This article outlines a theory of what affects the degree and nature of women's participation in the armed forces throughout history and across nations. Examining national security situations, military technology, military accession policies, demographic patterns, cultural values regarding gender, and structural patterns of gender roles, the article proposes a systematic theory of the conditions under which women's military roles expand and contract. The theory is then applied to analyze women's likely future role in armed forces. The military's need for personnel has been the driving force behind expansion of women's military roles through history and across nations, but cultural values supporting gender equality also contribute and seem likely to have increased influence in the future.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Anderson, Karen.
1981. Wartime women: Sex roles, family relations, and the status of women during World War II.Westport, CT: Greenwood.
2.
Binkin, Martin.
1986. Military technology and defense manpower.Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
3.
Binkin, Martin
, and Shirley J. Bach. 1977. Women and the military.Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
4.
Bloom, Anne R.
1982. Israel: The longest war. In Female soldiers—combatants or noncombatants?: Historical and contemporary perspectives, edited by Nancy Loring Goldman.Westport, CT: Greenwood.
5.
Boulègue, Jean.1991. “Feminization” and the French military: An anthropological approach.Armed Forces and Society17:343-62.
6.
Campbell, D' Ann.
1984. Women at war with America: Private lives in a patriotic era.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
7.
Campbell, D' Ann.1993. Women in combat: The World War II experience in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union.The Journal of Military History57:301-23.
8.
Chapkis, Wendy
, ed. 1981. Loaded questions: Women in the military.Amsterdam: Transnational Institute.
9.
Cherpak, Evelyn M.1993. The participation of women in the wars for independence in northern South America: 1810-1824.Minerva6:11-36.
10.
Chinchilla, Norma Stoltz.1990. Revolutionary popular feminism in Nicaragua: Articulating class, gender, and national sovereignty.Gender & Society4:370-97.
11.
Cock, Jacklyn.1994. Women and the military: Implications for demilitarization in the 1990s in South Africa.Gender & Society8:152-69.
12.
Cooke, Miriam.
1993. [UNKNOWN]Wø-man, retelling the war myth. In Gendering War Talk, edited by Miriam Cooke and Angela Woolacott.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
13.
Dandeker, Christopher
, and Mady Wechsler Segal. 1994. The social construction of gender integration in armed forces: Recent policy developments in the United Kingdom. Paper presented at the World Congress of Sociology, 22 July, Bielefeld, Germany.
14.
De Pauw, Linda Grant.1981. Women in combat: The Revolutionary War experience.Armed Forces and Society7:209-26.
15.
Dorn, Edwin.
1994. Testimony for House Armed Services Committee. Subcommittee on Military Forces and Personnel. Report prepared by Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. Hearing on women in the military, 103rd Cong., 2nd Sess.October 6.
16.
Eitelberg, Mark J.
1988. Manpower for military occupations.Alexandria, VA: Human Resources Research Organization for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Force Management and Personnel).
17.
Eitelberg, Mark J.
1991. A preliminary assessment of population representation in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Paper presented at the Biennial Conference of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, October, Baltimore, Maryland.
18.
Eitelberg, Mark J.
, Janice H. Laurence, Brian K. Waters, with Linda S. Perelman. 1984. Screening for service: Aptitude and education criteria for military entry.Alexandria, VA: Human Resources Research Organization for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower, Installations and Logistics).
19.
Elshtain, Jean Bethke
, and Sheila Tobias, eds. 1990. Women, militarism, and war: Essays in history, politics, and social theory.Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
20.
Enloe, Cynthia.1980. Women: The reserve army of Army labor.The Review of Radical Political Economics12:42-52.
21.
Enloe, Cynthia.
1993. The morning after: Sexual politics at the end of the Cold War.Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
22.
Gal, Reuven.
1986. A portrait of the Israeli soldier.Westport, CT: Greenwood.
23.
Gluck, Sherna Berger.
1987. Rosie the riveter revisited: Women, the war, and social change.Boston: Twayne.
24.
Goldich, Robert L.
1989. U.S. Army combat-to-support ratios: A framework for analysis.Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.
25.
Goldman, Nancy Loring
, ed. 1982. Female soldiers—combatants or noncombatants?: Historical and contemporary perspectives.Westport, CT: Greenwood.
26.
Goldman, Nancy Loring
, and Richard Stites. 1982. Great Britain and the World Wars. In Female soldiers—combatants or noncombatants?: Historical and contemporary perspectives, edited by Nancy Loring Goldman.Westport, CT: Greenwood.
27.
Hantrais, Linda.
1990. Managing professional and family life: A comparative study of British and French women.Brookfield, Vermont: Dartmouth.
28.
Hawley, John Stratton
, ed. 1994. Fundamentalism and gender.New York: Oxford University Press.
29.
Hine, Darlene Clark.
1989. Black women in white: Racial conflict and cooperation in the nursing profession, 1890-1950.Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
30.
Holm, Jeanne.
1992. Women in the military: An unfinished revolution, rev. ed.Novato, CA: Presidio.
31.
Hughes, Helen MacGill.1973. Maid of all work or departmental sister-in-law? The faculty wife employed on campus.American Journal of Sociology78:767-72.
32.
Isaksson, Eva
, ed. 1988. Women and the military system.New York: St. Martin's.
33.
Kessler-Harris, Alice.
1982. Out to work: A history of wage-earning women in the U.S. New York: Oxford University Press.
34.
Li, Xiaolin.1993. Chinese women in the People's Liberation Army: Professionals or quasi-professionals?Armed Forces and Society20:69-83.
35.
Li, Xiaolin. 1995. Women in the Chinese military. Ph.D. diss., Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park.
36.
Lorber, Judith.1993. Believing is seeing: Biology as ideology.Gender & Society7:568-81.
37.
Maisels, Amanda
, and Patricia M. Gormley. 1994. Women in the military: Where they stand.Washington, DC: Women's Research and Education Institute.
38.
Martin, Michel.1982. From periphery to center: Women in the French military.Armed Forces and Society8:303-33.
39.
Marwell, Gerald.1975. Why ascription? Parts of a more or less formal theory of the functions and dysfunctions of sex roles.American Sociological Review40:445-55.
40.
Moskos, Charles C.
1988. Institutional and occupational trends in armed forces. In The military: More than just a job? edited by Charles C. Moskos and Frank R. Wood.Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey's.
41.
Park, Rosemary.
1986. Overview of the social/behavioural science evaluation of the 1979-1985 Canadian Forces trial employment of servicewomen in nontraditional environments and roles. Research Report 86-2. Willowdale, Ontario: Canadian Forces Applied Research Unit.
42.
Pinch, Franklin C.
1991. Canada's post-Cold War military. Paper presented at the Inter-University Seminar (IUS)/Olin Foundation Conference on Armed Forces in a Warless Society, 10-11 October, Baltimore.
43.
President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Force.
1970. The report of the President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Force.Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
44.
Randall, Margaret.
1981. Sandino's daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan women in struggle.Vancouver: New Star Books.
45.
Randall, Margaret.
1994. Sandino's daughters revisited: Feminism in Nicaragua.New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
46.
Rogers, Deborah L.1992. The force drawdown and its impact on women in the military.Minerva10:1-13.
47.
Safa, Helen Icken.1990. Women's social movements in Latin America.Gender & Society3:354-69.
48.
Schneider, Dorothy
, and Carl Schneider. 1991. Into the breach: American women overseas in World War I.New York: Viking.
49.
Segal, David R.
1989. Recruiting for Uncle Sam: Citizenship and military manpower policy.Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
50.
Segal, David R.
, and Mady Wechsler Segal.1989. Female combatants in Canada: An update.Defense Analysis5:372-3.
51.
Segal, Mady Wechsler.1986. The military and the family as greedy institutions.Armed Forces and Society13:9-38.
52.
Segal, Mady Wechsler.
1989. The nature of work and family linkages: A theoretical perspective.The organization family: Work and family linkages in the U.S. military, edited by Gary L. Bowen and Dennis K. Orthner.New York: Praeger.
53.
Segal, Mady Wechsler
, and Amanda Faith Hansen.1992. Value rationales in policy debates on women in the military: A content analysis of congressional testimony, 1941-1985.Social Science Quarterly73:296-309.
54.
Segal, Mady Wechsler
, and Jesse J. Harris. 1993. What we know about Army families.Alexandria, VA: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences.
55.
Segal, Mady Wechsler
, Xiaolin Li, and David R. Segal.1992. The role of women in the Chinese People's Liberation Army.Minerva10:48-55.
56.
Segal, Mady Wechsler
, and David R. Segal. 1983. Social change and the participation of women in the American military.Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change. Vol. 5, edited by Louis Kriesberg.Greenwich, CT: JAI.
57.
Seitz, Barbara
, Linda Lobao, and Ellen Treadway. 1993. No going back: Women's participation in the Nicaraguan revolution and in postrevolutionary movements. In Women and the use of military force, edited by Ruth H. Howes and Michael R. Stevenson.Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
58.
Stanley, Sandra Carson
, and Mady Wechsler Segal.1988. Military women in NATO: An update.Armed Forces and Society14:559-85.
59.
Stanley, Sandra Carson
1992. Women in the armed forces.International military and defense encyclopedia.Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey's.
60.
Thorne, Barrie
, and Arlene Kaplan Daniels.1992. Remembering Helen MacGill Hughes (1903-1992).SWS Network News9:5.
61.
Törnquist, Kurt.
1982. Sweden: The neutral nation. In Female soldiers—combatants or noncombatants?: Historical and contemporary perspectives, edited by Nancy Loring Goldman.Westport, CT: Greenwood.
62.
Tuten, JeffM.
1982. Germany and the World Wars. In Female soldiers—combatants or noncombatants?: Historical and contemporary perspectives, edited by Nancy Loring Goldman.Westport, CT: Greenwood.
63.
Treadwell, Mattie.
1954. The Women's Army Corps.Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History.
64.
United Nations.
1991. The world's women: Trends and statistics, 1970-1990.New York: Author.
65.
Wool, Harold.
1968. The military specialist: Skilled manpower for the armed forces.Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
