Question

Historically, particularly during WWI and WWII there was a fear that integrating women into the military would "masculinize" them. What was the basis of this fear? How was the media a part of constructing this notion?

Answer 1

Historically, particularly during WWI and WWII there was a fear that integrating women into the military would "masculinize" them. What was the basis of this fear? How was the media a part of constructing this notion?

The basis of this fear was the fact that women should only be at their house and should only be serving and carrying out works that are only meant to not involve much strength. Any job involving strength was thought to be only masculine behaviour and to be consisting of masculine behaviours. It was considered in earlier days that women were supposed to be playing certain roles and those roles were not extended to the strength division. Hence, when the fact came that women could be integrated into military , it would be masculinisation of them . Another term that came up, was feminisation of military.

Such terms were publicised even more with the development of posters in which women would be shown wearing a military dress and a cap with slogans such as masculinisation of women or feminisation of military. This kind of messages were promoted by the media. Even inside the military, women were only thought to be the support system. The fear that women would carry out roles that they were not “supposed”. Moreover, it was thought that this would be crossing the stereotypes, and such things would be against what is meant to be done by women. For the media as well, it wasnt acceptable that there occurred crossing of roles, in ways that they would not imagine. There used to be posters and graphic images at places, that would be taken negatively in most of the cases.