Military Privatization and the Remasculinization of the State: Making the Link Between the Outsourcing of Military Security and Gendered State Transformations

Abstract

This article examines the gendered implications of military privatization and argues that the outsourcing of military functions to the private sector excludes women from newly developing private military labour markets, impedes gender equality policies and reconstructs masculinist gender ideologies. This process constitutes a remasculinization of the state, in the course of which the nexus between state-sanctioned violence and masculinity is being reaffirmed. Recent research has introduced the concept of masculinity to the study of the private security sector. Building upon these approaches, the article integrates feminist theories of the state into the research field and evaluates their potential contributions to the analysis of military privatization. In an exemplary case study of the US military sector, this privatization is embedded within debates on the neo-liberal restructuring of the state and addressed as a gendered process through which the boundaries between the public and the private are being redrawn. The implications of these transformations are investigated at the levels of gender-specific labour division, gender policy and gender ideologies. applying the concept of masculinity in the study of gender identity in the private security sector. Because war and political violence are gendered phenomena linked to the evolution of the modern nation-state, this article aims at expanding these approaches by introducing feminist theories of the state into the research field and embedding military privatization in debates on the neo-liberal restructuring of the state and its gendered implications. 2 This article argues that the privatization of military security constitutes a process of remasculinization, which excludes women from newly developing private military labour markets, impedes gender equality policies and reconstructs masculinist gender ideologies. These processes are the result of interactions between gender discrimination in the regular forces and in the private security industry, which reaffirm the nexus between state-sanctioned violence and masculinity. KeywordsThis article examines military privatization processes in an exemplary analysis of the US military sector. The gendered division of military labour, patterns of gender integration in the regular forces and general trends towards the marketization of state responsibilities are considered as relevant contexts. The relative importance of the military realm, the quantitative and qualitative scope of global military interventions, the advancement of gender integration and privatization processes and the availability of data and analysis on these subjects make the United States an ideal starting point for the critical investigation of the contractor industry. The US case can provide the basis for comparative research and guidelines for the study of similar developments in other countries. Caution is, however, advised in generalizing findings because of the specific structure and culture of the US military sector. More research on priva...

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