This article is about the discourses of gender which circulate within debates about the inclusion of women in the British Army. Drawing on material from elite policy debates within the British Ministry of Defence, Army, and Parliament, the article uses a methodology informed by theories of discourse analysis to examine how the figures of the male and female soldier are constructed. It focuses on three specific policy debates: the expansion in the number of posts open to women soldiers in the British Army, the introduction of “gender-free” physical tests as part of the selection process for the recruits to the Army, and the policy decision to exclude women from direct combat posts. The constructions of gender implicit within these policy debates are examined. The article concludes by considering these discursive constructions within the context of wider arguments about the changing practices of war and what these mean for women’s future military participation.
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References
1.
Defence Analytical Services Agency, UK Defence Statistics 2002London: The Stationery Office, 2002). Includes untrained and locally entered personnel, plus Gurkha regiments.
2.
Ibid.
3.
Ministry of Defence, Performance Report 2001-02, Cm 5661 (London: The Stationery Office, 2001), 25.
4.
Christopher Dandeker and Alan Strachan, “Soldier Recruitment to the British Army: A Spatial and Social Methodology for Analysis and Monitoring,”Armed Forces & Society19 (1993): 279-290.
5.
Christopher Dandeker and Fiona Paton, “The Military and Social Change: A Personnel Strategy for the British Armed Forces,”London Defence Studies paper 39 (1997): 9.
6.
Christopher Dandeker, “New Times for the Military: Some Sociological Remarks on the Changing Role and Structure of the Armed Forces of the Advanced Societies,”British Journal of Sociology45, 4 (1994): 637-654.
7.
This article does not consider current attempts to recruit more ethnic minority Armed Forces personnel, but this is certainly an issue of ongoing concern for the military, and an area of substantial research interest for military sociologists. Following public concerns about the tiny proportion of ethnic minorities in the Armed Forces (1.1 percent in 1999, according to figures from the Defence Analytical Services Agency), and highly publicized cases of racism and racial harassment culminating in publicly expressed concerns by the Commission for Racial Equality, the Armed Forces have made a public commitment to anti-racism and racism awareness. There are interesting questions which follow from this, concerning the links between militarism, ethnicity, and the construction of national identities. See Christopher Dandeker and David Mason, “Diversifying the Uniform: The participation of Minority Ethnic Personnel in the British Armed Forces,”Armed Forces and Society29, 4 (2003): 481-508.
8.
Ridge and Smith, for example, remarked in 1991 that the RAF had recently increased its ceiling from 7 percent of air women in the service to 10 perent, an increase of posts from 5,000 to 7,000. See M. Ridge and R. Smith, “UK Military Manpower and Substitutability,”Defence Economics2, 4 (1991): 283-293.
9.
Christopher Dandeker and Mady Wechsler Segal, “Gender Integration in the Armed Forces: Recent Policy Developments in the United Kingdom,”Armed Forces & Society23,1 (1996): 29-47.
10.
Defence Analytical Services Agency, UK Defence Statistics (London, The Stationery Office, 2002). Figures are from 1 January 2002. Percentages include both trained and untrained personnel.
11.
For a wider discussion of these issues, see Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, “Women and the Military,”The Journal of Strategic Studies23, 4 (December 2000) 32-50.
12.
and Linda Nicholson, ed., Feminism/Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1990).
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and Peter Bracken, “Women in the Army,” in The British Army: Manpower and Society into the Twenty-First Century, Hew Strachan, ed. (London: Frank Cass, 2000).
14.
Rachel Woodward, “Warrior Heroes and Little Green Men: Military Training and the Construction of Rural Masculinities,”Rural Sociology65, 4 (2000): 640-657.
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Melissa Herbert, Camouflage Isn’t Only for Combat: Gender, Sexuality and Women in the Military (New York: New York University Press, 1998).
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Lesley Gill, “Creating Citizens, Making Men; The Military and Masculinity in Bolivia,”Cultural Anthropology12, 4 (1997): 581-586.
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Christine Cnossen, An Examination of the Utilisation and Status of Women in Ground, Air and Naval Combat Positions in the Armed Forces of Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States of America as to What Effect They Have on Cohesion and Effectiveness (Unpublished NATO Fellowship Report, 1996).
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Darlene Iskra, Stephen Trainor, Marcia Leithauser, and Mady Wechsler Segal, “Women’s Participation in Armed Forces Cross-Nationally: Expanding Segal’s Model,”Current Sociology50, 5 (September 2002), 771-797.
19.
D. Winslow, “Rites of Passage and Group Bonding in the Canadian Airborne,”Armed Forces and Society25, 3 (1999): 429-457. Both approaches rest on qualitative methodologies, with their emphasis on interpretation rather than a search for representation.
20.
For a general introduction to the literature on discourse analysis, see for example Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (London: Longman, 1995).
21.
Analysis of media representations of the Armed Forces, and of gender within the Armed Forces, forms part of the broader research agenda from which this article is drawn. See Patricia Winter and Rachel Woodward, “Tomboys and Topless Lance Corporals: Media Representations of British Women Soldiers,” Feminist Media Studies, under review.
22.
In analysis using qualitative, interpretative analytic methodologies, the validity of the argument, in epistemological terms, rests with the coherence and logic of the arguments made using qualitative data, rather than with claims of (statistical) representativeness. Furthermore, in this article the arguments are based upon material appearing mostly in the public domain, available to the authors as researchers. This article is not a search for representativeness amongst a sample of quotations from spokesmen and women for the Ministry of Defence and British Army, but rather an analysis of discourses on gender as they appear in policy statements and documentation produced by those charged with steering the development of policy.
23.
House of Commons Debate on Defence Policy, 27 October 1997. Hansard Col. 616.
24.
Christopher Dandeker, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and Don’t Pursue: Is a Pragmatic Solution the Way Forward for the Armed Services in Today’s Society?”RUSI Journal (June 1999): 87-89.
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Ministry of Defence (1997), Greater Opportunities for Women in the Army. MoD Press Release 152/97, 27 October 1997.
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George Robertson, Transcript of speech to MoD Equal Opportunities Conference “Learning from Experience.”Royal Society of Arts, 10 November 1998.
27.
Ministry of Defence, UK Armed Forces—Celebrating International Women’s Day. MoD Press Release 056/99, 8 March 1999. The United Nations designated 8 March as a day for the celebration of women’s achievements around the globe. Many feminist organizations have adopted International Women’s Day in celebration of a feminist political agenda.
28.
Rachel Woodward and Patricia Winter, “The Limits to Diversity: Gender, Women and the British Army,” paper presented to the third international Gender, Work and Organisation conference, University of Keele, U.K., June 2003.
29.
Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), personal communication to the authors on equal opportunities in the Armed Forces, 23 August 1999; interview with representative from Directorate of Individual Training Policy (Army), January 2002.
30.
Army Training and Recruitment Agency, personal communication to authors on gender-free physical assessment for entry into the Army, 11 August 1999.
31.
Tim Butcher, “Army Unveils New Training Methods,”Daily Telegraph, 28 August 1997.
32.
Dandeker and Segal, “Gender Integration in the Armed Forces.”
33.
Cnossen, Token or Full Member of the Team.
34.
Ministry of Defence, Army Training Needs Modernisation not Mollycoddling, says Minister. MoD Press Release 103/97, 27 August 1997.
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Connell, “Masculinities.”
36.
and Barrett, “Organization of Hegemonic Masculinity.”
37.
EOC, Equality in the 21st Century: A New Sex Equality Law for Britain (London: EOC, 1999).
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I. R. Feinman, Citizenship Rites: Feminist Soldiers and Feminist Antimilitarists (New York: New York University Press, 2000)
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MoD Press Release No. 126/02, Employment of Women in the Armed Forces, 22 May 2002.
40.
MoD, Women in the Armed Forces: A Report by the Employment of Women in the Armed Forces Steering Group (London: Ministry of Defence, 2002).
MoD Press Release No. 126/02, Employment of Women in the Armed Forces, 22 May 2002.
44.
MoD, The Wider Employment of Women in Ground Combat, unpublished briefing paper, undated (c. summer 2001).
45.
We refer here to the Steven Spielberg-directed television series Band of Brothers, shown on British television in autumn 2001, and the Ridley Scott film Black Hawk Down, released in the U.K. in early 2002.
46.
Fred L. Borch III, “Military Law and the Treatment of Women Soldiers; Sexual Harassment and Fraternization in the US Army,” in A Soldier and a Woman: Sexual Integration in the Military, ed. Gerard J. DeGroot and Corinna Peniston-Bird (London: Pearson, 2001), 337-354.
47.
MoD, Women in the Armed Forces: Background and Rationale for Decision May 2002 (London: Ministry of Defence, 2002).
48.
See Gwyn Harries-Jenkins ’ review of the evidence in “Women in Extended Roles in the Military: Legal Issues,”Current Sociology50, 5 (September 2002), 745-769.
49.
MoD, The Wider Employment of Women.
50.
MoD, Women in the Armed Forces, paragraph 18.
51.
Secretary of State for Defence, Statement on Homosexuality and the Armed Forces, 12 January 2000, House of Commons.
52.
MoD Press Release No. 126/02, Employment of Women in the Armed Forces, 22 May 2002.
53.
MoD, Women in the Armed Forces, paragraph 19.
54.
As a prime example of this set of arguments, see Stephanie Gutman, A Kinder, Gentler Military: Can America’s Gender-Neutral Fighting Force Still Win Wars? (New York: Scribner, 2000).
55.
J. Bodnar, “How Long Does it Take To Change a Culture? Integration at the US Naval Academy,”Armed Forces & Society25, 2 (1999): 289-306.
