ABSTRACT

Republicans swept the presidency and both houses of Congress in the November 2016 election. The Republican Party platform adopted prior to the elections called for the review of what it termed "ideology-based personnel policies" such as women's combat service, and so it remains to be seen how the changing political tides will affect not only women's service, but also the service of gay, lesbian, and transgendered personnel. Although many recent historians have shifted their focus from the study of women to the study of gender, historians still need to uncover many aspects of women's martial service and how that service shaped their postwar lives. In particular, future scholarship needs to address the entangled relationships among gender and other factors. Many historians have conflated distinctions among men's military service by focusing on or privileging combat as the normative experience.