Evaluating the Shift in Gender Roles in the US Military

In October of this past year, I was selected to become a Naval Aviator after spending most of my adult life working towards this particular career path.  The community I am prepared to enter is quite unlike the one celebrated by past generations of Navy pilots, the brothers in arms whose pride in the culture of aviation was often just as important as the missions they performed.  After women were allowed to fly in the military followed a period of difficulty experienced by the so-called boy’s club of Naval Aviation, as there had not previously been a need for any sort of political correctness in Squadron ready rooms.  Despite the fact that women had passed the gauntlet of Flight training and were just as qualified as their male counterparts, the adjustment did not come without some hostility.  This issue came to a head immediately following the ’91 Tailhook scandal, which was a disastrous scandal rocking the Navy’s public image that caused a drastic overhaul in the way professionalism and harassment were dealt with.  Today, the camaraderie is not gone, and although the boy’s club is a thing of the past, male and female pilots have successfully been able to coexist and get along, and mission readiness has only improved.  So why today are we asking how gender roles have anything to do with warfare?

            Yes, war is traditionally a masculine domain, but while females are not yet found among the ranks of infantry units, there has been a push towards their integration.  Two female Marines were enrolled in the Marine Infantry Officer’s course, which they did not pass, but which did open the door for future female participation.  Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBN’s) have just received the first class of female junior officers.  Women can fly any aircraft they are qualified for.  The war heroes of the past may embody masculinity, but in the near future we should expect to see female military heroes emerging as Hollywood icons or cultural fixtures.  

The climate in the military today favors equal opportunity.  I absolutely disagree with the notion that patriotism is still a masculine sensation.  Just looking around at my peers, that is simply not the case.  Furthermore, I don’t think there will be any shift in whether drone warfare is perceived as less masculine because gender stigmas play less and less of a role in military operations.  While I will acknowledge that the issue is not a moot point, the stigma has been effectively reduced.  In “The Technoscience Question”, Blanchard references Charlotte Hooper’s 1998 quote that “new technologies may unwittingly mark out the new agendas for hegemonic masculinities to colonize” (150).  This might have been relevant fourteen years ago, but in my opinion times have changed and whether or not the use of future technologies is gender specific has become a non-issue.  In the case of drone warfare, anybody can operate and pull the trigger without worrying about stereotypical implications.