ABSTRACT
This book is about the politics of gender and the British Army. The intention of this book is straightforward. We engage with a range of debates and arguments around men and women’s participation in armed forces, we look in detail at one example from one place and time (the British Army, in the UK, at the beginning of WKHWZHQW\¿UVWFHQWXU\DQGZHDVNWZRTXHVWLRQV7KH¿UVWTXHVWLRQLVKRZGRHV gender work as an axis of organisation within the contemporary British Army and what understandings of gender follow from this? The second question is: how does this military understanding of gender relate to civilian understanding of and responses to the British Army, the armed forces more widely, and military activities and militarism in general? In this book, we argue for a broader understanding and awareness of gender issues than that suggested by much contemporary military and public debate, with its focus on questions around women’s military participation. We take the analysis of gender issues to include the study of both men and women. We are interested in the ways that gender difference, gender relations and gender identities shape military practices, and in the politics around the cultural practices that produce and reproduce ideas about gender as they circulate both around the Army and in wider contemporary civilian cultures and cultural forms. /HWXVFODULI\DWWKHRXWVHWRXUGH¿QLWLRQVRIµJHQGHU¶DQGµPLOLWDU\¶EHFDXVH
RXUXVHRIWKHVHWZRWHUPVGH¿QHVRXU¿HOGRIVWXG\:HXVHWKHWHUPµJHQGHU¶WR refer to the structuring of social relations and individual identities around biological sex differences. People are born male or female, and usually remain so. Morphological or physiological differences between males and females are external manifestations of biological differences that have evolved for the reproduction of the human species. These biological reproductive differences denote sex. We are not, however, just biological beings; we are people, and people function as social beings. We use the term ‘gender’ to refer to the multiple and diverse ways in which social relations (how we relate to each other) and identity (what we feel ourselves to be) are formed and sustained around sex differences. Gender, then, is a social category based around sex differences.1
