ABSTRACT

K. J. Meier and J. Nicholson-Crotty extend and confirm N. Riccucci and J. R. Saidel's research about the narrow-mindedness of representative bureaucracy as it applies to gender. Women have always represented an important part of this constituency. Women's presence in the US military has always been taken for granted as a convenient resource given the willful collective amnesia of the civilian and military leadership. The US military's expedient need for women as a resource has no doubt led to the expansion, if not uneven growth patterns, of women in the military. The likely growth in women as combatants, as women are fully integrated into occupations, positions and assignments that were formerly closed to them, will be expected to extend that reach. Although women have yet to achieve parity with men in the military, with their full integration throughout, if implementation proceeds as a condition of repealing the combat exclusion policy, military women will have achieved an important milestone.