The female combat soldier
| Author | Anthony King |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1354066115581909 |
European Journal of
International Relations
2016, Vol. 22(1) 122 –143
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066115581909
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The female combat soldier
Anthony King
University of Exeter, UK
Abstract
As a result of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, women have increasingly served on
the front line, performing combat roles once reserved exclusively for men. This article
explores the ways in which Western military culture may have both impeded and
facilitated female accession. In line with the feminist concept of hegemonic masculinity,
the article explores how female soldiers are often subjected to an institutionalized cultural
code that defines them as ‘sluts’ or ‘bitches’, denying them equality and recognition,
irrespective of their behaviour. At the same time, some highly competent women have
begun to be accepted and a new cultural classification has been developed for them:
they are ‘honorary men’. This new status represents an important development for the
armed forces and an opportunity for women. Yet, the category is so narrow that it is
very difficult for women to maintain it.
Keywords
Armed forces, culture, feminism, gender, masculinity, transformation
Introduction
Since 2001, Western forces have been involved in military campaigns of unexpected
duration and intensity in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the most remarkable aspects of
these campaigns has been the increased participation of women in official ground com-
bat roles or, in the UK and US armed forces, where women have been officially excluded,
alongside combat troops on military operations.1 In the latter case, although formally
defined as attached to combat units rather than assigned to them, women have endured
the same risks as their male counterparts and, indeed, they have engaged enemy fighters
at close quarters in numerous cases. By any objective standard, these women have served
Corresponding author:
Anthony King, Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter, Amory
Building, Rennes Drive, EX2 4PS, UK.
Email: a.c.king@exeter.ac.uk
581909EJT0010.1177/1354066115581909European Journal of International RelationsKing
research-article2015
Article
King 123
in combat with combat units.2 It is important to recognize the significance of this trans-
formation in organizational and, indeed, historical terms.
The current inclusion of women in the combat arms represents the culmination of a con-
tinuous process that can be traced back to the Second World War. Initially, between 1945 and
the 1970s, a proportionately small number of females served, restricted to clerical, adminis-
trative and nursing roles, often in separate women’s corps (Harries-Jenkins, 2006; Holm,
1982; Kümmel, 2002; Stiehm, 1981, 1989; Wechsler Segal, 1995). From the 1970s to the
1990s, women were gradually integrated more fully into the armed forces as the majority of
specialisms were opened to them. Nevertheless, before operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,
even in a country like Canada, which had formally integrated females in 1989, not only were
women de facto excluded from ground combat roles, but there was also a widespread con-
sensus in the armed forces that women could not serve in combat. Operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan have disproved that assumption and Western armed forces have revised their
perception of the capability of women and the military contribution they can make.
The accession of women to the combat arms represents a marked organizational trans-
formation. The change is even more profound in historical terms. Although females have
often played an important part in insurgent and terrorist organizations, they have rarely
served in official state armies. Indeed, successful guerrilla groups have typically expelled
women as they assume political power. In his work on gender and the military, Joshua
Goldstein demonstrated that in the entire course of human history, formal female acces-
sion to organized state combat units has only two precedents: the West African Dahomey
kingdom of the 18th and 19th centuries, with its ‘Amazon corps’, and the Soviet Army
between 1941 and 1945, which drafted some 800,000 women as it faced defeat by the
Germany army (Goldstein, 2004: 60–72).
This article analyses the emergence of a new gender category that has facilitated the
accession of women to combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the recent feminist secu-
rity studies literature, a number of scholars have become interested in gender codes and
have sought to show that these discourses have had manifest political and institutional
effects, typically to the detriment of women. Thus, Laura Sjoberg and Caron Gentry
(2007: 81) have sought to show how contemporary representations of female violence
have involved three narratives types that ‘permeate public discourses’. Women are con-
ceived of as mothers, monsters or whores: ‘While the mother narrative explains women’s
violence through characteristics essential to womanhood, the monster narrative explains
their violence as a biological flaw that disrupts their femininity’ (Sjoberg and Gentry,
2007: 36). In a similar vein, Lauren Wilcox (2009), Swati Parashar (2009, 2010), Sandra
McEvoy (2010), Heidi Hudson (2009) and Megan Mackenzie (2009a, 2009b) have all
sought to show the way in which violent females have been marginalized and disadvan-
taged by cultural representations categorizing them as ‘“camp followers”, “abductees”,
“sex slaves”, “domestic slaves” or “girls and women associated with the fighting forces”’
(Mackenzie, 2010: 160). Defining roles, statuses and hierarchies, gender concepts struc-
ture and inform female participation in the armed forces. Following this literature, this
article examines how gendered cultural categories have informed female integration into
the combat arms in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, the article takes a somewhat alternative perspective. The existence of dis-
courses which disadvantage women is fully acknowledged, but there is no reason to
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