Combat, Cohesion and Gender

Can women be infantry soldiers? Combat is one of the most extreme forms of human activities and throughout human history it has been almost exclusively a masculine domain. However, with the professionalization of the armed forces and the recent pressures of operations in Afghanistan, female participation in the army and on operations has been increasingly accepted and even normalised. Canada and Denmark now allow women in the infantry and, while the UK and US still maintain their bans on females in the infantry, female British and American soldiers have increasingly served on the front line in combat situations. This research addresses this important and potentially historic issue of the increasingly active participation of women in war.

Although the physical differences are not irrelevant, women's exclusion from the infantry has typically been justified by reference to its presumed effects on cohesion among the male soldiers. Females threaten the combat performance of male troops. In order to examine whether women can be members of the infantry and to identify the cultural and institutional conditions which might facilitate or limit this participation, this research adopts a historic and comparative perspective. It investigates the thesis that soldiers in mass conscript armies of the twentieth century were poorly trained and generally performed badly in combat. From the First World War to Vietnam, cohesion was encouraged primarily (and often not very successfully) through appeals to extraneous social values; masculinity, ethnicity or nationalism. Conscript soldiers were bound together by their social likeness, as comrades; as brothers-in-arms. There was little room for women in these groups.

By contrast, the basis of cohesion in the professional armies of the twenty-first century may ironically be both more effective and more impersonal. Professional armies now prioritise training. They engender cohesion and high levels of collective performance through the inculcation of drills which soldiers are trained to execute together. Cohesion seems now to be based primarily on practical competence not social criteria; skill not social homogeneity is now regarded as paramount.

This seems to be having important sociological consequences. Crucially, in the light of this professionalization, it is becoming acceptable for women to operate with infantry soldiers on the front line and, in some cases, to perform as infantry soldiers themselves. There has been a fundamental shift in the way in how combat soldiers unite themselves and perform their roles in battle, allowing individuals who were once excluded from the front-line to become members of these highly cohesive groups. Through documentary, fieldwork and interview research with the armies of Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, the UK and the US, this research seeks to explore the possibilities and limits of women's participation in the infantry.

In this way, the professional army perhaps reflects wider social changes. While societies in the twentieth century, especially in its first half, were ethnically and racially homogenous with clearly defined gender, ethnic and class hierarchies, globalised society today is characterised by increasing hybridity as tradionally boundaries erode. In civilian society, too, it might be possible to claim that new forms of solidarity are emerging based not on what people are - whether they are men, women, black, white, gay or straight - but on what they do; in terms of careers, consumption, leisure activity, lifestyle and activism. The cohesion of infantry soldier fighting in southern Afghanistan may be a military version of the kind of specialised, localised and practice-based solidarity which is increasingly defining the lives of people today. Through the investigation of one small but dramatic form of social practice, combat, this research aims to explore these profound changes in social existence.

1. Academic
This research identifies three-related areas of academic impact:
a) Worldwide scientific advancement to address issues of importance in other countries or globally. Combat provides a particularly fertile field for sociological investigation, because, in combat, the phenomenon of collective action and co-operation - one of the central philosophical concerns of sociology - is exemplified with a rare clarity. However, while there has been extensive work on combat in history and security studies, it has typically been of only periodic interest to sociologists. This project aims to synthesise and extend existing scholarship on cohesion in order to advance sociological understanding of gender through an examination of how professional male and female soldiers are co-operating with each other in combat. Accordingly, this project aspires to encourage a wider sociological interest in the armed forces, warfare and combat as a compelling focus of analysis especially at a time when the west has been engaged heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan and may face new conflicts in the future.
b) The development and utilisation of new and innovative methodologies and cross-disciplinary approaches. Sociology has made a vital contribution to the social and political sciences and, above all, to the disciplines of international relations and security studies (e.g. the constructivist turn). By providing a rigorous sociological analysis of the question of cohesion and gender, this project affirms and deepens collaboration between the sociology, IR and security studies. Specifically, the research aims to demonstrate the potency of hermeneutic ethnography as a method and to advance the understanding of contemporary transformations in gender relations in the social sciences.
c) Contributing towards the health of academic disciplines. British sociology remains a strong international discipline. However, it may be strengthened by deepening its inter-disciplinary links with other subjects. By focusing on a subject of great contemporary importance - combat - in which historian and security studies scholars have traditionally been more interested from the perspective of gender (a core topic for sociology), this project aims affirm these links and, thereby to contribute to continuing relevance of sociology as a discipline in the academy.

2. Users
The research aims to have three main user impacts: a) Shaping and enhancing the effectiveness of public services; b) Transforming evidence based policy in practice and influencing and informing practitioners and professional practice; c) changing organisational culture and practices.

This research speaks directly to the effectiveness of a vital public service: the armed forces and specifically the army. It aims to begin a debate not only about the real basis of military effectiveness but also about hidden organizational prejudices which are not based on evidence. One of the historic reasons for the exclusion of women from the infantry is that they are physically incapable to performing this physically demanding role. In many cases, this judgment is evidenced: since women are generally weaker than men, it is far more difficult for women to pass the necessary physical tests to be in the infantry. However, the exclusion of women is almost always also based on an appeal to the special male cohesion, especially since a significant minority of women are robust enough to be in the infantry. This research does not aim to dismiss the appeal to male cohesion as a rationale but it will ask the armed forces to think reflexively about the concept of cohesion and to explore whether the appeal to cohesion may obscure less objective and more discriminatory prejudices (sometimes taking the form of explicit harassment) which actually undermine the effectiveness of the armed forces. At the same time, through the use of the media, the research aims to contribute to wider defence debates.