ABSTRACT
For women to participate alongside their brethren and not necessarily in battle, they were reduced to accompanying men as pseudo-men to render support and comfort when the men were in need and they themselves were attired in men's clothing. Women of the early American republic similarly engaged in acts all for the purpose of reaping the rewards, if only the psychological satisfaction, of serving one's country by doing so on the battlefield. The 'othering' or 'others' as Frankenberg terms it, albeit in the form of hostility, that women in the military and as veterans experience, connotes abnormality or being outside the mainstream. The self-perpetuating and destructive behaviors by women are owing to sex segregation in laws and society that through repeated direct and indirect reinforcement in education, employment, the military and religion, render organizational life self-reinforcing and hence resistant to change.
