Just one of the guys until shower time: How symbolic embodiment threatens women's inclusion in the US military

Abstract

The military constitutes a complex occupational field for women — one in which embodied masculinity is legitimized and rewarded, and women's bodies are often perceived as problems to the extent that they deviate from this masculine standard. Drawing from 33 in‐depth interviews with men and women who served on active duty in the US military between 2005 and 2015, we ask: How does female embodiment raise barriers to the full incorporation of women as equal workers in a total institution? Our analysis focuses on three primary aspects of what we call symbolic embodiment (female bodies as physically weak, as leaky/unclean and as sexually distracting), as they are rooted in the cultural imagination more than in any biological or experiential reality. We show how the symbolic embodiment of female workers effectively undermines individual claims of honorary masculinity by reasserting the pre‐eminence of naturalized capacities over individual performance and experience, and constructs women as second‐class workers within the masculine culture of the military. Our results extend the literature on the embodied self at work and reveal potential limits to Bourdieu's theory of the gendered habitus.

Soldiers to Scientists: Military Service, Gender, and STEM Degree Earning

“…However, a substantial body of research has documented the unique barriers to career advancement faced by women in the context of the military as a gendered organization (Steidl and Brookshire 2018; Bonnes 2017; Connell 2005; Silva 2008). Scholarship on gendered organizations emphasizes gender not as separate from organizational processes but as formally and informally embedded in organizational logics (Acker 1990; Britton 2000; Martin 2004; Williams, Muller, and Kilanski 2012).…”

“…Moreover, today’s military includes a growing number of women: the Department of Veterans Affairs expects 180,000 additional female veterans by 2025 (NCVAS 2017). Despite these numbers, the U.S. military remains a gendered organization, and a substantial body of research has documented the ways gendered expectations, policies, and procedures shape career trajectories of military personnel (Steidl and Brookshire 2018; Britton and Logan 2008; Carreiras 2006; Kronsell and Svedberg 2012; Sasson-Levy 2011). Even after completing service, female veterans report lower incomes than their civilian peers (Cooney et al 2003).…”

‘There’s nowhere wonky left to go’: Gentrification, queerness and class politics of inclusion in (East) London

“…The findings complement and extend extant discussions on the exclusionary pressures which accompany inclusion. On the one hand, they complement these by showing that inclusion is indeed often ‘peripheral’ (Rennstam & Sullivan, 2018) and/or entails the silencing and suppression of forms of difference that cannot be included according to the norms governing recognition (Steidl & Brookshire, 2018). On the other hand, the study extends these by showing how these norms are organized according to classed logics.…”

Reflections on front‐line medical work during COVID‐19 and the embodiment of risk

“…In this respect, bodies other than the ‘standard’ body ‘are judged and identified as problematic for organizations’ (Simpson & Lewis, 2005, p. 1264). In some organizational contexts, women’s bodies are perceived as threatening, for example, in the military (Steidl & Brookshire, 2018) and corporate leadership (Mavin & Grandy, 2018), but in these healthcare contexts, the threat is borne by the women themselves, it is their bodies that are threatened by insufficient access to and suitability of the protective equipment that could help reduce the risk.

I find it hard to watch the statistics of looking at you know every time they announced another GP had died, another hospital consultant had died, you know and nurses, I find it difficult to watch that but when you look at you know, when you think about proportion and you know who’s going to get what, but then to find out that that you know the hugely high percentage of doctors who lost their lives who are part the BAME group …, I mean once that kind of trend was being more and more identified there were more safeguards put in place, the risk assessments, we’re not treating all colleagues the same, we’re not putting in more protective measures for people in that group, but u that didn’t happen for a while and so, yeah that was just hard to watch.

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