ABSTRACT
We will conclude by returning to the two questions posed in our introduction. The ¿UVWTXHVWLRQZDVDERXWKRZJHQGHUPLJKWZRUNDVDQD[LVRIGLIIHUHQFHZLWKLQ the British Army, and the consequences of this in terms of gender relations and identities within that institution. The second question was about how military and civilian understandings about gender, both within the Army and beyond, might intersect, and what this might mean for our wider understanding of military issues. In addressing these questions, we have argued around a small number of key observations; that women’s participation is quite carefully contained within an institution that has always required labour from its civilian society; that ideas about female difference are ambivalent in outcome, sometimes overcome through activities designed to be gender fair and sometimes rendered problematic because of their difference from male norms; that discourses about women soldiers portray these soldiers as potentially disruptive and problematic, an idea that has purchase in both military and popular cultural representations; and that models of mascuOLQLW\LQWKHPLOLWDU\YDOXHDVSHFL¿FHPERGLHGPDOHPLOLWDU\LGHQWLW\WKDWVWUXFWXUHVPHQ¶VPLOLWDU\SDUWLFLSDWLRQLQFHUWDLQVSHFL¿FZD\VDQGDOVRGHWHUPLQHVWKH subject positions available to women personnel. We have framed these observations within an argument that says, emphatically, that gender is a military issue, and that military gender issues are the proper concern of us all, wherever we are positioned in relation to the armed forces.
