Conscript military service is a pivotal experience for young Israelis of both genders. Juxtaposing conflicting claims concerning women’s military experience—the women’s marginalization claim and the youth moratorial self-enhancing claim—we compare men’s and women’s retrospective evaluations of six aspects of their service in the Israeli army: hardship, adaptation, motivation, investment, service significance, and personal benefits. Military service was found to be as meaningful and benefiting for women no less than for men. However, the dynamics of the moratorium experience differ by gender, in keeping with the differentiated substance and gendered social construction of their military roles.
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References
1.
For the centrality of the military service in Israeli society, see Eyal Ben-Ari and Edna Lomsky-Feder, eds., The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999).
2.
Maxine G. Wintre and Revital Ben-Knaz, “‘It’s Not Academic, You’re in the Army Now’: Adjustment to the Army as a Comparative Context for Adjustment to University,”Journal of Adolescent Research15 (2000): 145-172.
3.
Yechezkel Dar and Shaul Kimhi, “Military Service and Self-Perceived Maturation Among Israeli Youth,”Journal of Youth and Adolescence30 (2001): 427-448.
4.
Linda L. Carli, “Gender, Interpersonal Power, and Social Influence,”Journal of Social Issues55 (1999): 81-99.
5.
and in Baruch Nevo and Yael Shor, “Women in the IDF,” in Women in the IDF, ed. Uri Dromi (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2001), 9-31 [in Hebrew].
6.
Nevo and Shor, “Women in the IDF,” p.12.
7.
For the UK, see Christopher Dandeker and Mady Wechsler Segal, “Gender Integration in Armed Forces: Recent Policy Development in the United Kingdom,”Armed Forces & Society23 (1996): 29-47.
8.
see Joyce Robbins and Uri Ben-Eliezer, “New Roles or ‘New Times’? Gender Inequality and Militarism in Israel’s Nation-in-Arms,”Social Politics7 (2000): 309-342.
9.
Married women, but not men, are exempted from the draft. Women are also let off by declaring religiosity, while religious men have to prove actual Yeshiva attendance. Likewise, mental difficulties allow exemption for women more easily than for men. Only 15 percent of female recruits complete the full statutory term of service, as compared to 80 percent of males. S.A. Cohen, “Towards a New Portrait of the (New) Israeli Soldier,”Israel Affairs3 (1997): 77-114.
10.
Uta Klein, “The Gender Perspective of Civil-Military Relations in Israeli Society,”Current Sociology50 (2002): 669-686.
11.
Today, only 7 percent of the drafted women are officers. Women constitute 24 percent of the officers in the conscripted service and only 16 percent in the standing army (Nevo and Shor, “Women in the IDF,” p. 14).
12.
Danny Kaplan, “The Military as a Second Bar Mitzvah: Combat Service as Initiation to Zionist Masculinity,” in Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity in the Modern Middle East, eds. Mai Ghoussoub and Emma Sinclair-Webb (London: Saqi Books, 2000), 127-144.
13.
See Sion, Images of Manhood.
14.
Sasson-Levy, Constructions of Gender Identities within the Israeli Army.
15.
See Regina F. Titunik, “The First Wave: Gender Integration and Military Culture,”Armed Forces & Society26 (2000): 229-257.
16.
Sasson-Levy, Construction of Gender Identities in the Israeli Army.
17.
James E. Côté, Arrested Adulthood: The Changing Nature of Maturity and Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
18.
and Jeffrey J. Arnett, “Young People’s Conceptions of the Transition to Adulthood,”Youth and Society29 (1997): 3-23.
19.
For the concept of the total institution, see Erving Goffman, Asylums (Chicago: Aldine, 1962).
20.
S. Rabinowitz, “Inauguration for Adulthood: The Military System as an Effective Integration for Adult Adaptation: An Israel Air Force Base Perspective,”Psychological Reports51 (1982): 1083-1086.
21.
See Bennett M. Berger, “On the Youthfulness of Youth Societies,”Social Research30 (1963): 319-342.
22.
See also Judith S. Dubas and Anne C. Petersen, “Geographical Distance from Parents and Adjustment during Adolescence and Young Adulthood,” in Leaving Home: Understanding the Transition to Adulthood, ed. J.A. Grager and J.S. Dubas (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996), 3-19.
23.
Also see Caroline Guezaine, Marianne Debry and Vinciane Liesens, “Separation from Parents in Late Adolescence: The Same for Boys and Girls?”Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 29 (2000): 79-91.
24.
Summary of second-order factor analysis of cluster scores Cluster Hardships Coping Evaluation of service Difficulty - framework .80 Difficulty - physical .73 Difficulty - interpersonal .66 Difficulty - distance .56 Motivation - intrinsic .79 Motivation - extrinsic .65 Investment .77 Adaptation .61 Quality - social .78 Quality - challenge .53 Benefit - interpersonal .65 Benefit - framework .62 Benefit - distance .87 % explained variance 17.5 18.2 14.5 9.6 The separate appearance of the distance-from-family-and-home factor indicates a great gender difference in this area.
25.
The questionnaire was mailed to 1,000 potential participants in the kibbutz. At that time, many were traveling abroad during their “year off” allowed to them by the kibbutz. Hence, only 254 women and 196 men responded. An identical questionnaire was randomly distributed to 250 students in the humanities and social sciences in a major Israeli university—a group that roughly matched the kibbutz subjects socioeconomically; 80 percent responded. After eliminating non-urban respondents, 82 men and 101 women remained in the students’ sample. To balance group numbers, urban respondents were double weighted.
26.
The following table shows the sample composition by gender, rank (officers, other ranks), and unit for men or role for women (bracketed numbers: officers): Women Pre-enlistment course Instruction & command In-service vocational course Clerks Total N 125 (27) 111 69 (6) 151 (4) 456 (37) % 27 (22) 24 (41) 15 (9) 33 (3) 100 (18) Men Elite combat units Infantry Armor, Artillery, Antiaircraft, Sappers Non-combatant Total N 62 (34) 79 (14) 87 (25) 132 (37) 360 (110) % 17 (55) 22 (18) 24 (29) 37 (82) 100 (31)
27.
MANOVA detects effects of categorical variables on multiple dependent interval variables. Like ordinary analysis of variance (ANOVA), MANOVA uses categorical independents as predictors, but unlike ANOVA, it handles several dependent variables simultaneously. Accordingly, MANOVA tests the differences in the centroid (vector) of means of the multiple interval dependents for various categories of the independent(s). Hence it is particularly useful in analyzing effects on clusters of intercorrelated dependents. For details, see James H. Bray and Maxwell E. Scott, Multivariate Analysis of Variance, Qualitative Applications in the Social Sciences Series #54 (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1985).
28.
Women graduates of in-service vocational courses in our sample included radar operators, electronic technicians, tool operators, draftswomen, medics, and role performers in the intelligence and communication corps. The category of instruction and command consists of instructors for male soldiers in combat professions, operations sergeants and officers, liaison officers, personnel and administration officers, instructors and commanders at the Women Corps, and Youth Army cadet trainers. Graduates of pre-enlistment courses include personal affairs sergeants, education sergeants, psychotechnical evaluators, teachers, and sports trainers.
29.
Perception of a more vivid social life may reflect the response to an initially stronger need in women than in men. See James E. Marcia, “Identity in Adolescence,” in Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, ed. Joseph Adelson (New York: Riley, 1980), 159-187.
30.
Walker and Fennel, “Gender Differences in Role Differentiation.”
31.
Dar and Kimhi, “Military Service and Maturation.”
32.
33.
Tova Yedidia recorded a similar attitude among socially disadvantaged women enlistees in “‘Being Like Everyone Else’—How Women Soldiers in a Special Enlistment Roster Perceive Their Preparatory Course and Military Service” (M.A. thesis, Hebrew University School of Education, Jerusalem, 1998 [in Hebrew]).
