Women on Military Service, Combat & Gender

The 1990s saw women starting to fill a wider range of roles within the military, with many countries relaxing their bans on women serving in combat roles. As a result, women are ready to fly combat aircraft, serve in artillery units, staff missile emplacements, function combat medics, and fill various other roles that involve potential combat exposure. Additionally, more women are assigned to combat-support roles located on the battlefront. Yet most research on women involved in military life still concerns itself with the wives of enlisted men, women in civilian posts within the military, women that were sexually assaulted within the military, or women in non-combat-related military service. It is thus patently obvious that women combatants and veterans who fulfill assignments in conflict zones deserve closer attention.
There is still severe opposition to the integration of girls into combat roles. The presence of female bodies within the military is usually seen as a possible threat to team cohesion and combat effectiveness. In fact, women’s struggle for equal participation within the military is usually criticized, even by feminist activists. Many scholars hold the view that the struggle for equality in the military has negative side effects, including possibilities of reinforcing militarism, of encouraging the militarization of women’s lives, and even bringing about legitimization of the use of force. Yet, irrespective of these debates, since women are currently serving in a variety of combat roles and combat-support positions in many countries, there is much for us to learn about the gendered elements of military service.
Conversations with women veterans reveal multiple levels of oppression and various difficulties for women in combat – the women often reflect about what it means to be a woman in the military and what it means to be feminine within the military. Tal, a former combatant within the Israel Defense Forces, described the method that she went through like this: “After the whole process of combat training, I became a person. [As a combatant] I am not a strong woman, but a kind of a weak man.”

By: Saksham Gupta