Savannah Boothe
Professor Lori Bedell
CAS 137H
26 October 2012
Paradigm Shift
The role women should take in the United States military has been a point of contention since the conception of the United States and the existence of a national defense. Women were constantly constrained by societal stereotypes and were refused an active role in the armed forces, even after proving their military prowess time and time again. Many events had to occur to trigger the allowance of women in the military. After decades of acting as a supportive role for the United States Armed Forces, the advent of the Civil Rights and ERA movements helped to legitimize a greater variety of roles for women in the military, which has resulted in the current position of females as equal in almost all aspects of the military.
Since the initiation of the United States, a national defense has been vital to the fate of the country. The creation of the country itself was the result of a ferocious war, resulting in many war veterans becoming national heroes. The vast majority of these heroes, however, were men. Women were repressed from joining in the fight for their nation because of the convention that their sole jurisdiction was the home. The Cult of Domesticity was the prominent belief surrounding the “proper” conduct of women; it stated the core attributes that a woman was expected to abide by. These four cardinal virtues consisted of piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Together, these facets “spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife- woman. Without them, no matter whether there was fame, achievement, or wealth, all was ashes” (Welter 152). These conditions did not provide a conducive environment in which women could join the volunteer effort to fight. However, it was very obvious that the desire to serve and support a cause through physical combat was embedded in women despite the Cult of True Womanhood holding them back. Throughout the American Revolution and Civil War, women were found impersonating men and joining the war effort, discretely challenging society’s limited view of a woman’s role. However, these acts of rebellion against the discrimination against women in the volunteer militias were rare, and women were forced to find other approaches to bolster the war effort.
Society believed that women, as feminine, fragile, and peaceful creatures, were a liability in battle and that “the true woman’s place was unquestionably by her own fireside… as wife and mother” (Welter 162). Because of this domestic role enforced by society, women found alternative ways to participate in the wars previous to World War I. They employed themselves as camp followers, filling “unofficial capacities” but performing “essential support services to the troops- frequently serving as nurses, cooks, and laundresses” (…). Because they were kept from the front lines of battle, women discovered new ways to fulfill the urge to serve and forge their own path to aid in the creation of a great nation. The roles that they found were directly parallel to what society viewed was proper for women; domestic duties that ensured femininity and preserved innocence of the woman.
During World War II, history teaches that a huge shift took place in the role of women. World War II necessitated a deficit of manpower and to fill this gap the country turned to women. However, in filling this deficit, they still were matched with duties “that matched women’s ‘natural’ abilities- clerical work and jobs requiring rote attention to detail and small motor skills” (…), a reminder of the previous centuries stereotype of women. Throughout the World War, strides were still made toward integrating women into the armed forces. Instead of simply being followers of the military as they had been in previous wars, “the US Armed Forces were transformed from essentially all-male to mixed-gender forces” (…); women were actually permitted to enter and serve in the military. They often served in all women regiments, such as the Army and Navy Nurse Corps, Women’s Army Corps, Marine Corps Women’s Reserves, and Women Airforce Service Pilots. A vast majority served as nurses, reinforcing the stereotypical view held by society that women made better nurses than troops, but by the end of the war “there were few noncombatant jobs in which women did not serve, including positions that hadn’t even existed when the war began- positions brought about by scientific and technological advances to aid the war effort” (…).
Women had been integrated into every service branch and were serving overseas in large capacities during World War II; although they were still restricted from certain combat theaters, they still were provided the opportunity to be a part of the war effort and fight for the country that they loved. The volunteering of women had previously met enormous resistance due to the previous generation’s harsh view that women belonged in the home, caring and teaching the children and tending the household. However, as the war progressed, the view of their role shifted. They were seen as a vital resource for the war effort, both because of the gap they filled in the manpower necessity and because of the high quality at which they performed their duties. President Roosevelt even “requested a nurse draft bill in his 1945 State of the Union address” (…) to recruit even more women into the military. General Eisenhower represented the great shift; he stated, “when the formation of women’s units was first proposed, ‘I was violently against it’” but he conceded that “Every phase of the record they (women) compiled during the war convinced me of the error of my first reaction” (…). He then went on to try and ensure that women had a permanent place in the United States military. It appeared that World War II was the key trigger to incorporate women into the military as an indispensable resource.
Immediately following World War II, however, the great strides that had occurred for women in the US Armed Forces were backtracked because of the new archetypal family. The American Dream reinstated and reinforced the belief that women should be a force in the home and women abided by this rule because of the wish to marry well and appear properly feminine. A feminine ideal of domesticity and maternalism overtook the nation and women generally accepted their fate. The military saw a decline in the recruitment of women and had difficulty retaining them once enlisted (…).
During this time period, the United States entered the Korean War and discovered it was vastly underprepared. A stronger source of manpower was necessary for the war effort, and because of their ability in World War II, women were called upon to serve their country. However, far fewer opportunities were available to women than had been available in World War II. They were demoted back to personnel and administrative jobs, as these were more “feminine jobs” that aligned with the role of women under the American Dream. Women’s basic training even included “‘women’s’ classes such as makeup and etiquette lessons” (…) to ensure that women were not losing any of their femininity by being a part of the military. An Army recruiting pamphlet stated “‘In authorizing job assignments for women, particular care is taken to see that the job does not involve a type of duty that violates our concept of proper employment for sisters and girlfriends. In the military field, for example, women do not drive heavy trucks’” (…), further proving the military’s biased view of what a woman’s role should be in the Armed Forces. Based on society’s view, the military placed women in an inferior position and denied them a position of combat; the number of women in the military was at the highest in history, but because of “an absence of official policy and directives encouraging the use of women, family-unfriendly policies, high turnover rate and societal attitudes towards women’s roles” (…), serious doubts about the value of military women’s programs persisted.
The 1970s presented the biggest trigger that transformed the woman’s role in the US military. “In 1972, two policy issues intertwined to advance women’s position in the US Armed Forces: the decision to end the draft and to rely on an all-volunteer military force and the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution” (…). Society saw an unprecedented change; the ERA stated that the “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex” (Francis). Women were fighting for equal rights in all aspects of American life, and one resultant factor was part women took in the military. Society became more aware of the women’s struggle, recognizing the discrimination against women in all aspects of life, including employment, wages, and benefits. Due to the awareness, society became more accepting of women taking on roles that were previously only acceptable for men, one major role being a combatant one in the Armed Forces. Although Congress did not pass the ERA, its presence at the federal level ensured that “public dialogue focused on equal rights for women, the Department of Defense knew it needed to look at problems of gender discrimination in the military” (…). ROTC programs became coeducational, women moved from the traditional fields into most occupations of the Armed Forces, new job opportunities became available for women in all services, and Navy and Coast Guard even provided coed crews. One of the most prominent changes occurred; weapons training became mandatory for all military personnel, implying that women had secured the combatant role that they had wanted for centuries. Other policies made it easier for women to have careers in the military and still provide for their families. Frontiero v. Ferguson ruled “that the civilian spouses of military women were to be afforded the same benefits as the civilian spouses of military men” and in 1975 “the Department of Defense ordered the services to discontinue the practice of discharging women for pregnancy” (…). The 1980s continued the evolution of the combatant role of women. Caspar Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan made an encompassing statement about the decade’s lengths to fully incorporate women into a combatant role; “Qualified women are essential to obtaining the numbers of qualified people required to maintain the readiness of our forces… While we have made progress, some institutional barriers still exist… This Department must aggressively break down those remaining barriers that prevent us from making the fullest use of the capabilities of women in providing for our national defense” (…). By the end of the decade, women found themselves major components in combatant zones.
Today, women make up more than fifteen percent of active duty military forces, and are a major part of almost every operation that the military performs. It is not a novelty to see a woman leading a squadron and it is not rare to see a woman fighter pilot. Women have come so far, yet one could argue that the role still has farther to go. The percentage of women is the highest it has ever been; yet it is still so low.
