Question

According to Melissa Herbert (1994), the debate over the role of women in the military raises interesting questions for feminists and militarists. What are some of these questions? Do you agree with the questions that are raised? Explain.

Answer 1

Introduction

• The US Department of Defense is lifting its ban on women in direct ground-combat positions, as recently announced by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. The armed services are thus preparing to open the remaining jobs still off-limits to the female workforce. In this context, gender scholars working on military and security issues can expect to be confronted with the question whether this is a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing in terms of feminist and pacifist commitments.
• This discussion aims to provide a more comprehensive perspective on the interrelations between the military and gender; one that more accurately reflects the state of gender scholarship on the military and feminist IR. These fields have moved beyond the strict dualism between radical anti-militarist positions which oppose women’s military participation out of pacifist reasons, and ‘integrationist’ positions which unambiguously favour it, sometimes with patriotic overtones.
• The systematic inclusion of women into efforts to improve contact with the civilian population and gather intelligence on the ground, e.g. in so-called Female Engagement Teams, builds on gender stereotypes which are not all that different from pervious approaches.
• ‘Population-centric’ counterinsurgency theory still views women as advantageous and uses them instrumentally for strategic purposes (Dyvik 2012). Military gender integration is also still implicated with representations of women as peace-makers and proof of US ‘cultural sensitivity’. Thus, gender equality and the empowerment of women remain causally linked to American national security interests.

Feminist Critiques of Discourses on Gender and Security

• Feminist analysis has shown that such framings can in fact be detrimental to broader equality issues. Feminist scholars have found that linking gender and security in a simplified way is productive of a particular gender order which essentializes women’s status as weak victims and claims that they have universally shared peaceful interests (Shepherd 2008).
• These discourses follow a post-colonial script which depends on constructions of the ‘violent other’ and associates women’s equality with Western civilization, thus ‘obscuring “Western” agency in both male privilege and violence against women’ (Harrington 2011, 567).
• These critiques have also been applied to gender mainstreaming mechanisms in international institutions. Critical research in this area has shown that the gains women make in these institutions always produce both empowerment and new constraints (Prügl 2011, 73). Additionally, some women, particularly white, educated women have benefitted more from the growing institutional attention to gender issues than others. Expectations that women’s integration would make militarized institutions more peaceful and geared towards the needs of marginalized groups have thus become increasingly dubious. Hence, uncritically participating in celebrations of women’s new opportunities in the military could have unintended consequences.

Challenges

• These findings have made feminist positioning on military gender integration ever more complex. The times when standpoints could easily be separated along the lines of equality ethicists (Stiehm 1989) and peace ethicists (Ruddick 1982) are definitely over. But this is not all bad news. Acknowledging these complexities takes the pressure off to exclusively identify with either side. Feminist theory and practice, as a pluralist project, certainly has room for both and feminists will continue to do both, critically engage with military institutions and support equality for women within them.
• Feminist disagreements over these issues will go on and likely never be settled. Meanwhile, a rights-based approach might still be the safest bet for those wishing to make a non-militaristic point for military gender integration.
• While some may not perceive the ‘right’ to fight, kill, and die as a desirable objective, focusing on equal access to important state institutions is preferable to arguments that women can fulfil placatory functions in the military or provide the social skills that men lack. Women should not be required to prove that they can do anything ‘better’ than men or bring any specific qualities to military and other institutions to be allowed to participate.
• At the outset, there is no straightforward answer to journalists’ questions about the normative evaluation of women’s integration into ground-combat. In the light of feminist research in the areas of military, war, security, foreign policy, and international institutions, we can only conclude that full integration does not need to be ‘good’ for it to be right.