Governing “dependents”: The Canadian military family and gender, a policy analysis
| Author | Leigh Spanner |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020702017740606 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
Scholarly Essay
Governing
‘‘dependents’’: The
Canadian military family
and gender, a policy
analysis
Leigh Spanner
Department of Political Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton,
Alberta, CanadaPlease remove "tel" and "fax"
Abstract
Pioneering feminist International Relations scholarship suggests that in order to func-
tion, militaries rely on spouses, most often wives, to under takethe majority of domestic
labour, suspend their own careers, and relocate willingly for new postings. However, the
contemporary military family’s relationship to war making may be different because
family forms are changing: norms around domestic responsibilities and primary earners
suggest greater gender equality, and women are contributing to war making as soldiers.
Thus, this paper asks whether the military’s reliance on the traditional family, and con-
ventional gender relations, is being reinforced or destabilized by policies and programs
that speak to Canadian military families. A critical feminist policy analysis of select policy
and program documents, which address unique and characteristics of military life
(mobility and separation) is undertaken. While there is discursive acknowledgment of
the changing composition of military families, traditional familial and gendered assump-
tions persist in subtle ways.
Keywords
Canadian Armed Forces, military families, gender, feminist critical policy analysis,
feminist international relations
The military family occupies an ambiguous place in the military-societal binary.
Military families are deeply connected to, and affected by, the military on a daily
basis, though they are not technically ‘‘military.’’ They are civilian, although not
International Journal
2017, Vol. 72(4) 484–502
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702017740606
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Corresponding author:
Leigh Spanner, University of Alberta, Political Science, 12-04 HM Tory Building, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G
2H4, Canada.
Email: spanner@ualberta.ca
civilian in a typical sense, given their relationship to war making. The military
family calls into question the artificiality of the military-societal binary in a most
direct way. Military family members are citizens who live every day on the hyphen
of the military-societal dualism. This paper takes up the Canadian military family
as a research subject—a research subject that also occupies an ambiguous place in
the international relations–domestic politics binary. Military families are funda-
mental to the military’s operational readiness and its ability to realize foreign policy
initiatives of the government; they are also subject to federal government policies,
entitlements, and programs. Moreover, the military family represents a snapshot of
the norms and values that characterize a society more broadly. It is believed by
some, including Stephen Harper’s Conservative governments, that there is no
better way to be Canadian than to take up arms in ‘‘her’’ defence,
1
and, as such,
military members and their families are held to the highest standards. Given the
privileged, and also contested, position of the military in society, the military family
is in a unique position to (re)produce social values and norms. The representative
and constituting nature of the military family vis-a
`-vis societal norms, which they
are afforded given their position on the hyphen, is especially interesting from a
gender perspective. Feminist International Relations scholars have argued that a
society’s prevalent gender relations are most aptly depicted in militarized settings,
2
and recently there has been a surge of interest in gender equality in the Canadian
Forces.
3
Yet, there has been little systematic analysis of the relationship between families,
gender, and war in feminist International Relations. Instead, a rich body of litera-
ture about gender and women in militaries has been produced. Much of the con-
temporary feminist International Relations work on militarization and gender
focuses on important themes such as the culture of masculinities in militaries;
how to integrate women into the military as soldiers; and sexual assault in mili-
taries.
4
More broadly, contemporary studies of military families are typically found
1. This is evident by material and symbolic fusing of citizenship and military service, such as having
Canadian Forces members play prominent roles in citizenship ceremonies; the 2009 Citizenship
Handbook, entitled Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, which high-
lights Canada’s military history; the launch of a Civil Military Leadership program at the
University of Alberta; and the language featured in many speeches by Stephen Harper and his
government.
2. Francine D’Amico and Laurie Weinstein, eds., Gender Camouflage: Women and the US Military
(New York: New York University Press, 1999).
3. These include targeting women in recruiting campaigns, and meeting target quotas; integrating
gender perspectives in Canadian Armed Forces planning and operations, and the creation of a
gender advisor’s position in 2016; and the initiation of Operation Honour, in 2015, to address
sexually inappropriate behaviour and sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces.
4. Maya Eichler, ‘‘Militarized masculinities in International Relations,’’ Brown Journal of World
Affairs 21, no. 1 (2014): 81–93; Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001); Paul Higate, Military Masculinities: Identity and the State (California:
Praeger Publishing, 2003); Annica Kronsell, ‘‘Gendered practices in institutions of hegemonic
masculinity,’’ International Feminist Journal of Politics 7, no. 2 (2005): 280–298; Nancy Taber,
‘‘The profession of arms: Ideological codes and dominant narratives of gender in the Canadian
military,’’ Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal 34, no. 1 (2009): 27–36; Sandra Whitworth,
‘‘Militarized masculinity and post-traumatic stress disorder,’’ in Jane L. Parpart, ed., Rethinking
Spanner 485
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