Professional Soldier, Weak Victim, Patriotic Heroine

Abstract

Discourses on military gender integration in the US are shaped by various groups of social actors who promote different gender ideologies according to their varying interests in the process of military restructuring. Different branches of the Armed Forces, politicians, NGOs and lobbyists argue for or against integration by utilizing different images of military masculinity and femininity. Depending on social and military conditions, female soldiers are portrayed as efficient professionals, patriotic heroines, victims in need of protection or sexualized intruders in a male domain. The aim of this paper is to identify the strategic and political contexts that influence these ideologies, emphasizing the importance of structural change in military and civilian labor markets, patterns of gender-specific labor division and political power relations. For this purpose, media reporting on military gender issues in The New York Times (NYT) and The Washington Post (WP) from 1990 to 2010 is examined in a discourse-analytical case study.

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