SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

Perceptions of Women in the Military

Room 221, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)

Perceptions of women working in a male dominated arena can shape the institution’s responses to discrimination of women in those fields. Historically, the US military has excluded women from participating in a number of positions in the military on the grounds that men and women are physiologically, mentally and emotionally built for different positions in the society (D’amico, 1999; Brod, 1994; Steihm, 1989). Men are inherently aggressive and competitive while women are perceived as being inherently maternal, and gentle. While women have gained access to different factions in the military, women have been constrained to performing military duties within the parameters of US society's stereotypical gender roles, filling roles of caretaking positions (D’amico, 1999). In recent news a bill was passed by congress opening up the military, in its entirety, to women. This inclusion may seem like progress, but it does leave to question how historical perceptions of women in the military will feed into how women are treated and how these perceptions shape women’s experience in the military. I will be interviewing both men and women who have worked in close proximity to the military in order to better understand commonly held perceptions of women in the military and how perceptions affect experiences.