Gender and Close Combat Roles

Abstract

This chapter examines the current integration of female soldiers into ground combat roles following the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The chapter argues that professionalization has opened a space in which competent women may be able to take up their place in the combat arms and, above all, the infantry but it also notes the severe limitations of this accession. Successful women can be defined as honorary men and accepted as equals. However, the category of honorary man is very narrow and it is very easy for women to be reclassified by male soldiers in what remains a masculine culture. Accordingly, they are constantly in danger of being dismissed and denigrated in sexual terms.