The first wave: Gender integration and military culture

Armed Forces and Society

Volumn 26, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 229-257

  Titunik, Regina F ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT HILO   (United States)

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EID: 0034422865     PISSN: 0095327X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0095327X0002600204     Document Type: Article

References (123)

1. Major General Jeanne Holm, W.S.A.F. (retired), Women in the Military. An Unfinished Revolution, rev. ed. (Novato, CA: Preside Press, 1992), xiii.
2. Holm, Women in the Military, xiii.
3. Quoted in Madeline Morris, "By Force of Arms: Rape, War, and Military Culture" Duke Law Journal 45 (February 1996): 735.
4. Dana Priest, "Women Fill Few Jobs Tied to Combat," Washington Post, 21 October 1997, A01.
5. Sheryl Stolberg and Melissa Healy, "Harassment is Old Battle for Many Army Women," Los Angeles Times, 15 November 1996, A22.
6. Report of the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender-Integrated Training and Related Issues to the Secretary of Defense, http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/git/ report.html, 16 December 16 1997, 14.
7. Morris, "By Force of Arms," 651-781.
8. The core arguments of Morris's lengthy article were reproduced in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post just as the Aberdeen Proving Ground incident had reached the level of a national scandal. Madeline Morris, "The Rape Differential." OpEd, Washington Post, 20 November 1996, A19.
9. Morris, "By Force of Arms," 653.
10. It should be stressed that Morris's statistics show that occurrences of rape are significantly lower in the military than in civilian life. From 1987-1992, according to her data, the number of rapes reported in the Army was 47% of civilian rates, and the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force were much lower: 19%, 27%, and 20% respectively. In order to legitimately reach conclusions about military culture from the fact that there are higher levels of rape in the military relative to other crimes, Morris would have to demonstrate that rape is as underreported in the military as in civilian life. She is aware of this weakness in her argument and attempts to justify the assumption that there is parity between the reporting of military and civilian rapes in a lengthy footnote (662-664, n. 33). She bases her contention that military women are as unlikely to report rape as civilian women on a quotation from the 1990 Update Report on the Progress of Women in the Navy. The report states that the "majority of staff level advisors interviewed perceive that most female victims would not report a rape" (663, n. 33, my emphasis) The perception of staff advisors appears to be a rather flimsy basis on which to conclude that rapes are as underreported in the military as in civilian life, because consideration must be given to the fact that there is greater supervision, communal surveillance, and control in the military, which may make it more difficult to conceal any kind of aberrant behavior. Morris further argues that her figures for military rape are "estimated conservatively," because most states include marital rape in their data, whereas the military does not. In order for this point to carry any weight, she would have to show that the inclusion of marital rapes makes a significant difference in the civilian statistics, which she does not (662-665, n. 33). I thank Susan G. Brown for helping me to interpret Morris's data and results and bringing many of these considerations to my attention.
11. Morris, "By Force of Arms," 701; see also 751.
12. Walter A. McDougall, "Sex, Lies, and Infantry," Commentary 104 (September 1997): 46.
13. Stephanie Gutmann, "Sex and the Soldier" The New Republic, 216 (24 February 1997): 18.
14. Eric Schmitt, "War is Hell. So Is Regulating Sex," The New York Times 17 November 1996: 4:1.
15. Linda Grant De Pauw, Battle Cries and Lullabies (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 9.
16. Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modem Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1994), viii.
17. Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968).
18. According to Plato's Socrates, though men's and women's natures are alike in so far as the capacity for any given profession is distributed to both of them, in all [of these professions] woman is weaker than man," Plato, Republic, 455e.
19. Elshtain, Woman and War, 53.
20. Elshtain, Woman and War, 53.
21. Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 255-261, see Max Weber, The Religion of China. Translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth (New York: The Free Press, 1951), 158.
22. Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 255-261, see Max Weber, The Religion of China. Translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth (New York: The Free Press, 1951), 158.
23. Weber, From Max Weber, 261.
24. Weber, From Max Weber, 256.
25. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Thomas Cleary (Boston: Shambhala, 1991), 56.
26. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 37.
27. As an interesting side note at this point, before the Second World War it was argued that women could not adapt to the regimentation of military life, but, as it turned out, women, "took well to drill." One company officer claimed that the women "learn more in a day than my squads of men used to learn in a week." As Mattie Treadwell relates, the women "were not disconcerted by the necessity of discipline and regimentation; their shoes were shined, uniforms spotless, beds tightly made, footlockers neat." See Mattie Treadwell, U.S. Army in World War II Special Studies: The Women's Army Corps (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1954), 70.
28. Morris, "By Force of Arms," 751.
29. Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites, (New York: Henry Holt Company, 1997), 9.
30. John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 8-9.
31. Quoted in Keegan, A History of Warfare, 8.
32. Keegan, A History of Warfare, 9. The Cossacks were exemplary of other individualistic horseriding fighters, such as the Cavaliers, for example, who were unable to prevail against Cromwell's disciplined forces: "For it was the habit of the Cavaliers to gallop enthusiastically into the attack and then, without discipline, to disperse, either to plunder the camp of the enemy or prematurely and individually to pursue single opponents in order to capture them for ransom. All successes were forfeited by such habits." Weber, From Max Weber, 257.
33. Keegan, A History of Warfare, 9. The Cossacks were exemplary of other individualistic horseriding fighters, such as the Cavaliers, for example, who were unable to prevail against Cromwell's disciplined forces: "For it was the habit of the Cavaliers to gallop enthusiastically into the attack and then, without discipline, to disperse, either to plunder the camp of the enemy or prematurely and individually to pursue single opponents in order to capture them for ransom. All successes were forfeited by such habits." Weber, From Max Weber, 257.
34. Weber, From Max Weber, 257.
35. Morris, "By Force of Arms," 701; see also 751.
36. Gutmann, "Sex and the Soldier," 20.
37. Samuel A. Stouffer, Arthur A. Lumsdaine, Marion Harper Lumsdaine, Robin M. Williams Jr., M. Brewster Smith, Irving L. Janis, Shirley A. Star, and Leonard S. Cottrell Jr., The American Soldier: Combat and its Aftermath, vol. II (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1949), 136 and 174-175; see also Edward Shils, "Primary Groups in the American Army," in Center and Periphery: Essays in Macro-sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 384-402.
38. Samuel A. Stouffer, Arthur A. Lumsdaine, Marion Harper Lumsdaine, Robin M. Williams Jr., M. Brewster Smith, Irving L. Janis, Shirley A. Star, and Leonard S. Cottrell Jr., The American Soldier: Combat and its Aftermath, vol. II (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1949), 136 and 174-175; see also Edward Shils, "Primary Groups in the American Army," in Center and Periphery: Essays in Macro-sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 384-402.
39. Stouffer et. al., The American Soldier, II 175.
40. Stouffer et. al., The American Soldier, II 156-167.
41. Stouffer et. al., The American Soldier, II 159.
42. Stouffer et. al., The American Soldier, II 137.
43. Stouffer et. al., The American Soldier, II 125.
44. Stouffer et. al., The American Soldier, II 125.
45. Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz, "Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II," in Center and Periphery: Essays in Macro-sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 364.
46. Carol Barkalow, "Let Women in the Military 'Be All They Can Be,'" Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1991, opinion.
47. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 85.
48. See, for example, Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 77.
49. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller, Foreward by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 114.
50. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press 1992).
51. S. L. A. Marshall, World War I (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992), 102.
52. S. L. A. Marshall, World War I, 103.
53. Bevin Alexander, How Great Generals Win (New York: W.W. Norton & Company 1993), 24.
54. J. Glenn Gray, in his classic account of war drawn from his World War II diaries, observes that soldiers become tender about living things during war; they are protective of vulnerable life, including wounded enemy soldiers and "lavish" unusual care on "[w]aifs and orphans and lost pets during war." Gray names this sentiment "preservative love." See J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (New York: Harper & Row 1970), 83-84; see also Elshtain, Women and War, 209.
55. J. Glenn Gray, in his classic account of war drawn from his World War II diaries, observes that soldiers become tender about living things during war; they are protective of vulnerable life, including wounded enemy soldiers and "lavish" unusual care on "[w]aifs and orphans and lost pets during war." Gray names this sentiment "preservative love." See J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (New York: Harper & Row 1970), 83-84; see also Elshtain, Women and War, 209.
56. For an excellent account of women's participation in war, see De Pauw, Battle Cries and Lullabies.
57. Keegan, A History of Warfare, 76.
58. Ehrenreich, Blood Rites.
59. James Webb, "The War on the Military Culture," The Weekly Standard 2 (20 January, 1997): 17.
60. Webb, "The War on the Military Culture," 20.
61. The author of this paper spent three years in the U.S. Army (1975-1978). When I was promoted to sergeant, one of the men in my unit advised my first sergeant that he was not in the habit of taking orders from women. My first sergeant responded that he was unconcerned about the recalcitrant soldier's attitudes about women. "But," he loudly admonished the soldier, "you will take orders from that sergeant!"
62. Margaret C. Harrell and Laura L. Miller, New Opportunities for Military Women: Effects upon Readiness, Cohesion, and Morale (Santa Monica: Calif: RAND, DASW01-95-C-0059, 1997), 95.
63. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1948), 132.
64. Eisenhower, Crusade, 133.
65. Eisenhower, Crusade, 133.
66. Treadwell, The Women's Army Corps, 384.
67. Holm, Women in the Military, 57-59.
68. De Pauw, Battle Cries and Lullabies, 252.
69. Remarkably similar rumors surfaced again as a result of the participation of women in the Persian Gulf War. See Linda Bird Franke, Ground Zero: The Gender Wars in the Military (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997) 104-129.
70. De Pauw, Battle Cries and Lullabies, 253.
71. De Pauw, Battle Cries and Lullabies, 254, and Holm, Women in the Military, 52.
72. De Pauw, Battle Cries and Lullabies, 254, and Holm, Women in the Military, 52.
73. De Pauw, Battle Cries and Lullabies, 255, and Holm, Women in the Military, 52
74. De Pauw, Battle Cries and Lullabies, 255, and Holm, Women in the Military, 52
75. Anthony Leviero, "War Chiefs Urge Women's Services," The New York Times, 3 July 1947, A22. See also Holm, Women in the Military, 116-117.
76. Anthony Leviero, "War Chiefs Urge Women's Services," The New York Times, 3 July 1947, A22. See also Holm, Women in the Military, 116-117.
77. Leviero, "War Chiefs," A22.
78. Nations generally make use of women in times of need. The British and Soviets both drafted women in World War II. In the Soviet case, a million women served, "8% of the total number of military personnel, with the majority being at the front." Soviet women served in the ground forces as snipers, machine gunners, and in tanks. See Jean K. Cottam, "Soviet Women in Combat in World War II: The Ground Forces and the Navy," International Journal of Women's Studies 3 (1980): 345-357. Similarly, military leaders acknowledged the necessity of including women in the 1991 Desert Storm action. Pertinent in this regard is a comment made by General Charles Krulak, Commandant of the Marine Corps, about the need for women in the Gulf War on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, 15 May 1997: "I will tell you, I took two hundred and one women to Desert Storm. I did it and recommended to the Commandant at the time that I take them, because the fact of the matter is I needed them. I needed them desperately."
79. Holm, Women in the Military, 403.
80. Holm, Women in the Military, 433.
81. Holm, Women in the Military, 405.
82. Holm, Women in the Military, 436; Franke, Ground Zero, 67.
83. Holm, Women in the Military, 436; Franke, Ground Zero, 67.
84. Holm, Women in the Military, 436.
85. Harrell and Miller, New Opportunities for Military Women, 93.
86. Lory Manning and Jennifer E. Griffith "Women In The Military: Where They Stand" (Washington, DC: Women's Research and Education Institute, 1998), 8.
87. Manning and Griffith, "Women In The Military," 14.
88. Sheryl Stolberg, "Forget the Scandals . . ." Los Angeles Times, 29 November 1996, E1 and E4. Military women who are currently serving in Honolulu, and with whom I maintain communication, also express this view. One woman Navy lieutenant writes, "Yes - the military is still very much an 'old boys club,' but that doesn't mean that a woman can't achieve phenomenal success if they earn the respect of their male and female peers, subordinates and seniors through hard, honest work and sacrifice. I think the military by definition places a supreme value on professionalism and competence - those who pull their weight and 'walk the walk' - whether male or female can and do go far ... I think society should take some cues from the military when it comes to gender and race integration, teamwork, values and integrity." Personal communication from Lieutenant Destiny Burns, U.S. Navy, to Regina F. Titunik, 13 May 1998.
89. Stolberg, "Forget the Scandals," E4.
90. Cynthia H. Enloe, "The Politics of Constructing the American Woman Soldier," in Women Soldiers: Images and Realities, ed. Elisabetta Addis, Valeria E. Russo and Lorenza Sebesta (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 89.
91. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 231.
92. Franke, Ground Zero, 259.
93. Helen Rogan, Mixed Company: Women is the Modern Army (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1981), 303; see Charles Moskos "Army Women," Atlantic Monthly 266 (1990): 78.
94. Helen Rogan, Mixed Company: Women is the Modern Army (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1981), 303; see Charles Moskos "Army Women," Atlantic Monthly 266 (1990): 78.
95. Rogan, Mixed Company, 304.
96. Lisa Leff, "NOW Pickets at Naval Academy," Washington Post, 29 May 1990, B4.
97. Webb, "The War on the Military Culture," 17.
98. Martin Binkin, Who Will Fight the Next War: The Changing Face of the American Military (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1993), 8.
99. Charles Moskos, who, along with Sibley Butler, has examined the successes of blacks in the military, cautions against overdrawing the comparison between racial and gender integration in the armed forces. See Charles Moskos "The Folly of Comparing Race and Gender in the Army," Washington Post, 4 January 1998, C01. Moskos brings attention to important incommensurable factors such as physiological differences between men and women, privacy issues, and the "chemistry of sexuality." But his main concern is to point out these dissimilarities in relation to the issue of women in combat not to deny that both groups have benefited from a particularly meritocratic system. Indeed, regarding women's attainments in the military over the last 20 years, Moskos recognizes that women have succeeded largely because of their talents.
100. Morris, "By Force of Arms."
101. Morris, "By Force of Arms," 733; see also 710-718.
102. Laura Miller, "Feminism and the Exclusion of Army Women from Combat," Working Paper No. 2, Project on U.S. Post Cold-War Civil-Military Relations: John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University, 1995 (http://hdc-www. harvard.edu/cfia/olin/pubs/no2.htm)l3.
103. Miller, "Feminism and the Exclusion of Army Women from Combat," 3.
104. Major Marie Rossi's response to a CNN reporter during the Persian Gulf War is instructive in this regard. When asked how she, a women, felt about piloting her helicopter in combat, she responded "What I am doing is no greater or less than the man who is flying next to me or in back of me." Major Rossi was later killed when her helicopter crashed while serving in the Gulf. Holm, Women in the Military, 438.
105. "Female U.S. aviators fly first combat missions," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 19-20 December 1998.
106. Harrell and Miller, New Opportunities for Military Women, 99.
107. M. C. Devilbiss, "Gender Integration and Unit Deployment: A study of G.I. Jo," Armed Forces & Society 11 (Summer 1985): 540. During my three years in the U.S. Army, I also experienced the same kind of attachments recounted in this report. See also Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, Report to the President, November 15, 1992, (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1992), C-82.
108. M. C. Devilbiss, "Gender Integration and Unit Deployment: A study of G.I. Jo," Armed Forces & Society 11 (Summer 1985): 540. During my three years in the U.S. Army, I also experienced the same kind of attachments recounted in this report. See also Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, Report to the President, November 15, 1992, (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1992), C-82.
109. See Dana Priest, "Engendering a Warrior Spirit," Washington Post, 3 March 1997, A01.
110. Barkalow, "Let Women in the Military 'Be All They Can Be.'"
111. Quoted in Elshtain, Women and War, 10.
112. Harrell and Miller, New Opportunities for Military Women, 48.
113. Harrell and Miller, New Opportunities for Military Women, 48.
114. Harrell and Miller, New Opportunities for Military Women, 74.
115. See James Brooke, "New Attention to Women in the Military." The New York Times, 3 March 1997, A, 10. See also Lisa Hoffman, "Bad Press Fails to Sour Women on the Military," Honolulu Star Bulletin, 27 November 1997, A-21. Despite all of the bad press about the military after the Aberdeen scandal broke in November 1996, more women joined the military in 1997 than in the previous year! This suggests that there is a discrepancy between the image of the military painted by the press and the pundits and the actual experience of the military at the grassroots level.
116. See James Brooke, "New Attention to Women in the Military." The New York Times, 3 March 1997, A, 10. See also Lisa Hoffman, "Bad Press Fails to Sour Women on the Military," Honolulu Star Bulletin, 27 November 1997, A-21. Despite all of the bad press about the military after the Aberdeen scandal broke in November 1996, more women joined the military in 1997 than in the previous year! This suggests that there is a discrepancy between the image of the military painted by the press and the pundits and the actual experience of the military at the grassroots level.
117. Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 106.
118. Moskos and Butler, All That We Can Be, 106.
119. Manning and Griffith, "Women In The Military," 11.
120. Moskos and Butler, All That We Can Be, 42; Luix Overbea, "Growing Numbers of Black Women See Military Service as Ticket to a Stable Career," Christian Science Monitor, 26 September 1985, 2-3.
121. Moskos and Butler, All That We Can Be, 42; Luix Overbea, "Growing Numbers of Black Women See Military Service as Ticket to a Stable Career," Christian Science Monitor, 26 September 1985, 2-3.
122. Overbea, "Growing Numbers," 3.
123. Nor is it my intention to make an argument for the inclusion of women in combat. The question of women serving in combat requires consideration of a number of complex issues that are beyond the scope of this paper.