woodward and Winter 2007). The idea of class, heroism, and fighting for God and Empire became deeply rooted in the British culture and psyche. Where men could easily fulfill the heroic role, women too carved out space for themselves in the nursing field where their participation in war would do little to challenge military masculinity. Nurses were utilized for their skills in greater numbers during the Boer War (1899–1902), but it was Florence Nightingale who epitomized the heroic nurse. W. H. Russell, a war correspondent for The Times, covered Nightingale’s work and made famous her combined nurturing and adventurous qualities. Nightingale was aware that she and her contemporaries were often doing the work that had previously been taken up by camp followers. Understanding this and in an effort to dissociate her work from their predecessors, Nightingale and her colleagues adopted uniforms to signify their professionalism both inside and outside of the British Army. Nightingale also crafted strict regulations for her nurses to follow that discarded any reference to fashion or superficiality because life in the service called only for discipline and professionalism. Nightingale went on to establish the Army Training School for military nurses in 1860 which institutionalized the professional engagement of women in the context of war and solidified the heroic status of women who take on this work (Piggott 1975). Edwardian life in Great Britain permeated society with military ideals, the language of war, and the anxieties related to the erosion of the British race. It was during this period that several voluntary paramilitary groups started to emerge that capitalized on notions of valor and patriotism that were widespread at the time. In 1907, as part of the comprehensive army reforms spearheaded by Richard Haldane, Secretary of War, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) was created to transport the wounded to hospitals and tend to wounded soldiers in the field. The FANY combined the ideals of nursing and patriotism, but it was also predicated on and appealed to ethos of femininity where women provided support for men at war. Despite feminine qualities of the organization, the public questioned women’s employment in nontraditional contexts. Nonetheless, FANY provided a site in which socially elite women might serve their country in a way aligned with femininity, while simultaneously staking a claim for their role in national service at this time. The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was an additional organization that provided a recognizable and acceptable forum for women to voluntarily serve in the name of patriotism. Launched in 1909 by the War Office, the VAD quickly became a female service that offered voluntary detachments of women to supplement the army and existing Territorial Medical Service (Martin 2002).

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Members of FANY were joined later by women in the Women’s Voluntary Reserve (1914) and the Women’s Legion (1915), where they staffed canteens and took on roles of cooks, waitresses, and drivers for troops stationed in England (Thomas 1978). The function of women in the various volunteer groups was to “free a man for the front”—a major continuity between the American and British cases. The work that women took up in this period was traditional in scope and reinforced gendered patterns of labor in Great Britain. British women were regarded as less skilled than the “temp” who could replace a man wholesale in a time where manpower was in desperate need. Indeed, a point of departure between the American and British case is that the latter took real steps to ensure that the gendered division of labor would remain robust through the introduction of dilution in the military sphere. Due to the devastating loss of life at the Battle of the Somme, Lieutenant General H. M. Lawson authorized a study regarding the extent to which women’s labor could be utilized to help the war effort. Lawson suggested the increased use of women, but Field Marshall Haig, the Commander in Chief of the British Army in France, insisted on applying the concept of dilution that was already in place in the munitions and engineering civilian sector to the army. Women were dilutees rather than sheer substitutes for men in these contexts. To further elaborate: Under dilution, skilled workers were replaced by semi-skilled or unskilled workers, a process “often, but not always, accompanied by simplification of machinery, or the breaking up of a job into a number of simpler operations.” As well as providing an immediate solution to the problem of a lack of skilled workers, and the amount of production which would be lost whilst workers were trained in new skills, dilution ensured that skilled trades such as engineering remained the occupation of elite male workers. The introduction of female labor into these trades was mediated by the process of dilution as jobs undertaken by one skilled man was broken down into their constituent parts and carried out by several women doing relatively unskilled repetitive labor. Haig argued that this process would be necessary if women were going to be employed in the support services of the army. Where Lawson had suggested that women should be substituted for men, Haig insisted they should be employed as dilutees, proposing a ratio of 200 women to replace 134 men as clerks and in domestic services. (Noakes 2006: 64–5)

The regulation of women in this manner both reinforced the gendered division of labor and the status differential between British men and women. Additionally, both Lawson and Haig worked actively to maintain the gulf between women and warfare. Said another way, their concerns about women introducing sexuality into the army and the suggestion that women should be placed in segregated units with female officers supervising them maintained the relationship between masculinity and warfare. Manpower shortages necessitated male conscription in 1916, which led to the interest in capitalizing on women’s labor and ultimately to the creation of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in March 1917. The first group of women left for France in the same month and other women’s auxiliary groups were organized. Specifically,

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the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) was established in November 1917 and the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) was established the following April (Vining and Hacker 2001). Women serving in the WAAC were more susceptible to criticism and whisper campaigns simply because they existed in greater numbers and were more visible than the WRNS or WRAFs. Consistent with the American case, British servicewomen were subject to vile rumors about their sexuality and promiscuity. Their male counterparts depicted many WAACs as “mannish” lesbians and sexual predators fixated on male soldiers (Grayzel 1997). A 1918 Ministry of Labor investigation of the WAAC revealed that most of the rumors originated in letters sent home by male soldiers and many investigators believed that soldiers had been motivated to slander servicewomen due to “‘jealousy and hostility towards the WAAC’ if they had been ‘dislodged from noncombatant tasks’ by the women’s arrival” (Noakes 2005: 3). In part, as a response to the derogatory rumors circulating about women voluntarily serving their country in a time of world war and as a result of the nine WAACs who lost their lives during the German Offensive, “Queen Mary assumed the position and title of commanderin-chief, and the WAAC was renamed the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps” (QMAAC) on April 9, 1918 (Grayzel 1997: 159). Plans for conscripting women were discussed in 1918, but were never formalized as there was a reservoir of women who wanted to “do their bit” through voluntary service. By the end of the war in 1918, more than 100,000 women voluntarily served in two types of paramilitary units—the volunteer corps and the women services—where they took on noncombatant roles associated with the armed forces (Robert 1997). While there was no demobilization plan for women in the auxiliary corps by the end of the war, women were released to return home depending on their skill set and domestic role (e.g., wives and mothers were the first released). Throughout the First World War, women were never formally part of the British armed forces; rather, they were enrolled in one of the various paramilitary women’s groups and retained as civilians working with the military. The QMAAC was officially disbanded in September 1921. The First World War experience for British women was largely one in which their work was restricted and regulated to guarantee that women’s new roles did not threaten the connection between masculinity and warfare. While women’s work at this time took them outside of the home, the gendered division of labor was maintained through dilution and employment in service sectors. The clear split between men and women’s work would be maintained until the next global conflict. Between 1919 and 1938, concerted efforts were made to preserve gender roles in British society. The First World War shifted attitudes of British citizenry from general disapproval of women who took up war work to widespread acceptance and recognition of their efforts essential to victory. The press was negatively vocal about women’s participation in volunteer groups because it threatened the gender-role status quo. In 1919, The Sheffield Daily Telegraph was explicit about how military life degraded femininity in certain contexts. The article read, in part: in some cases Army life (we omit the nursing and hospital department) in the cases of girls naturally refined or delicately nurtured, has not been an unmixed

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blessing … they show a tendency to avoid the home and sever their home ties; the efforts they make to appear “bold” and masculine … all go to indicate the loss of grace and charm which in the old days caused their fathers to espouse their mothers … we hope that it will represent but a passing phase and that (they) will venture to shed their army manners with their military uniforms. (Noakes 2008)

Interestingly, as in the American case, nurses serving alongside the US Army did not threaten the status quo where traditional gender roles were preserved. It was only women who worked in contexts previously considered exclusive to their male counterparts that were thought to be problematic. The Times also ran pieces that were disparaging to women involved with the QMAAC. Overall, the postwar years pushed for the reassertion of traditional gender roles in British society.1 For example, representatives from the women’s auxiliary corps—Helen Gwynne-Vaughn (WRAF), Florence Leach (QMAAC), and Kathleen Furse (WRNS)—advocated for the preservation of the women’s auxiliary services where women would be subject to the same terms of enlistment as male soldiers; however, the creation of female reserves in peacetime would not come to fruition due in part to the transition from war to a climate of international cooperation and collective security fostered by the League of Nations. By 1933, international tensions emerged and women’s auxiliary corps were again considered. Lady Londonderry, the representative of the Women’s League, and Helen Gwynne-Vaughn established a Council of Women for War Service, which united the existing Women’s Legion, the FANY, the VAD, and the QMAAC Old Comrades Association under the title of the Women’s Legion (Bidwell 1977). This body aligned itself with gender-role expectations and publically announced that it would be primarily concerned with protecting the home front in the event of a conflict. The  War Department, however, had mixed feelings about women’s utility as an auxiliary force: the department recognized women’s participation and mobilization in wartime as useful in a military buildup, but thought it best that the structure of the auxiliary corps be directed by the military itself. By 1936, “the Women’s Reserve Sub-Committee of the Man-power Reserve Committee formed by the Committee of Imperial Defense refused to recommend the setting up of a reserve of women, arguing that the Ministry of Labour could organize and provide all the women’s labour needed in wartime” (Noakes 2006: 96). The most supportive member of the committee regarding women’s utility was the air force, which offers another parallel between the British and American experience. As noted in Chapter 2, the American service branch that was most innovative in their employment of women was the air force. Similarly, the Royal Air Force (RAF) was the most technically advanced of the three services and also the least bound by tradition and class prejudice. Whilst the army of the mid 1930s was still dominated by the concept of the “officer gentlemen,” leading his troops through a natural authority and shared recognition of class hierarchy, the air force “encouraged individuality, freedom of thought, and a close working relationship between officer and the rank and file.” Status was achieved in the RAF through

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Despite the support offered to women’s auxiliary corps by the RAF, the subcommittee concluded that supporting the Women’s Legion would not be a productive use of resources as they could rely on labor exchanges to furnish women if they became necessary to the war effort. As a result, the Women’s Legion was dissolved in 1936. Two years later, under the duress of the coming war, Adjutant-General Liddel rescinded the decision to terminate the women’s service groups. Organizers of these groups fought to give women the same status as their male counterparts, but the War Office had planned to maintain the model used in the First World War. The ATS was created on September 9, 1938, in anticipation of the Second World War. By the beginning of the Second World War, three women’s auxiliary corps existed in Great Britain. The ATS, affiliated with the army, was formed in September 1938 and the WRNS in April 1939 to release men for sea duty. The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) was formed later, in June 1939, to relieve RAF personnel for frontline duties (Mason 2016). By December  1939, approximately 43,000 women had volunteered their service and joined one of the aforementioned auxiliary corps. The Registration for Employment Order (REO) of 1941 gave the British government authority to direct women into industry and the National Service Act (Number Two) permitted the conscription of women into auxiliary services for the first time (Maddrell 2008). While women were never conscripted in the United States during the Second World War, it is understandable why British women were conscripted. As the proximity to war increased, along with the need for combatants, women’s militarization increased in kind. The REO was introduced three years into the Second World War and sparked national debate regarding women’s wartime roles. The fact that the government could direct women into industry was seen by some members of parliament (MP) as an attack on social values. Agnes Hardie, a Labour MP, objected to this practice and believed that the need for women’s service could be met through voluntary means. The House of Commons debate in 1941 contrasted the notion of liberating women through war service with concerns about femininity and the maintenance of family life in Great Britain. Noakes described the debate: Whilst two conservative MPs Thelma Cazalet and Irene Ward argued that “women will not be found wanting,” and “this debate creates another milestone in British parliamentary history,” Agnes Hardie stressed the importance of women’s maternal role over and above their economic role in the wartime economy, commenting that women bringing up children were “doing a far more important job for the future generations, for which we are meant to be fighting, than filling shells with which to kill some other mother’s son.” Debates about women’s war service thus echoed those of the First World War as the representations of female labour as a modernizing, liberating force were

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answered with a reassertion of the overarching importance of motherhood and the home during wartime. (2006: 113)

Similar debates were ongoing across the Atlantic in Congress where comparable concerns were raised about the proper place for women and the extent of their mobilization. As another point of continuity between the experience of servicewomen in the British and American militaries, women in the ATS were the targets of disparaging remarks about women’s sexuality and class (similar to women’s experience in the First World War). British men described ATS women as sexually promiscuous and often referred to them as the ground sheets of the army and the “Auxiliary Tarts Service” (Emsley 2013). British women occupied nontraditional military jobs in greater numbers as the war progressed. Women worked in auxiliary air support, plotted air and shipping movements, carried out signals and code work, and participated in inshore air-sea rescue. Women’s employment in the technical fields culminated in their integration into anti-aircraft (AA) batteries. While women were prohibited from firing AA guns, they engaged with the enemy from a distance and operated fire-control instruments. “By September  1943, over 56,000 women were working for AA Command … the first mixed regiment to fire in action was the 132nd on 21 November 1941 and the first ‘kill’ came in April  1942” (Campbell 1993: 306). Additionally, women were assigned to searchlight units where they were tasked with helping the AA gunnery crews spot enemy aircraft during evening air attacks. This was certainly the closest British women had ever come to acting as combatants, which transgressed existing gender boundaries. Arguably it was Great Britain’s imperiled situation that justified the use of women in AA batteries such that men could be moved to the front (Fieseler, Hampf, and Schwarzkopf  2014). The mixed AA units were such a success that US Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall conducted his own top-secret experiment to see if American women could be employed similarly. His investigation concluded that American women, too, did well in AA batteries; however, Marshall thought that they were a higher priority in other roles. As Campbell (1993) notes, “Had Germany or Japan been able to pose a practical threat from the air to the continental United States then putting women in AA positions might have become a high priority” (305). Overall, British women sacrificed their lives during the Second World War. Over the course of the war, “624 British service women were killed in action, ninety-eight were missing in action, and twenty were taken prisoner” (Thomas 1978: 629). At the height of women’s mobilization in the Second World War, 12 percent of the 4.6-millionmember military force comprised women. After the Second World War ended, women became indispensable to the task of processing paperwork that brought millions of men back home. February  1, 1949, marked the permanent establishment of women in the British armed forces. Each service, however, differed in designating women’s status. The Women’s Royal Army Corps (WRAC) became an independent corps in the regular army with its own female officers and command structure. The Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) was organized as a separate entity that provided shore-based support for the Royal Navy (RN) and “its members were recruited and selected by the director and were exempted

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from the Naval Disciplinary Act of 1922. The Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) was completely integrated into the RAF, commanded by and authorized to command men” (Thomas 1978: 640). Here, again, the RAF proves to be the most progressive force as they integrated women directly into the organization. Moreover, when discussing the way in which the army and air force would integrate women into the organizations, the army raised concerns about women commanding junior male soldiers. In response to this concern, Philip Noel Barker, the Secretary of State for Air, asserted that “the Air Force structure of command was one which should be followed by the Army, arguing that ‘in these days when we have women Cabinet Ministers and M.P.s, women Mayors, Magistrates and J.P.s, it would in our opinion be indefensible to withhold from women Officers in the services disciplinary power over men’” (Noakes 2006: 148). Significant changes in the WRAC, WRNS, and RAF were not evident until decades later in 1979. WRAC women were restricted to administrative roles where they went without weapon or field training and were completely excluded from participating in combat. Until 1979, women made up 2.5 percent of the total army strength (Dandeker and Segal 1996). Dandeker and Segal not only cite various restrictions that maintained women’s numbers but also attribute women’s weak representation to their “own attitudes, which favored traditional gender roles, as well as … the attitudes of male soldiers. However, others within the WRAC, including some senior officers, took the view that women were both underestimating themselves and creating an isolationist culture despite the fact that traditional male attitudes were changing” (1996: 31–2). The 1980s ushered in significant changes for the WRAC. In 1982, WRAC recruits experienced weapons training for the first time and the prestigious military academy, Sandhurst, trained the first cohort of female officers. Joint training and joint management were established in 1984 where women found themselves eligible for equal advancement opportunities. By the beginning of the 1990s, 100 of the 134 occupational specialties were open to women. However, infantry and armor positions remained closed to female soldiers. Physical capability rather than gender became the standard applied to candidates for job placement. As stated by Dandaker and Segal (1996), the army developed “a policy of gender-free physical testing so that physical aptitude and not sex [would] determine whether individuals [were] eligible for a particular specialization” (32). After the Second World War, British women were not deployed again until they participated in the Persian Gulf War (Operation Granby), where 1,100 female soldiers were deployed in various posts. Women made up  2.8 percent of the British forces deployed in the conflict, as compared to the 6.8 percent deployed by the American forces. Between 1991 and 1993, female soldiers were prohibited from serving in the infantry or Royal Armoured Corps. In any other context, “women were not to be in posts going forward of the second echelon of a brigade in combat” (Dandeker and Segal 1996: 33). The WRAC was eliminated on April 5, 1992, and all new members were recruited to the British Army thereafter. By 1993, women’s representation in the British Army was the largest of all three services. While the British Army had more women numerically, the RAF enjoyed the largest proportion of women in the triservices. Women’s representation in the RAF grew from 7 percent in April 1989 to 8.6 percent in June 1993 and “as of June 1995, the RAF

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ha[d] a higher proportion of women serving than the other two services, with 1,039 officers and 5,273 enlisted personnel comprising 8.8% of the total number employed (71,272)” (1996: 33). The RAF still enjoys the largest proportion of women in the triservices with women making up 13.9 percent of the total force (Rutherford 2014). The original structure of the RAF may speak to the large proportion of women in its ranks. Because there are a small number of RAF combat jobs and most of the specialties outside of combat have clear parallels in the civilian sector, the integration of women in this branch has been relatively noncontroversial. Despite the fact that the RAF subsumed the WRAF in 1949 and women assumed ranks traditionally held by men in 1968, the utilization of women in the RAF remained limited into the 1980s. Dandeker and Segal (1996) note that “although in 1945 17% of the personnel of the RAF were women, by 1948 this figure had fallen to 8%, and by 1957 the figure was 2%. Up until 1979 this figure never rose above 6%, despite the proven suitability of many RAF occupations for women shown in service experiences in World War II” (35). This early underrepresentation is explained by the fact that the RAF believed that women were not a cost-effective investment since “the average length of service for a woman was 6.9 years in contrast to 14 years for a man, and since it cost about £13 million to train each air crew” in 1986 (1996). Research on women’s retention rates indicated that, in fact, they were an excellent investment, and by 1989, the RAF announced plans to recruit for and train women pilots and navigators. By 1995, eight and twelve women qualified as fighter pilots and navigators, respectively. Although the RAF seems to be on the leading edge of women’s integration post– Second World War, the RN takes up the mantel to further gender integration in the 1980s. In the post–Second World War period, a mere 3,000 WRNS were retained and utilized in administrative roles at RN air stations both at home and abroad. By 1974, a WRNS survey detected the shifting British social structure and RN career limitations, and as a result, advocated for the possibility of integrating WRNS into the navy. Gender integration policies that followed came from the observation of other Navies—specifically, those of the Netherlands, United States, Australia, Sweden, and Norway. While Britain’s military was the model for its employment of women in the 1940s, it lagged behind its allies in the 1980s. For example, limited seagoing duties were open to American women, and Canadian women were being tested on warships (Sherit 2013). By 1993, the WRNS were officially disbanded and integrated into the RN so they might serve on HM ships. This integration was a result, in part, of the failure in RN recruitment, which amplified the need to integrate women onto ships. In 1990, three years prior to their official integration, 20 WRNS officers and ratings (i.e., enlisted personnel) volunteered to serve on HMS Brilliant to clear the shortfall of male recruits (Wrens 2014). However, exclusion rules applied to women serving in the RN throughout the 1990s. All jobs were open to women except for those comparable to direct combat roles in the army (i.e., the Royal Marines). Although navy women qualified to fly fast jets, they were “excluded from employment in commando helicopters (Sea Kings), submarines, and minor war vessels such as mine hunting and fisheries protection” (Dandeker and Segal 1996: 36). By February 2006, 71 percent of RN jobs were open to women, 71 percent of the total positions were open to women in the British Army, and 96 percent of RAF jobs

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were open to women (Simon and Abdel-Moneim 2011). British servicewomen, even in 2016, serve everywhere but in jobs that are associated with close combat. Lieutenant Colonel Lucy Giles was the first woman to take command of a college at Sandhurst in 2015 (Johnson 2015). Women continue to be “excluded from the Royal Marines General Service (as Royal Marine Commandos), the Household Cavalry and Royal Armoured Corps, the Infantry, and the Royal Air Force Regiment” (Simon and AbdelMoneim 2011: 64). British female sailors have historically been barred from serving on submarines for “health reasons,” but that ban was lifted in 2011 after a Ministry of Defense review found no medical reasons to warrant the exclusion of women. Female officers started serving on Vanguard-class nuclear-powered submarines in 2013 and were followed by female ratings in 2015. In this respect, the RN outpaces the US Navy with regard to gender integration (Vinograd 2011).

Canada The Canadian military’s use of women in the early twentieth century mirrors that of the British case due to the fact that Canada was a member of the British Empire. It was not until 1931 that Canada gained legislative sovereignty over all matters except for the Constitution, and in 1982 control over the constitution was given to the Dominion which formally terminated Canada’s dependence on Great Britain. Before discussing Canada’s employment of women in the armed forces, it is important to illustrate the early attempts to assert Canada as a legitimate fighting force rather than simply a force that Great Britain could call upon when it needed reinforcement. Starting with the Boer War, Sir Wilfrid Laurier called upon Canada to make a decision separate from Great Britain on whether it would involve itself in that conflict. Although Canada had no choice in the matter—as a subordinate member of the British Empire, Britain’s war was Canada’s war—assertions regarding the desire to control its own military were made publically. While Canada’s participation in the First World War was mandated by its colonial status, the Canadian government reassured Canadians that they had control over the extent and nature of Canada’s involvement in the conflict (Durflinger 2015). Sam Hughes, Canadian military commander, presented the Canadian military as a unified and independent force. Upon arrival for training in England, Lord Kitchener, British Minister of War, had informed Hughes that Canadian men would be “split up to serve as reinforcements for existing British battalions” (Brook 2015). Hughes ignored this order and kept Canadian men together to act as an independent fighting force, where they would prove their worth to the allied nations. The Canadian military’s performance in the First World War led to the creation of Canada’s own Imperial War Cabinet in 1917. International attitudes about Canada had transformed; where once they were regarded as a subordinate colony, they were now a competent force. This was further demonstrated internationally when Canada became a signatory of the Versailles Treaty and a member of the League of Nations. By 1940, when Canada joined Great Britain in waging war against Germany, Canada had full military independence from Great Britain.

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Canadian women served in similar capacities as British women in both great wars. Just as there were voices of dissent by citizenry and public officers regarding women’s employment, there were also individuals who focused on the worth of women’s service during this time of crisis. Diverse groups of women across Canada exerted effort in support or care for soldiers during the First World War. While some women were in positions of privilege that allowed them to fund and operate their own hospitals, others who were less privileged joined VAD units or enrolled in auxiliary nursing organizations such as the Red Cross (Quiney 1998). While Canada is consistent in its use of women in traditional roles with respect to Great Britain, the Canadian understanding of women in the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC) is extraordinarily progressive for its time. Established in 1904, the CAMC included a permanent nursing service where nurses were completely integrated into the Canadian military as soldiers. Toman (2007) elaborates: they enlisted as lieutenants with the specially created officer’s rank and title of Nursing Sister (NS). Graduation from a recognized school of nursing had become one of the basic requirements for enlistment with the CAMC by 1914, effectively excluding untrained and semi-trained women from the Canadian forces. Civilian nurses readily filled every available position with the CAMC during the First World War, thereby assuring an adequate supply of military nurses as well as a standardized set of nursing skills based on civilian training and credentials. They constituted the first generation of Canadian Nursing Sisters. (4)

By the Second World War, Canadian civilian nurses volunteered to serve in such large numbers that a suspension had to be placed on women’s enlistment ten days after a call to mobilize medical units (2007). These women filled nursing positions in the newly formed Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps (RCAMC), the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), and the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN).2 This is in contrast to the US case where a campaign to conscript nurses to meet a quota between 1943 and 1945 was considered and was highly controversial. The Nursing Sisters of the First World War paved the way for the second generation of nursing sisters who inherited officer status, military privileges, compensation, and access to the front line where they could be most useful to soldiers. In contrast to the British and American cases, Canadian nurses understood themselves as soldiers: Although nurses enlisted under the protection of the Geneva Convention, which classified medical personnel as noncombatant and neutral, Canadian nursing sisters increasingly perceived themselves as soldiers; they called themselves soldiers and they understood their work as “winning the war” through the salvage of damaged men. They actively sought opportunities to move closer to the frontlines, readily accepting increased risk and danger as part of the job. The  armed forces highly valued their knowledge and skills, reluctantly moving them forward as they demonstrated better outcomes for the soldier under their care than less well-trained personnel could achieve. (Toman 2007: 5)

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Despite this point of departure, the military saw these nurses as temporary and would serve only as long as they were needed. This is consistent with the American and British cases. As early as May 1918, the contribution of Canadian women during the First World War was recognized by the establishment of the Militia Council subcommittee in Ottawa that considered the establishment of an all-female corps, the Canadian Women’s Corps (Taylor 1999b). While the council approved the women’s corps formation in principle in September 1918, the Armistice brought about the termination of women’s corps in peacetime. Canada was in step with debates about women’s utility after the war in Great Britain. As Nazi Germany posed a greater threat to Great Britain, the position on women’s service was reversed and women started volunteering in civilian volunteer organizations across the country. In October  1939, the first Canadian group of women to mobilize called themselves the Victoria B.C. Ancillary Corps where members formed motor transport, first aid, supply, and clerical divisions in order to make themselves useful should conflict become a serious possibility. Dozens of similar corps formed simultaneously in British Columbia and the need for an organizational structure to streamline women’s effort became clear. Joan B. Kennedy stepped in as the lead organizer. At the time of Canada’s declaration of war in 1939, the mobilization  of women became a real possibility, and Kennedy, along with Mrs.  Arthur Nation, traveled to Ottawa to seek official recognition of the corps as had been granted to the British ATS. Although this was considered premature by the Minister of Defense, by 1941 the constellation of women’s paramilitary volunteer organizations was numerous and diverse: between eighty and ninety organizations involving some 17,000 women across Canada had grown increasingly insistent in their demands for some form of official recognition. Besides the Red Cross, several of these self-designated corps had fashioned themselves after existing auxiliaries in Britain—complete with their own uniforms, ranking hierarchy, marching drills, and in one case even “musketry” training. Nova Scotia and Alberta had each formed women’s service corps. Then came the Women’s Transport Service, a national organization, and in Quebec, a Women’s Volunteer Reserves Corps. Saskatchewan had its own branch of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and another national organization, the Canadian Auxiliary Territorial Service (CATS), soon emerged. (Gossage 1991: 24)

Although Canada initiated compulsory registration of women in 1940, there was much debate in both Canada and Great Britain about the voluntary service of Canadian women (Thomas 1978). Canadian military strategists, policy makers, and parliamentarians did not largely support women’s mobilization and militarization. It was not until 1941, when Canada and Great Britain recognized the dire manpower shortages that they would face in another world war, that the Canadian High Commissioner, Vincent Massy, and General P. J. Montague recommended the formation of a Canadian’s women service. Interestingly, as a point of departure from the American case, British and Canadian war planners understood that politically

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it would be far more acceptable to mobilize women who were eager to participate in the war effort than to enlist men who were unwilling to volunteer their service. They thought this would be a more popular and acceptable practice. The United States never considered the use of women to supplant men unwilling to volunteer until the Vietnam Era. In 1941, the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC) and the Canadian Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (CWAAF) were set up as separate auxiliary arms of the army and air force, respectively. Since they were directed by the affiliated “parent” service, women were not considered essential parts of the affiliated service. By February 1942, the air force announced a restructuring by creating a women’s division (WD) of the RCAF and the army did the same reorganization a month later. However, the army quickly learned that independent command channels, policies, and status of women introduced administrative complications, and as a result, the CWAC was incorporated into the army and given full army status. Women served in the navy from the inception of the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS) in 1942 and avoided the administrative difficulties encountered by the CWAAF and the CWAC. WRENS was the smallest service with 7,000 women, followed by the air force with approximately 17,000 servicewomen. The CWAC had the largest numerical representation of women with over 22,000 of them serving in its ranks (Plows 2008). Canadian recruitment of women into the services was modeled after the British experience. However, the Canadian effort encountered one unique obstacle to overcome with regard to the recruitment of the best women and that was a common language. The enlistment of Québécoise women was limited by English-only training facilities for volunteers who were exclusively French speakers (Durflinger 2007). All French-Canadian female candidates who were not bilingual were rejected from the services because there was no adequate instruction for French speakers until mid1942. The interest of French-Canadian women to serve was high, but the language policies of the Canadian military prevented widespread enlistment in these areas. This complication was eliminated when all three services created their own English school for francophone recruits. Language was not an issue that had to be considered in the British and American case. Consistent with the integration experience of other Western militaries was the whisper campaign focused on CWACs. Like its British and American counterparts, the Canadian military dealt with a nationwide whisper campaign in 1943 that affected the recruitment of women into all three services, but disproportionately affected the army. Internal inquiries of the Army and air force revealed that the attitudes of military men were not favorable to women in the services. A public opinion poll demonstrated that civilian attitudes aligned with attitudes of military men: The attitude of family and friends was heavily weighted with disapproval towards female enlistment. Roughly 50 percent were not in favor—between 20 percent and 30 percent were indifferent. Those in the forces were 48 percent in favor; in civilian life, only 28 percent. Of the fathers surveyed, 27 percent approved; of the mothers, 21 percent. Of the boyfriends, those in the forces were only 25 percent

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As with the Western cases, steps were taken to reprimand negative behavior toward women in uniform by military leadership. The Canadian services also went a step further to repair damage and attract women into the services through two films (Proudly She Marches and Wings on Her Shoulders) created by the National Film Board that presented a new brand of femininity—specifically, martial femininity. These films projected a widespread national message that women’s femininity would not be sacrificed in the name of global warfare. As an additional incentive to increase women’s enlistment in the Canadian services, the pay scale applied to Canadian servicewomen was improved in June  1943. Canadian servicewomen originally made two-thirds of their male counterparts’ pay in accordance with the British model, but their pay was later increased to four-fifths of their male counterparts’ pay rate (Hadley, Huebert, and Crickard 1992). This monetary incentive, though small, is a departure from the strategies used by the American and British militaries. Although there is little space to discuss the development of the training programs for each Canadian service once women enlisted, Canadian female leadership of the WRCNS and the RCAF WD relied on senior British WRNS and WAAF personnel for organizational guidance and instruction for new recruits. Moreover, the CWAC relied on Canadian war-tested and qualified leaders such as Matron-in-Chief Col. Elizabeth Smellie, C.B.E., a Canadian nursing sister who served overseas during the First World War. Smellie was replaced by Joan B. Kennedy, the leader of the 1938 Victoria B.C. Ancillary Corps, in November 1941. Regardless of the service branch, basic training was four to six weeks and it was understood that the primary function of servicewomen was to release a soldier for the front. Servicewomen operated in traditional roles such as secretaries, phone operators, and cooks, but by 1943 Canadian women developed skills once reserved for their male counterparts such as coders, visual signalers, telegraphers, draftsman, and teletype operators. Like their British counterparts, Canadian women were also assigned to AA units and coastal artillery regiments (Thomas 1978). Canadian women who served overseas were subjected to higher standards, just as their American counterparts were, even for menial jobs. Gossage (1991) says: The original qualifications for a CWAC servicewoman on overseas duty were three months of Basic Training. In addition there was an age limitation. She had to be over twenty-one and have a good medical record … . Further, she had to be “of exemplary character and possess a suitable temperament.” “Appearance and general smartness” would also be a consideration in the choice of candidates for overseas duty. Just how much any of these stipulations had to do with performing the functions of a laundress is cause for conjecture, but officially these were the requirements on record. (151)

By the end of the war, approximately 3,000, 1,300, and 500 women served overseas in the CWACs, RCAF (WD), and WRCNS, respectively (1991). At the end of the

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Second World War, women were incrementally demobilized and eventually all of the women’s services were dissolved (Thomas 1978). All parties, however, did not accept the dissolution of the women’s organizations in 1945–1946. Senior staff officers from all three services recommended that a select group of experienced women be retained in the event of another war. Despite the appreciation the government expressed for women who served, it was eager to demobilize as many servicewomen as possible. However, demobilization efforts had virtually no impact on women in nursing. Because of the care required for injured soldiers returning home long after the war ended, nurses were required to staff veterans’ hospitals across Canada. The communist coup of Czechoslovakia and Berlin Blockade of 1948 signaled the intensifying Cold War to the allied nations that led to an incremental rearmament of Western militaries. The buildup of the Canadian military, many thought, might require the reestablishment of the women’s organizations should there be male volunteer shortfalls. By the beginning of the Korean War, the federal cabinet supported the recruitment of women into the regular Canadian forces to meet these anticipated shortfalls. The recruitment goals of each service differed based on positions available to women, where the army set the most liberal goals and the navy set the most conservative goals.3 Once recruitment goals were stated by each service, it was not long until the cabinet authorized the enlistment of women in the various services. The cabinet authorized the enlistment of women into the regular air force and army on March  21, 1951, and January  1, 1954, respectively. In January  1955 “the government authorized women to be integrated into the [RCN] as regular force members rather than re-establishing the separate female component used during the war” (Allen 2007: 20). Canadian servicewomen served in the Korean War (1950–1953) but only as nurses. Canadian nurses were deployed to Kure, Japan, in July  1951 as part of a medical group that would ultimately staff a British Commonwealth Hospital. In 1952, nurses served in a similar capacity in Seoul, Korea, to build a 100-bed hospital. RCAF nurses also received aeromedical training that proved invaluable to the war effort. Dundas (2000) notes: A number of nurses were also attached to the United States Air Force and cared for casualties on flights from Japan to San Francisco, while others participated in Canada’s first large-scale hospital air lift in the summer of 1951. On this occasion, Canadian causalities who had been transported to Tacoma, Washington, by the USAF were taken to a converted Dakota air ambulance to DVA hospitals in Canada. After signing the armistice, some of the nurses attended to the released prisoners of war as they were being flown back to Canada. (100)

Canadian nurses worked jointly with their British and American counterparts in the context of the first UN operation with the goal of achieving collective security. Women’s representation and participation in the Canadian military declined substantially between 1955 and 1965 due to various circumstances. First, in 1955, the Air Council lowered the ceiling for women’s service from 4,000 to 2,500 personnel.

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This action was justified by supposed recruitment capabilities despite the fact that there were over 3,000 airwomen in the RCAF in 1953 (Dundas 2000). The RCAF also cited lower retention rates and physical abilities when women were compared to men. These reasons, along with the integration of systems that relied heavily on computers and, thus, limited the need for additional personnel, led the Air Council to recommend the “phasing out” of female personnel. Though the army recruited women into nursing assistant positions (nonmedical corps trades) in 1955, by 1963 the need for these positions diminished. The RCN, for its part, continued to recruit women into the Communications Branch, but the Personnel Structure Review Team studied the WRCNS in 1964. The report concluded that women provided excellent service, but conditions were set on future deployments: Naval women, the report recommended, should be used only for positions in which “men cannot be suitably or effectively employed and where civilians possessed of the required skills were not obtainable” and in trades where personnel shortages existed, but only “for temporary employment until the trade resumes its normal strength.” These conditions appeared to reduce RCN servicewomen to near auxiliary status, making them secondary to the men rather than equal members of their service. (Dundas 2000: 103)

By 1964, women’s representation in the Canadian services was miniscule. The RCAF boasted 566 personnel, the RNC had a total of 288 female officer and enlisted personnel, and the CWAC had a total of thirty-eight female regular force members (2000: 103). Women’s roles would expand far beyond these numbers between 1965 and 1988; however, the pressure to include more servicewomen into the Canadian armed forces would emanate from external sources rather than the military itself. The expansion of women’s roles and numbers in the Canadian military was propelled forward largely by external political pressure. The Minister of National Defense applied direct pressure on the military to make changes that would include women, and various pieces of legislation—the Royal Commission of 1971, the 1978 Canadian Human Rights Act, and the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms—also compelled a revision of military policy. First, the Minister of National Defense authorized a 1964 investigation on the role of women in the military after the RCAF phased out women entirely from the service. The investigation demystified enduring objections with regard to the utilization of women. The challenges that women allegedly brought with them to the services (e.g., uniform shortages, cost of separate housing, cost of unintended pregnancies, high attrition rate) were workable. The advantages women brought to the services such as force flexibility and increased ability to respond to new postings outweighed the purported disadvantages. The primary conclusion of the Minister’s 1965 Manpower Study was that the choice to dissolve the RCAF WD was without merit and the study recommended that the “requirement for women in uniform be recognized as permanent, and not subject to further review in principle” (Dundas 2000: 109). Unification of the Canadian military services followed four years later on February  1, 1968, where all three services were subsumed under the collective moniker of the Canadian Forces (CF).

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This eliminated wholesale the CWAC, WRCNS, and the RCAF (WD), but the status of servicemen remained intact. All men and women now served the CF alike. Second, the 1971 Royal Commission of the Status of Women investigated the role of women in Canadian society. Several of the committee recommendations were directed at the CF by suggesting “that enlistment criteria and pension benefits be standardized; that married women be allowed to enlist; that pregnancy not necessitate termination of service; that women be given the opportunity to attend military colleges; and that all trades and classifications be open to women” (2000: 110). The CF accepted all suggestions but one. They would not open all trades and classifications to women, especially those classified as “near combat.” Women’s admittance to military academies did not come to pass until 1980.4 A separate annual report, published by the Department of National Defense in the same year, explicitly stated that the result of the Royal Commission of the Status of Women report would be to diversify professional opportunities for women, recruit them more intentionally into the CF, and grow their numbers. By all accounts, this promise was realized. Between 1971 and 1978, women’s representation in the regular forces grew from 1.8 to 6 percent and they also made up 19 percent of the reserve force (Granatstein 2011). At this time, Canadian servicewomen served everywhere in Canada, alongside NATO forces in Europe, and in concert with United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF II) in the Middle East. Third, the 1978 Canadian Human Rights Act became law on March 1 and prohibited discrimination on various grounds including gender. However, a clause allowed businesses to exclude individuals from specific jobs if they could demonstrate a legitimate reason for doing so. This new legislation led to the comprehensive examination of CF personnel policies in order to determine if changes were required. The team tasked with the investigation could not easily determine exemptions, which, in turn, impelled a five-year Service Women in Non-Traditional Environments and Roles (SWINTER) evaluation program. The objective of the SWINTER trials was to evaluate the “impact on operational effectiveness of women in and near combat roles, at sea, and in isolated locations” (Weinstein and White 1997: 57). With respect to the air force, women started training as pilots in November  1979 and all forty women who participated in the SWINTER air trial demonstrated their competence and were posted to operational flying units. Despite women’s proven competence as aviators, the “Air Command decided against the continued use of women because of restrictions on their ability to fly” (Dundas 2000: 116). Land force SWINTER trails included approximately sixty positions in a service battalion and 15 positions in a field ambulance battalion that were filled by women who provided transport maintenance and front line treatment and evacuation in Germany. At the end of the trail in September 1984, women who were trained for the job could complete the required tasks; however, their integration into these units reduced operational effectiveness. The sea trial took place between 1980 and 1984 on the HMCS Cormorant where between eight and thirteen female crew members were integrated into the ship’s company for a four-year period. The sea trial illustrated that women could competently fulfill their duties, noncombatant ships could easily accommodate mixed-gender crews, and that women were qualified for assignments on minor war vessels (e.g., patrol boats, small training vessels). Lieutenant Commander and Captain of the HMCS Cormorant Gil

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Morrison acknowledged the conflicted feelings associated with integrating sea vessels, but noted that “You don’t drive down the highway looking through the rear-view mirror. You consult it, but you look ahead” (2000: 117). Applied to the question of integration, he was confident that every sailor would move forward with their duties after the initial shock of seeing a female sailor aboard formerly all-male ships. Finally, the 1987 Combat Related Employment of Women (CREW) trials were intended to measure the impact of mixed-gender units on operational effectiveness. Two years earlier, in April 1985, the Equality Rights portion of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was implemented. The section emphasized the right to equal protection without discrimination based on gender. In fall 1985, the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Equal Rights recommended that all military occupational specialties be open to women in the CF. Although more specialties were open to Canadian servicewomen as a result, additional studies were required before lifting all exemptions. The CREW trials, then, were an effort to understand if and to what extent gender equality affected the CF. The RCAF initially was the first service to phase out women in the 1970s, but it was the only service to decline participation in the CREW trials and immediately removed all barriers of service to women. RCAF women could take on any role as a result and began training in fighter aircraft in 1988. Select army units and naval vessels were identified to participate in the CREW trials, but the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) decision in February 1989 was made before the trials were completed (Staff 2007). The CHRT directed the CF “to remove any remaining employment restrictions [to be phased out over a 10-year period] based on sex, with the exception of employment in submarines” (Weinstein and White 1997: 57). The CF was also required to coordinate external monitoring of the process of gender integration. Military senior staff reluctantly accepted this decision, which aimed to align the military more closely with Canadian social and cultural values. Davis (2011) describes the following ten years as a painful transition for the CF since it struggled to adopt Canadian widespread social values. The CF worked to remove barriers for its servicewomen through the creation and revision of policy (e.g., implementation of harassment policy and personal equipment changes). Importantly, language shifted around similar initiatives from references to the “integration of women” to “gender integration,” which helped military personnel realize that the challenges posed by gender integration were relevant to both CF men and women in the service. As far as the CF was concerned, by 1994 it believed that gender integration was complete based on equal opportunity and equal liability policy (Davis 2011). The Minister’s Advisory Board on Women in the Canadian Forces (MABWIFC), an external monitoring body, recognized the progress that the CF had made but that many challenges lay ahead. The final analysis of the CHRT expressed mixed messages regarding progress. The CHRT “was not satisfied with the progress that the CF had made on the gender integration front from 1989 to 1999. However, the Commission was satisfied that there was sufficient senior leadership commitment to gender integration in the future and thus did not impose further external monitoring beyond the requirements of the Employment Equity Act” (Davis 2011: 100). The RCN lifted the exemption prohibiting women from serving on submarines in March 2000. By 2007, women made

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up  13.5 percent of the regular forces and 20.4 percent of the reserve forces. Despite women’s entrance into combat roles, women were still working in gendered ways. For example, women dominated nursing fields numerically—75 percent of the field was made up by women—and were a token force in operational fields like land combat arms with under 4 percent female composition (2011: 106). Canadian servicewomen in warrior roles have seen combat and a total of four women have been killed with that occupational designation; Army Captain Nichola Goddard was the first woman killed in action in May  2006. Women’s representation in the CF continues to grow; servicewomen make up 14.8 percent of the total force (both regular and reserves). As of January  2014, the RCAF leads the triservices with the largest percentage of women (18.7 percent), the RCN has just slightly fewer women (18.4 percent), and the CA has the smallest number of women in its ranks (12.4 percent) (Government of Canada 2014). Canada is certainly a leader in military gender integration where women have been integrated into almost all occupational specialties for more than twenty years. The CF stands apart from its Western allies with regard to gender integration because so much weight has been placed on mitigating discrimination through its human rights legislation. The external pressure put on the military to begin the process of gender integration was based on human rights principles and did major work to align the military values with the values held by citizens it aims to protect. The inclusive nature of Canadian society and values is best exemplified by its consideration of diverse members serving in the CF—specifically, Sikh and Aboriginal (e.g., indigenous) service members. Sikh CF servicemen in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police can choose to both serve their country and follow their religious practice of wearing turbans rather than a CF head cover. Before 1990, religious practices would have to be sacrificed in the name of service. However, after consulting the Canadian Charter of Rights and Canadian Human Rights Act, the Solicitor General ruled that turbans could be an acceptable head cover. The turban, when worn in the context of the CF, would be worn with a municipal cap badge centered on its front and that badge could be removed in the context of religious sites or the home (Canadian Human Rights Commission 2013). In the case of indigenous peoples, the CF had accommodated cultural styles of braided hair worn by servicemen. Aboriginal CF members are authorized to wear their hair down in braids while in uniform as long as safety is not compromised (Lackenbauer et  al. 2008). These examples illustrate the care taken by the CF and Canadian government to be inclusive of all Canadian people and to respect diversity. The CF has intentionally adopted a “change behaviors first and changed attitudes will follow” approach to gender and diversity by making accommodations for Sikh turbans and Aboriginal braids. Change is slow, but attitudes are shifting in the CF about women after having them in combat positions for more than twenty years.

Israel Many scholars look to Israel as the model of women’s early and equal employment in the military. As long as the state has existed, women have been conscripted into

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the IDF, and prior to statehood in 1948, women were involved in home defense by way of paramilitary groups. Despite the fact that this appears egalitarian, women’s involvement in defending Israel is fraught with paradoxes. Prior to statehood (1907–1949), Jewish women were employed in traditional roles that largely supported the men who fought to ensure the community’s security. Few women participated in combat, but women are credited with taking up arms and defending their settlements. The first paramilitary organization, the Bar Glora, was a secret society founded in 1907 and had at least two female members (De Pauw 2000). The Bar Glora became the Ha-shomer, or the watchman, in 1908 for the express purpose of defending small Jewish countryside settlements. Under Ottoman rule, the countryside was left largely exposed and vulnerable to raids, and settlement residents required community guards who were tasked with preventing theft, escorting residents who traveled to and from settlements, and protecting the settlement crops (Van Creveld 2000). Women were involved in Ha-shomer because they were part of the community and would often participate in deliberations relevant to the security of the settlement. Although some women were armed in order to protect themselves, they generally did not serve as guards. They did not involve themselves in pursuit of settlement enemies or raids on Arab villages; like their Western counterparts, women primarily occupied auxiliary roles such as cooking, cleaning, nursing, and secretarial bookkeeping (Gaynor 2009). While their male peers did not consider women combatants, they were treated as such during the First World War. Members of Ha-shomer “were persecuted by Ottoman authorities, who suspected them of collaborating with British intelligence in Egypt” (Van Creveld 2000: 83). Both male and female members were either tortured and executed or arrested and sent into exile. Once British rule was established in 1918, the Histadrut (the Labor Federation and the Jewish community’s most representative body at the time) eliminated the Ha-shomer and replaced it with the Hagana. The Hagana also included women in its membership since the community held strong socialist beliefs, but the organization was run exclusively by men. Hagana women occasionally trained “for duty as officers and even a Gedud ha-Banot ha-Lohamot (Legion of Fighting Girls) was founded under the command of Shoshana Gestetner-Wilensky and Hana Sternfeld. Yet, most of the women were not trained for combat but rather were integrated into the military support system of nursing and communication” (BaumelSchwartz 2008). When conflict with the Arabs arose in 1929, women in the Hagana became invaluable to intelligence and smuggling operations since British rules of engagement prohibited the physical searching of women. In 1936, Hagana members collaborated with the British Army by joining the “special night squads” to chase Arab bandits under the command of Captain Orde Wingate (2008: 84). While few women continued to gather intelligence, they had no involvement in the “special night squads.” However, women’s roles in paramilitary groups expanded in 1941 with the advent of the Palmach (the shortened name for Plugot Machats, translated into “assault companies”), a full-time volunteer force constructed with British permission in anticipation of Rommel’s possible invasion of Palestine. Women made up approximately 15 percent of the Palmach and the organization is thought to be

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the “most sexually integrated armed forces in history” because many of its volunteers had grown up on the kibbutz that emphasized communal living and sacrifice (Van Creveld 1998: 118). Dormitory coed living was not unconventional in this time and context. After the German threat had dissipated, the Palmach went  underground where it was 6,000 members strong  and included both men and women. Women gathered intelligence and operated as  “communicators, nurses, and providers of logistic support”; they did not engage in combat (1998: 85). Beyond the Palmach, other opportunities for young Jewish women existed so they might gain  some military experience. During the Second World War, Jewish authorities urged young people to join the British Amy and approximately  30,000 responded to this call, 10 percent of whom were women. Jewish women who elected to join the British Army  found themselves in a separate female corps, but served in new  roles like chauffeurs, truck drivers, and telephone operators. After the United Nations called for the establishment of the Jewish state on November 29, 1947, both the Hagana and Palmach focused their operations against the British as they started fighting for their independence and women received weapons training with men (Browne 2007). Shortly thereafter, a group of Palmach members on patrol were abducted and slaughtered by Arabs in the Negev. Because this atrocity involved women, the Hagana ordered all women to be taken out of combat units. However, not all commanders followed this rule because trained personnel were essential in the face of continued British presence and the shortage of man power. In the first six months of hostilities, women were involved in heavy fighting and some lost their lives: From December  1947 to March  1948 a number of women … helped take convoys into beleaguered Jerusalem as well as Gush Etsion. Acting as communicators and first-aid personnel, they often came under fire, returned fire when the opportunity presented itself, and took their share of casualties; of 1,200 PALMACH dead, nineteen were women. A few others participated in the ferocious fighting for Safed and the area around Latrun, where one of them, Netiva Ben Yehuda, most likely earned her reputation as “the Blonde Devil” of Arab myth. Whether accidently or not, one of her tasks was to cover up some of the atrocities committed by male comrades, untying the hands of dead Arab prisoners to disguise the fact that they had been shot in cold blood. (Van Creveld 1998: 118–19)

As soon as the hostilities ceased, all remaining Palmach women were eliminated from positions that could involve combat. When the IDF was established on May 30, 1948, the Palmach was dismantled and a new structure modeled after the British ATS was established (Hacker and Vining 2012). Women in the IDF were removed from integrated units and placed in a separate corps called the Chen (the Chel Nashim, or Women’s Army Corps, translated as “grace”). Female officers who obtained military experience through their service in the British Army commanded female subordinates. This decision imitated other Western militaries and designated the Chen as an auxiliary force. Many former

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Palmach women did not transition to the Chen because of the perceived decline in status. By December  1948, women made up  10.6 percent of the IDF and 108 (2.4 percent of the total casualties) lost their lives in the War of Independence (Van Creveld 2000). Women affiliated with the Palmach prior to the War of Independence performed well, but others who did not have prior paramilitary experience had a difficult time due to haphazard mobilization and inadequate training. With this in mind, along with the military potential of Israel’s neighbors, the IDF worked hard to retain women such that they could “free a man to fight.” While this sentiment is consistent with the American, British, and Canadian case for the time period, the IDF departs from its Western counterparts on the matter of conscription. Adopted in 1949, the Israeli Defense Service Law required that all men and women who had reached the age of eighteen, unless exempted, be liable for a twenty-four-month IDF service period in peace or wartime (Gal 1986).5 When male service time was increased to thirty months, the time commitment for women remained at twenty-four months. Upon completion of this two-year service, both Israeli men and women are required to serve in the reserves.6 There were other distinctions made between men and women that are worth noting. In contrast to men, “who were kept on the rolls until they were 55 years old, women’s period of reserve service only extended to the age of 34. In practice, however, once a woman had been discharged women are rarely called up for reserve duty, enabling them to concentrate on family, study, and career” (Van Creveld 2000: 88). Far fewer women are conscripted into the IDF due to different exemption c­ ategories— specifically, roughly 60 and 90 percent of all Israeli women and men join the military service, respectively (Gal 1986). In Israel’s relatively short history, it has fought seven wars and women have been present in various capacities in all of them. Women primarily occupied traditional roles (e.g., administrators, welfare workers, medical auxiliaries) until the mid1970s when manpower shortages drove women’s roles to change significantly. Women’s military status remained traditionally static from 1949 to 1973 and several continuities between the IDF and the American, British, and Canadian cases exist. The IDF has responded to allegations of sexual promiscuity and applied higher standards to inducted female soldiers than it did to male soldiers. First, the transition from the Palmach to the IDF made it clear that a more professional posture was required that discouraged sexual activity among its members. An environment where Palmach members would proudly display the undergarments of “conquered” women and where any “undesirable consequences [would be] taken care of quietly and efficiently by the countrywide network of Histadrut-affiliated clinics” did not support female membership in a professional manner (Van Creveld 2000: 88). As analogous behavior was deemed unacceptable to the British Army, Chen headquarters used the British system as the model from which to draw up regulations for appropriate IDF behavior. A chain of command—one for men and one for women—was instituted to stem sexual harassment. Women who experienced sexual harassment were often transferred to another unit or their allegations were ignored; the path of least resistance that privileged the male soldier was taken since “a state that really needs its male warriors will tend to overlook their indiscretions,

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sexual or other” (Van Creveld 2000: 88). Second, the IDF applied higher standards to women than it did to men since fewer women were required due to their exclusion from combat arms. Gal (1986) claims that the IDF manpower division applied higher psychological and educational standards to female conscripts. IDF service has been considered a “rite of passage” that confers connections important to career development beyond the IDF, and as such the application of higher (arbitrary) standards is thought to be detrimental to women who do not meet them. Jewish women were perceived as less valued than their male counterparts when considering their weapons training at this time as well. Like the command structure, basic training was segregated and women were trained on weapons that were considered second class (e.g., Model 1898 Mauser bolt-action rifles, Uzi submachine guns); “It was only after the October  1973 war that modern small arms became sufficiently plentiful for everybody, including women, to be issued with them” (Van Creveld 2000: 89). In the 1960s the IDF attempted to train a small number of women in more nontraditional roles like navy diving, but this effort led to the resentment of their male counterparts. This resentment ultimately led women to drop out of the training programs or pursue jobs outside of this training. The experience of many women in the IDF up until 1973, and to a large extent even today, regards women’s status as inferior to that of male IDF soldiers. The gendered division of role and status has made women vulnerable to discrimination, sexual harassment, and abuse. Dar and Kimhi (2004) claim that for Israel particularly, “women are denied the symbolic aura of soldiering and the social capital so many veteran men enjoy on entering civilian society. Intended to symbolize women’s equal participation in the national collective, the army actually helps marginalize them socially” (435). These issues are curious in the context of a country that afforded so many rights to women early in its history. As in all cases where women are utilized in increasing numbers in the military, the shortage of manpower was the primary justification for expanding their numbers and roles. The reconstruction after the October  1973 war, where fewer than ten servicewomen lost their lives, was a time to reassess. Prior to the October 1973 war, women’s service time had been extended from twenty-four to thirty months in 1964; men’s service requirement was extended in kind from thirty to thirty-six months. Enlistment standards for everyone decreased to make more conscripts eligible and jobs were opened to women. Female soldiers operated as maintenance personnel, drivers, flight controllers, radio operators, and instructors in fields from which they were excluded from participating themselves. These opportunities were won by the first “right to fight” for Israel campaign, led by Knesset member Marcia Freedman, in the hope of opening combat roles to women. Jacoby (2010) states that “her efforts, along with increased public debate about the gender division of labor in the postwar period, and the military’s willingness to fully utilize the available womanpower for future military operations, lead to a gradual broadening of the professions of women in the Israeli military” (83). Between 1948 and 1982, the IDF was careful to keep female soldiers out of harms’ way. Female soldiers generally stayed in the rear or were evacuated from field units in a hostile environment. Female soldiers were prohibited from crossing the Israeli-

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Lebanon border during the Lebanon War (1982). However, the discontent on the part of reservists to serve in this conflict compelled the IDF to move women from support units and into combat zones. The sentiment of discontent continued with the development of the intifada in December  1987, and many officials pointed to women’s participation in the Lebanon War as reason to expand their utilization in future conflicts. With Western feminism catching up to Israel, negotiated peace with Egypt,7 and the emergence of Iran–Iraq War, the IDF was ready to test more women in different ways. Between 1980 and 1991, the MOSs open to women increased from 296 to 500, a 60 percent increase. The face of the officer corps changed as well: Whereas from 1983 to 1993 the number of male officers increased only by 29 per cent, that of female ones doubled. The outcome was that, rank by rank, the percentage of female officers grew: from 14 to 23 per cent of all captains, from 13 to 18 per cent of all majors, and from 6 to 11 per cent of all lieutenant-colonels. By mid-1997 the IDF even had three female brigadier-generals. Two of them owed their ranks to the positions which they occupied, i.e. that of CHEN chief and IDF spokesperson, respectively; whereas the third had been promoted, on the occasion of Israel’s 49th birthday, allegedly for her “special merits.” (Van Creveld 2000: 95)

Although their American, British, and Canadian counterparts already assumed the role of pilots, Alice Miller’s 1995 petition to the Israel High Court of Justice sought permission to qualify for the pilot’s course after being rejected by the IDF. The case was brought to the court by the Israel Women’s Network and the Association for Civil Rights (Golan 1997). The court ruled that the “air force must make appropriate arrangements to permit women to become candidates and, if qualified, enter the pilot training courses” (Golan 1997: 116). It was this decision that facilitated the structural and legal reforms that would later guarantee women’s equal participation in the twenty-first-century IDF. Rimalt (2007) enumerates the changes: In 1999, women began training in combat-related tasks, such as border surveillance, task officers, and some armored divisions. The training for these positions is identical for men and women, and women who volunteer for such occupations have to sign up for an extended period of service beyond the regular woman’s obligation to the IDF. In addition to structural changes within the military, the legislature has taken some legal measures to guarantee the full implementation of the principle of sex-based equality in the military. In 2000, a bill that amended the 1986 Defense Service law was passed by the Israeli legislature. The bill provided for equal military service for men and women unless the nature or substance of a position precluded women’s participation. A similar provision was included in the amended Women’s Equal Rights Law, and the Minister of Defense supplemented those legal reforms with regulations that list the new military positions that are now open for women. (1106)

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Consistent with the other cases, parliamentary activity and pressure was the critical force to effect such change. The aforementioned legal reforms led to more structural reforms—specifically, on August 1, 2001, the Women’s Army Corps (Chen) was dissolved. No longer an independent unit, the former Chen was incorporated into the General Staff and five major objectives concerning women were articulated by the IDF Chief of the General Staff: (1) women’s service would be founded on principles of equity and partnership, (2) men and women in identical roles would serve the same period of time, (3) the service of women would expand to include new roles, (4) female petty officers would be placed in operational units and would serve primary functions, and (5) quality rather than course of service would inform the appointment of female senior officers (Jacoby 2010). A 2005 report published by the Military Chief of Staff ’s Advisor for Women’s Issues provided an analysis of the gains women have made in the IDF since the Miller ruling. As of 2005, only 2.5 percent of female soldiers served in combat-designated jobs. This number not only indicates gradual growth in women’s representation in nontraditional roles but it also shows that women remain tokens and that their integration is largely symbolic rather than meaningful. Moreover, female soldiers have crossed over into combat occupational specialties, but not all combat roles are open to them, and as such, status has shifted for combat jobs that are now integrated. Rimalt (2007) states that the combat positions that were redefined to be integrated are now considered marginal and less prestigious than combat roles that remain closed to women. Changing the definition of a job upon women’s entrance allowed the IDF to maintain gender difference in the face of women’s presence (Williams 1989). What’s more, in the decade since the Miller case was won, is that the IDF remains highly gender segregated. In 2006, 63 and 21 percent of all military roles were performed exclusively by male and female soldiers, respectively. One out of every five female IDF soldiers remains in a stereotypical gender role, while a staggering 97 percent of the prestigious decision-making positions are filled by men (Rimalt 2007). Little has changed in the last decade. As of 2015, Israeli women still do not serve in “front-line combat brigades mobilized to engage in direct heavy combat” (Scarborough 2015). Ninety-two percent of army positions are open to women and they serve as fighter pilots, unmanned aerial vehicle operators, infantry officers, naval captains, and military police (Rudoren 2013). The primary combat unit in which women serve is the Caracal Battalion, which guards the Egypt–Israel border. In August 2015, the IDF recruited for the Lions of Jordan, a new integrated light infantry battalion that patrols the eastern border along the Jordan Rift Valley (Wooten 2015). While female soldiers in other roles serve two years, women in the Caracal and Lions of Jordan battalions must serve a total of three years. Most recently, the IDF decided that female soldiers were not equipped to serve in tank units because of concerns surrounding physical fitness and lack of privacy. However, the IDF “left room to reconsider allowing female soldiers to serve as combat engineers operating heavy equipment, also in enemy territory, after reviewing the policies of other Western militaries” (Sudilovsky 2015).

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Conclusion The comparative exercise undertaken in this chapter has revealed more continuities than distinctions between women’s integration into the British, Canadian, and Israeli armed forces. Without question, women’s roles in the military expanded in every environment under stress—specifically, when manpower shortages became evident to military planners, the military turned to women to fill noncombat positions so they might “free a man to fight.” The process of opening more nontraditional combat roles has not been a linear one. Rather, in all cases, the process has been circular “in which short-term inclusion of women in combat roles was followed by long-term exclusion and then by another short-term inclusion” (Sasson-Levy 2003: 445). The opportunities for women in the military have only grown because of external pressure applied by outside groups, be it the legislature or civil rights advocates. Moreover, the individuals exerting this pressure are almost always women themselves. Although military men in the cases of the United States, Great Britain, and Canada have stood behind initiatives to offer women more opportunities in the armed forces, there are very few instances of such accolades by military (male) officials in Israel. Sexual harassment is a common experience for women in all militaries explored here and it continues to be a problem today. Interestingly, in the American, British, and Canadian cases, whisper campaigns emerged during the Second World War from within the military in hopes of pushing women out. No campaign of this kind emerged in the Israeli case, but sexual harassment problems are pervasive there too. A final continuity between the cases is the fact that women’s numbers in nontraditional spheres remain low and superficial. The fact that women are entering more nontraditional specialties in greater numbers shows progress, but the fact that they remain tokens in these environments may indicate that there are real (or perceived) barriers to entry and success. Only time will determine if women saturate these fields and transcend token status now that combat exclusion rules have been lifted for the British, Canadian, and American militaries. While the similarities are numerous and the aforementioned list is not exhaustive, there are several differences to highlight between the cases explored in this chapter. The most obvious difference lies in the compulsory conscription for men and women in the Israeli case. With the exception of the conscription of British women during the Second World War, servicewomen in the Western cases explored here were never regularly conscripted and all women’s service has been voluntary. Despite the fact that IDF recruitment and promotion policies are purportedly based on universal conscription, far fewer Israeli women serve than their male counterparts because they can declare exemption on the grounds of religion, marriage, or motherhood. More specifically, “the law grants priority to women’s family roles over their obligations to military service” (Sasson-Levy 2003: 445). A second notable difference between the experience of women in the American, British, Canadian, and Israeli armed forces is the acceptance level of diversity in the rank and file. Canada, by far, is most inclusive when it comes to diversity and has opened opportunities to women sooner and faster because of its human rights legislation and multicultural attitudes. The Israeli case is arguably the least diverse and most patriarchal. Israeli men occupying combat positions are the  most privileged and this status confers prestige beyond

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their service in the IDF.  Levy (1998) notes that the affiliation with combat is not just a job, but the link to the Israeli collective outside of the military. Hauser (2011) echoes this sentiment by saying  that “if the completion of Army service signifies belonging in  Israeli society, combat service denotes absolute inclusion” (627). As was stated earlier, many combat jobs have been redefined to include women, and yet those positions have been  marginalized in order to concretize gender divisions. A final difference, albeit small, is the attention paid in these histories to nurses serving in the American, British, and Canadian militaries. For all of the aforementioned cases, nurses were  heralded by military men to be heroic, and arguably more heroic than women serving their militaries in different capacities. With respect to the Israeli case, women are expected to occupy auxiliary roles, and as such, nursing fits well within the paradigm of appropriate occupational pursuits. Israeli nurses may not have been heralded as heroic because all members of society must be mobilized to protect the state.

4

Stereotype Threat Theory and Women’s Marksmanship Performance: A Social Psychology Experiment

The two previous history chapters illustrated that gender-role expectations and stereotypes pervade women’s military experience. Representations of women as the heroic nurse or dutiful secretary were as common in the 1940s as they were in the 1990s. As women became permanent members of the armed services both in the  United States and abroad, stereotypes that painted women as sexually deviant  (e.g., promiscuous or mannish) or physically and emotionally unfit for military service  were launched in an attempt to isolate and drive them out of the military. Despite the resistance  servicewomen felt from their peers, families, and congressional  representatives, they have made significant progress since the Persian  Gulf War. Women’s history in the American armed forces and their distinguished service since the 1990s have recently culminated  in the abolition of the ground combat exclusion rule by former US Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta in  2013. Former president Barack Obama emphatically stated that “this milestone reflects the courageous and patriotic service of women through more than two centuries of American history and the indispensable role of women in today’s military” (Ruolo 2013). The decision promises to open approximately  237,000 positions to women: 184,000 openings in combat arms professions and 58,000  in positions that were previously closed based on unit type (Ruolo 2013). Prior to Panetta’s announcement, women were already serving “in many of those jobs, but as temporary ‘attachments’ to battalions—a bureaucratic sidestep that has been necessary with  the high demand for troops during the last decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan” (Bumiller 2010).  The lifting of the combat exclusion policy, then, formalizes existing norms that finally reflect reality. Although the joint chiefs and the US president supported this formal recognition in an era where  front lines have dissolved and all service members risk their lives daily, acrimonious congressional debate regarding the A version of this chapter was first published in the International Journal of Interdisciplinary Civic and Political Studies in 2014. Due to lack of resources, time, and military access, the investigator was not able to update the experiment after the original 2009 investigation. Since this is the first and only stereotype threat experiment of its kind (e.g., use of active-duty military personnel on a military relevant examination) that the author is aware of, it serves as an important example of applied interdisciplinary research.

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future health of the American military followed Panetta’s announcement that, again, brought traditional gender-role stereotypes front and center. Advocates of women in combat noted that women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have performed superbly. Formally recognizing women’s role in combat allows them to reap the rewards of that participation (e.g., career advancement predicated on war fighting) and gives them opportunities for advancement that they lacked without formal recognition of their combat service; lifting the combat exclusion policy gives servicewomen access to the most prestigious military positions (e.g., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff). Thus, there are fewer barriers prohibiting success of servicewomen who want to serve. Critics of the Pentagon’s decision, on the other hand, claim that this decision is more about political correctness than military effectiveness. Some consider women in combat roles distracting at best and dangerous at worst. Rick Santorum publically regards servicewomen as dangerous because men may feel obligations to protect them rather than focusing on the mission (Seelye 2012). Women, in this light, are distracting because they are people who need protecting. Critics also worry that the inclusion of women in combat jobs might degrade unit cohesion and readiness. The aforementioned anxieties are based simply on gender-role stereotypes—specifically, women are physically weaker, more emotional, and more nurturing than their male counterparts. Gender-role stereotypes, then, often color our ideas of which jobs best suit women. If what it means to soldier is wrapped up in the masculine warrior image, the identity of the servicewoman becomes broadly devalued. This devaluation, in turn, can have irreversible repercussions for not just the female soldier, but the entire military. Although women’s service has changed over time and they have without question made progress with respect to career advancement and opportunities in service, the representations of women called upon in public discourse has remained eerily stagnant. The fact that representations have not changed to reflect women’s service today may have real implications for women’s performance in the military context. This chapter applies social psychology theory to the military context in order to show that traditional representations of servicewomen are not just antiquated statements, but powerful enough to impact the daily tasks of women in the military. This chapter examines the extent to which gender-role stereotypes can undermine performance in the USMC context. Female Marines, I argue, confront more negative judgments than women in other service branches because the USMC is especially steeped in tradition, predicated on warrior ethos, and only 6 percent of its force is comprised of women (Ricks 1998). Making up only 6 percent of the entire force, women are an obvious minority group whose performance and behavior are habitually scrutinized. It follows, then, that female Marines feel added pressure to perform well in situations where their behavior can corroborate the negative reputation that their group lacks a valued ability. This pressure, known as ST, is tested experimentally to see whether stereotypes can disrupt the marksmanship performance of female Marines. The domain of marksmanship was specifically chosen because of its relevance to the USMC. Furthermore, the marksmanship examination has the unique ability to draw fair comparisons between men and women. If women’s performance can be disrupted, justification to exempt them from combat may be based not on skill, but

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on performance hampered by gender-role expectations. Indeed, the USMC was the only service branch to request exemptions for women in specific frontline combat jobs in 2015 (Baldor 2015). These exemptions were likely predicated on traditional gender-role expectations for women in the armed forces. Overall, the literature on performance effects of negative stereotyping is rich and related to gender, race, and sexuality.

Literature review Stereotype threat ST is a phenomenon defined as a “social-psychological threat that arises when one is in a situation or doing something for which a negative stereotype about one’s group applies.” Claude Steele, the pioneer of ST research, goes on to say: This predicament threatens one with being negatively stereotyped, with being judged or treated stereotypically, or with the prospect of conforming to the stereotype. Called stereotype threat, it is the situational threat—a threat in the air—that, in general form, can affect the members of any group about whom a negative stereotype exists … Where bad stereotypes about these groups apply, members of these groups can fear being reduced to that stereotype. And for those who identify with the domain to which the stereotype is relevant, this predicament can be threatening. (Steele 1997: 614)

This definition highlights the fact that for a negative stereotype to be threatening, it must be self-relevant. Steele details, as complementary to his definition, three conditions that must be present in order for ST to take place. First, there must be widespread awareness of the negative stereotype associated with one’s group. Second, ST only occurs when a negative stereotype is relevant to the individual during a domain-performance situation. Finally, an individual’s identification with the relevant domain must also exist. Degree of individual identification will render individuals prone to or safe from ST. Research demonstrates that more highly domain-identified individuals are the most vulnerable to ST because their self-regard is wrapped up in the successful completion of the task (Aronson et al. 1999). All aforementioned ST conditions are satisfied for female Marines within the USMC domain. First, there is widespread awareness that servicewomen are generally negatively stereotyped (Boyce and Herd 2003; Looney, Robindon-Kurpius, and Lucart 2004; Morgan 2004). Second, stereotypes impugning the competence of female Marines apply to several domain-performance situations within the USMC. Women in MOSs that require mechanical knowledge will perform their duties in the face of stereotypes that suggest women know very little about automotive and aeronautical mechanics (Gabbay et  al. 1996). Marksmanship is another area where women are presumed to have little knowledge (Hayes 2001). Third, female Marines are likely to be highly identified with their role in the armed forces since they have self-selected into

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the community. Women who elect to join the USMC often defy traditional gender roles. Their prove’em wrong mentality may actually render female Marines more vulnerable to ST because every performance counts. In domains of marksmanship, as I will argue, the risk of confirming a negative stereotype increases considerably for female Marines. Marine Corps marksmanship, the domain in which this experimental study is situated, is a skill inextricably bound to the identity of the Marine (Sturkey 2003). The pressure for women to do well in marksmanship domains may be exacerbated by the emphasis the USMC places on that particular skill set and negative gendered stereotype relevant to it. Essentially, when women are completing a “masculine” task in an already male-dominated environment, they face the threat of confirming or being judged by a negative stereotype that calls into question a women’s competence on the battlefield. The self-threat that this predicament causes may interfere with the concentration of female Marines, particularly when they are completing a qualification that evaluates their weapon competence. This hypothesis is examined here. Empirical support from various literatures demonstrates that ST can affect the performance of members of many stereotyped social groups. ST has explained female academic underperformance relative to men (Steele et  al. 2007), African American academic underperformance relative to Caucasian students (Steele and Aronson 1995), and the academic underperformance of Hispanic students where analytical ability was measured (Gonzalez, Blanton, and Williams 2002). Beyond academic domains, ST is described as negatively affecting homosexual men in childcare domains (Bosson, Haymovitz, and Pinel 2004), Caucasian male athletes with respect to natural athletic ability (Stone et al. 1999), and women in negotiation (Kray, Galinksy, and Thompson 2002). No study to date explores the effects of ST on performance in the military context. This investigation extends the work on ST in two critical ways: it employs an entirely new population and examination. Activeduty service members are entirely absent from the stereotype literature until now, and the marksmanship evaluation is a departure from the written examinations primarily used in ST studies. Before discussing the experiment, it is imperative to demonstrate (1) that female Marines generally underperform relative to their male counterparts in the marksmanship domain and (2) that the marksmanship domain is potentially threatening to female Marines. These two conditions must be satisfied for ST to undermine marksmanship performance.

USMC marksmanship qualification: A domain of underperformance? Female Marines have been successful in both deployed and stateside arenas. While many women excel in the most masculine of traditions, female Marines generally underperform relative to their male counterparts while qualifying on a firearm.1 Every Marine, at the recruiting stage and as they progress through the ranks, qualifies annually on an M16 service rifle. Table  4.1 illustrates the differences between male and female recruit marksmanship performance. It is important to note that the domain of marksmanship allows one to draw fair, direct comparisons

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Table 4.1  Recruit marksmanship qualification data

Initial qualification (%) Experts (%) Sharpshooters (%) Marksman (%) Total (%)

Men (n = 35,000)

Women (n = 3,000)

88 23 28 49 100

68 15 17 65 97

Source: Data provided by Marine Corps Recruiting Depot-West (MCRD-West) and represents marksmanship performance for Fiscal Year 2009.

between male and female performance. Choosing a task like running to compare performance has little utility since men have an inherent speed and strength advantage over women. Table  4.1 shows that a much higher percentage of women do not pass their initial qualification as compared to male recruits during boot camp. The “initial qualification” data account for an argument that suggests women have less experience with firearms than males do when they join the USMC. Female recruits continue to underperform relative to their male counterparts after completing thirteen weeks of basic training. By the final qualification during basic training, 97 percent of female recruits pass the marksmanship qualification. The remaining 3 percent do not pass and are subsequently dropped from the program. One hundred percent of males in FY 2009 graduated basic training. Furthermore, according to Table 4.1, there are more highly skilled males than females. More males than females are given the grade of expert and sharpshooter. Meanwhile, over half of the female population received the grade of marksman, which is the lowest scoring category. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) data provided by the Department of the Navy also corroborate the aforementioned trends. Data analysis for 1,000 Marines shows that for those ranked Private, Private First-Class, and Lance Corporal, the mean rifle score for men and women is 207 (SD = 1.4) and 195 (SD = 1.2), respectively. These data illustrate that female Marines generally underperform relative to their male counterparts in tasks of marksmanship. Despite what the data suggest, some commentators posit that women are, in fact, better shooters than men. Ben Dolan, a former Marine sniper claims that “women can shoot better, by and large, and they’re easier to train because they don’t have the inflated egos that a lot of men bring to [rifle range]” (Wan 2006). A small percentage of women have also proven their talent in the domain of marksmanship. Julia Watson, one of the most accomplished USMC female shooters, made history as one of the first female graduates from the 2005 Small Arms Weapons Instructor Course.

Is the marksmanship domain threatening to female Marines? Marines repeatedly say: “Every Marine is a rifleman.” Regardless of age, sex, or MOS, all Marines are trained to operate the M16-A2 service rifle during boot camp. This phrase is the Marine Corps’ most widely known edict. It illustrates, in the most simplistic terms, the Corps’ desire to infuse into every Marine the fighting spirit and ethos upon which the organization has relied for more than 227 years (Milks 2003).

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Everything revolves around the rifleman. “Marine Aviation, Marine Armor, Marine Artillery, and all supporting arms and war-fighting assets exist to support the rifleman” (Sturkey 2003). The saliency of the rifleman is understood by the fact that every recruit repeats, memorizes, and ultimately lives by the Rifleman’s Creed. Authored by Master General William H. Rupertus, a portion of the creed emphasizes the importance of a rifle: “This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless” (Sturkey 2003). Marksmanship, the most fundamental of Marine Corps skills, is inextricably bound to the identity of the Marine. It is so important that all Marines qualify on the rifle annually to ensure that their marksmanship skills are continually refreshed.2 In the domain of marksmanship, women are vulnerable to underperformance. Most female Marines acknowledge that more men are awarded grades of expert and sharpshooter than women. Anxiety may also develop from feeling an obligation to continually over-perform in certain domains in order to show that they are competent Marines. When I asked a female Major for her opinion on origins of female underperformance, she stated that “as a woman coming into an all boys’ gun club, you have to prove yourself … Unfortunately when I came in the stigma was [that all] women [were] … good for was clerical work. Women were never seen as war fighters. It was almost [as if] you are infringing upon their sacred ground … So I constantly had to prove myself ” (personal interview). In conjunction with constantly reaffirming her worth, she also expressed feeling added pressure on the rifle range because she didn’t want to be responsible for giving other female Marines a bad name. Female Marines who want to be taken as serious, competent Marines understand that they have to excel in the face of stereotypes that depict women as incompetent riflemen. The burden they bare—the stress that results from the need to disconfirm a negative stereotype that pertains to them—could negatively impact the scores of female Marines everywhere.

Methods Experimental paradigm and hypotheses The goal of the research was to test whether female Marines are vulnerable to ST in the domain of marksmanship. In order to test if ST undermines women’s performance, Marines are given a marksmanship prequalification examination where ST, or how much female Marines are at risk of confirming a negative stereotype while taking the examination, is experimentally manipulated. The experimental study does this by varying how the marksmanship qualification is presented. In the ST condition, the examination was described as diagnostic of ability and that there exists a belief that women are less competent than men when it comes to marksmanship. This condition, in other words, made the gendered stereotype about competence with firearms relevant to female participants’ performance “and establish[ed] for them the threat of fulfilling it” (Steele and Aronson 1995: 799). In the no-ST condition, the

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same examination was described as nondiagnostic and the presence of a negative stereotype was entirely absent. This should have reduced ST. In the ST condition, one expects that female Marines will underperform in relation to equally qualified men in the condition where sex differences are emphasized and the exam is believed to be diagnostic of ability. In the no-sex differences and nondiagnostic condition, one expects that women will perform equally to her male counterparts because of the reduction of ST. Since performance differences between men and women in the ST condition show baseline performance rates, illustrating that women’s performance can be improved by reducing ST is critical.

Participants Two hundred and eight male and female active-duty Marines were recruited through a USMC liaison and were all offered a $10 Starbucks gift card for their participation. The data of forty-nine participants were excluded from the analysis because they failed to complete components of the distributed surveys. This left a total of 159 participants randomly assigned to two experimental conditions. Of the 159 participants, eighty were female Marines and seventy-nine were male Marines.

Rifle qualification evaluation The USMC marksmanship qualification is composed of four progressive examinations: (1) known distance (KD) firing, (2) basic combat marksmanship, (3) intermediate combat marksmanship, and (4) advanced combat marksmanship. These sections are used to teach Marines the application of marksmanship fundamentals so they can better function as an individual or part of a unit engaged in combat. The KD firing examination was chosen as the experimental exercise because it tests the most fundamental USMC marksmanship skills. Marines have the opportunity to score between 0 and 250 points. The lowest skilled category, marksman, requires a score between 190 and 209. Sharpshooter, the next highest categorical skill level, requires a score between 210 and 219. Expert, the highest skill category for marksmanship qualifications, requires a score between 220 and 250.

Design and procedure The experiment took the form of a 2 × 2 factorial design. The factors were sex of the participant, male or female, and examination representation, where the exam was represented in one of two ways: either diagnostic of ability with reference to a negative stereotype or nondiagnostic of ability with no reference to a negative stereotype. Participants reported to the rifle range in mixed male and female groups. After participants gave their consent to participate, they filled out a presurvey assessing demographic information, most recent qualification score, comfort level with firearms, and how highly they identify with the USMC and the task of marksmanship.3 Seven days later, on a prequalification day (e.g., practice), they arrived at the rifle range ready to take the prequalification examination. Directly before the prequalification began, a

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marksmanship coach distributed a half sheet of paper that had the stereotype prime or no-stereotype prime printed on it to randomly selected male and female Marines. The marksmanship coach asked all participants to read it before they began the qualification. The stereotype and no-stereotype prime read as follows: ST PRIME: Statistical evidence suggests that women perform less effectively than males when qualifying as marksman. We are specifically looking to see if there is a difference between men and women’s ability. Your score today will reflect your skill as a marksman. NO-ST PRIME: This marksmanship exercise is merely practice. Because this is just practice, your score has no bearing on your skill as a marksman.

Once read, the first portion of the marksmanship prequalification started. The KD prequalification took approximately fifty minutes to complete. The prequalification is composed of rapid and slow fire with an M16, where Marines aim for targets at distances of 200, 300, and 500 yards while maintaining different postures. Once the prequalification was complete, each marksmanship coach recorded the participant’s score.

Variables The forty-eight-item presurvey accounted for qualities that may impact, positively or negatively, performance with a firearm. The first set of presurvey questions recorded demographic information and individual experience/comfort with firearms. The second set of presurvey questions measured their identification with the USMC generally, and marksmanship specifically (e.g., “Marksmanship is a skill I am very good at”). These questions were measured on a 7-point scale anchored by phrases “strongly disagree” (1) and “strongly agree” (7). An “identification index” was prepared by adding the responses to the following three questions: “marksmanship is a skill I am very good at,” “it is important to me that I do well on tasks of marksmanship,” and “being a Marine is an important part of who I am.” The distribution of responses to the indexed questions showed a clear division between two groups: (1) Marines who scored 17 points and above and (2) those who scored 16 points and below. A score of 17 was determined as the cutting point. An identification index of ≥17 represents a high identification level. Otherwise, the subject was associated with moderate/low identification level. A dichotomous identification variable was chosen because it distinguished between highly identified and poorly identified Marines. The dependent variable was the participant’s performance on a fifty-minute rifle marksmanship prequalification.

Statistical methods An ANOVA was performed to evaluate the effect of sex and ST condition on the rifle marksmanship qualification. The least squared means of the rifle marksmanship qualification and the corresponding 95 percent confidence intervals based on the

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ANOVA were calculated for the four groups of Marines: males primed with negative stereotype, males given a no-ST prime, females primed with negative stereotype, and females given a no-ST prime. The “recent marksmanship” score, or ability, (continuous variable) and identification level (high identification and moderate/ low identification) were considered as additional factors that could affect the rifle marksmanship qualification. The effect of these two covariates and interaction effects between the covariates and sex and condition on the rifle marksmanship qualification were evaluated. Nonsignificant interaction effects were removed from the initial model by a backward selection procedure. A significance level of 0.05 was used for the main effects and 0.1 was used for the interaction effects. For exploratory purposes, an ANOVA or ANCOVA was employed to evaluate the possible effects of individual identification level (≥5 and