Women In The Military Gender Integration At Sea

The purpose of the study described herein is to measure and observe factors hypothesized to be associated with the integration process. Of particular interest are certain personal interactions that are believed to occur in a skewed organization. Four ships were given the preintegration form of the Navy in Transition Survey. One of these ships was resurveyed 9 months after integration. In addition, Navy reservists collected observational data aboard six ships. Responses to the preintegration and postintegration surveys were analyzed to determine how attitudes were affected by gender, age, education, pay grade, ship, and shipboard department. The attitudes measured in the preintegration survey were highly related to both the individual and organizational variables of interest. Although nonrated men held the most traditional beliefs about women's roles in the workplace, they liked working with women more than they did any other group. On the postintegration survey, petty officers were the least positive of any group about the success of integration. Department effects were also evident. Women felt more performance pressure than men and experienced more problems aboard ship.

This study for the U.S. Marine Corps presents a historical overview of the integration of women into the U.S. military and explores the importance of cohesion and what influences it. The gender integration experiences of foreign militaries, as well as the gender integration efforts of domestic police and fire departments, are analyzed for insights into effective policies. The potential costs of integration are analyzed as well.

Women and Gender Perspectives in the Military compares the integration of women, gender perspectives, and the women, peace, and security agenda into the armed forces of eight countries plus NATO and United Nations peacekeeping operations. This book brings a much-needed crossnational analysis of how militaries have or have not improved gender balance, what has worked and what has not, and who have been the agents for change. The country cases examined are Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia, and South Africa. Despite increased opportunities for women in the militaries of many countries and wider recognition of the value of including gender perspectives to enhance operational effectiveness, progress has encountered roadblocks even nearly twenty years after United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 kicked off the women, peace, and security agenda. Robert Egnell, Mayesha Alam, and the contributors to this volume conclude that there is no single model for change that can be applied to every country, but the comparative findings reveal many policy-relevant lessons while advancing scholarship about women and gendered perspectives in the military.

Women's participation in the military has been restricted since gender integration began. About 33,000 women served in World War I - 20,000 of them in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps, which were separate from the regular Army and Navy. In World War II, manpower shortages and reports of valuable performance by women in other countries' armed forces led the United States to utilize approximately 350,000 women for its own military effort. The attack on pearl Harbor resulted in the creation of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES). Women typically filled nursing and administrative jobs, which were consistent with civilian women's work, although they also served in all other noncombat jobs. These 350,000 women who served in World War II were regarded as temporary support that would free more men for combat. After the war, women's future role with the military was called into question. In 1948, the year when racial integration was mandated by president Truman, Congress passed the Women's Armed Services Integration Act, which placed highly specific limits on the women who would now be allowed to join the Army. Women could make up no more than 2 percent of the total enlisted ranks; the proportion of female officers could equal no more than 10 percent of enlisted women. No woman could serve in a command position, attain the rank of general, or hold permanent rank above lieutenant colonel. This Act specifically prohibited women from being assigned to aircraft or vessels engaged in combat missions.

Numerous states have passed gender integration legislation permanently admitting women into their military forces. As a result, states have dramatically increased women’s numbers, and improved gender equality by removing a number of restrictions. Yet despite changes and initiatives on both domestic and international levels to integrate gender perspectives into the military, not all states have improved to the same extent. Some have successfully promoted gender integration in the ranks by erasing all forms of discrimination, but others continue to impede it by setting limitations on equal access to careers, combat, and ranks. Why do states abandon their policies of exclusion and promote gender integration in a way that women’s military participation becomes an integral part of military force? By examining twenty-four NATO member states, this book argues that civilian policymakers and military leadership no longer surrender to parochial gendered division of the roles, but rather support integration to meet the recruitment numbers due to military modernization, professionalization and technological advancements. Moreover, it proposes that increased pressure by the United Nations to integrate gender into security and NATO seeking standardization and consistency on the international level, and women’s movements on the domestic level, are contributing to greater gender integration in the military. Winner of the 2015 ERGOMAS "Best Book in Civil-Military Relations" Award.

The role of women in the military has steadily been increasing since the early 1970s. The most recent changes occurred between 1992 and 1994, when both legislative and policy changes expanded opportunities for women. Congress has taken a keen interest in this process, and the House report for the Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997 included as a special interest item a direction to the Secretary of Defense to evaluate the performance of the military services in integrating women into occupations previously closed to them. The report also asked for an assessment of the effects of this integration on readiness and morale. The study has three components. The first determines how each service implemented the guidance to open new skills and organizations to women. Each service interpreted the guidance differently, and it is important to understand those interpretations before assessing the progress in implementing the congressional guidance. The second component assesses the progress of what we refer to as gender integration. In this component, we determined the extent to which the services carried out their interpretations of the congressional direction. The third component assesses the effects of gender integration on the readiness, cohesion, and morale of units. To complete the third component, we relied on a series of visits to military units. We visited 14 units, chosen to provide the broadest possible view of the effects of the policy changes. We used three techniques during field visits to gather information about gender issues and their effects on readiness, cohesion, and morale. We interviewed commanders and other senior leaders, conducted a series of focus groups with unit personnel, and administered a survey to focus-group participants and other unit personnel.

Controversy about women in the military continues, yet women's relations with the military go far beyond whether they serve in the ranks. Gender Camouflage brings together a diverse array of authors to explore the controversy surrounding women's military service, to examine the invisibility of civilian women who support the institution, and to expose the military's efforts to camouflage their support and contributions. Contributors first consider nurses, servicewomen, military academy students, female veterans, and lesbians. The focus then shifts to military wives, women employed by the DoD, and female civilian military instructors whose work is less visible but no less essential to the institution. The book also examines the experiences of women outside of the military, such as "comfort women" near U.S. bases, women engaged in peacework, and women workers affected by military spending in the federal budget. Analytic chapters are juxtaposed with first-person narratives by women who have actually been there, including a member of the first gender-integrated class at West Point, the first female civilian instructors at the U.S. Naval Academy, and an African American Air Force Nurse Corps veteran. Contributors include Connie Reeves, Georgia Clark Sadler, Gwyn Kirk, and Joan Furey.

Gender Ideologies and Military Labor Markets in the U.S. offers a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between changes in military gender ideologies and structural changes in U.S. military and society. By investigating how social and military change have influenced gender ideologies, the author develops an approach that (re-)connects military gender ideologies to the social conditions of their production and distribution and explains their transformation as effects of changing social and political relations and conflicts. Examining the role of different groups of social actors, media debates on women’s military participation and gender ideologies inherent in depictions of military women, the author seeks to contextualise these ideologies are within structural change in the U.S. military and society, relating them to the gender-specific division of labour on civilian and military labor markets. This work provides a deeper understanding of the nexus between military re-structuring processes, women’s military integration, and changes of gender ideologies in regard to war and the military, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of gender, security studies and American politics.

Has opening new skills and units been enough to create equal opportunities for women in the U.S. military? Success has been mixed, in part because of the circumstances of individual occupations, and some issues affect men as much as they do women. Among the authors' recommendations are that career counseling include both opportunities and potential drawbacks and that longer-term studies on specific issues are merited.