Since the integration of women into the United States armed forces, servicemen have been expected to be the fighters while servicewomen largely occupied safe or nurturing support roles as dictated by American society at large. The ground combat exclusion policy, which officially barred women from all positions involving ground fighting, limited women to support units which, in theory, were strategically located in the rear and far removed from the dangers of the front lines. As we experienced in the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the differentiation of gender roles became irrelevant in asymmetrical wars with no established front lines. Female soldiers found themselves in a variety of combat situations of indirect and direct nature, as I learned through the qualitative interviews that I conducted at Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In this dissertation, I examined the narratives of female and male soldiers who experienced combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, to discern: 1) whether females and males discussed their scenarios differently; 2) whether experiencing combat affected soldiers’ ideas about their various gender roles; 3) whether perceptions on servicewomen’s combat participation differed by sex; and 4) whether soldiers’ opinions on women’s inclusion in combat arms military occupation specialties differed by sex. What I found in my study was that: 1) female and male soldiers largely discussed their combat experiences in similar ways; 2) while familial gender roles were largely unchanged as a result of combat deployment, the majority of female and male soldiers perceived changes in their roles as women and men – where women often discussed feeling stronger, empowered, and independent, and men often identified their changes in terms of maturity and personal growth; 3) that exposure to women’s roles in combat deployments had a more positive effect on the perceptions of male soldiers than those of female soldiers; and 4) that both female and male participants largely disagreed with the ground combat exclusion policy for women.

Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka varför kvinnor som gått militär grundutbildning väljer att vidareutbilda sig till specialistofficerare. Respondenterna utgjorde fem kvinnliga specialistofficerare i åldrarna 22 till 34. Tre av dem hade gjort allmän värnplikt och två av dem hade gått grundläggande militär utbildning (GMU). Av demografiska skäl genomförde jag telefonintervjuer med respondenterna. Jag följde principerna för induktiv tematisk analys när jag analyserade intervjuerna. Analysen visade att kamratskapen och möjligheten att utmana och utveckla sig själv samt typen av arbetsuppgifter och möjligheten att använda utbildningen både i det militära och i det civila var motiv för vidareutbildning. / The aim of this study was to investigate why women who have basic military training choose to continue their education in the Armed Forces. The participants represented five female officers aged 22 to 34. For demographic reasons I conducted telephone interviews with the participants. I followed the principles of inductive thematic analysis when I analyzed the interviews. The analysis showed that the comradeship, the opportunity for personal development, the type of tasks and the ability to use the military training not only in the Armed Forces but also in the civilian life were motives forbecoming an officer.

The focus of this paper is gaining a deeper understanding of the discursive ways in which Ukrainian female soldiers are represented in international news media by analyzing online newspaper articles. The research questions are centred around finding out what common discursive representations are predominant in the articles, how these representations are visible, and what discourses are meant to be favored by the authors or publishers. The theory is based on a Foucauldian approach to discourse analysis. A total of eight articles were chosen for analysis from four major newspapers based in the United Kingdom and the United States. The data consisted of both text and images featured in the articles. The main findings of the paper are that even though there is a strong discourse that promotes stereotypical representations of female soldiers, there is also a counter-discourse that brings female soldiers’ voices to the forefront and challenges historically predominant stereotypical representations.