Add Female Veterans and Stir? A Feminist Perspective on Gendering Veterans Research

• Author: Maya Eichler
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X16682785
• Date: 01 October 2017
• Published date: 01 October 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Add Female Veterans

and Stir? A Feminist

Perspective on Gendering

Veterans Research

Maya Eichler

1

Abstract

This article examines how scholarship on veterans has begun to incorporate gender

as a relevant category of research. Drawing on feminist theory, it identifies different

approaches to gender within the field of veterans studies and suggests avenues for

advancing this aspect of research. The vast majority of gender research on veterans

treats gender as a descriptive category or variable through a focus on female vet-

erans or gender differences. This article argues that research on veterans can be

enriched by employing gender as an analytical category. Focusing on gender norms,

power and inequality based on gender, and the intersections of gender with other

categories of social difference opens up new questions for gender research on

veterans. This kind of broader, analytical conceptualization of gender reveals the

ways in which gender shapes the transition to civilian life for all veterans and how

veterans policies and programs impact gender relations.

Keywords

veterans, gender, feminist theory, veterans research, military to civilian transitions

1

Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Maya Eichler, Mount Sai nt Vincent Universi ty, 166 Bedford Highway, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

B3M 2J6.

Email: maya.eichler@msvu.ca

Armed Forces & Society

2017, Vol. 43(4) 674-694

ªThe Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X16682785

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The past decade has seen the emergence of a vibrant and growing field of veterans

studies. Research on veterans is taking place across the disciplinary spectrum of the

health and social sciences in fields, such as psychology, medicine, public health,

sociology, anthropology, social work, geography, and more. While past research on

veterans was persistently gender-blind, contemporary research has begun to incor-

porate gender as a relevant catego ry. There has been a phenomenal increase in

gender research on veterans over the past decade and a half (Figure A1), reflecting

the upswing in veterans research as well as increased attention to gender in academia

and policy making. To date, gender research on veterans focuses overwhelmingly on

health-related issues but also examines socioeconomic issues such as the adjustment

to civilian life, unemployment, and homelessness (Table A1).

This article draws on feminist theory to offer a critical review of the growing

body of gender research on veterans. It asks: How is gender being incorporated into

research on veterans? What are the main trends and what gaps exist? From a feminist

perspective, what are fruitful avenues to advance gender research on veterans? This

critical review is guided by a feminist unders tanding of different approaches to

studying gender. Gender can be conceptualized and employed in research in differ-

ent ways, from a narrow conceptualization of gender as a descriptive category to a

broader conceptualization of gender as an analytical category.

Feminist historian Joan Scott (1986) distinguishes between three uses of gender,

gender as a ‘‘descriptive,’’ ‘‘causal,’’ and ‘‘analytical’’ category. Gender as a

descriptive category adds women into research as subjects of study but does not

explain the history and nature of unequal power relations between women and men.

Gender as a causal category aims to explain how structures of inequality are linked

to women’s subordination. Finally, gender as an analytical category treats gender as

a constitutive element of social relationships that is based on perceived differences

between the sexes. In this latter approach, gender is understood in multiple ways:

symbolic, normative, political, and in relation to individual identity (Scott, 1986).

Feminist theory is helpful in identifying and analyzing the various approaches to

gender found in research on veterans. In spite of the growth of scholarly interest in

gender, what is meant by gender and what gendering veterans research entails is not

as self-evident as it may initially seem. Most research on veterans that incorporates a

gender lens does not draw on feminist scholarship, but feminist insights can be

useful to identify limitations in the existing literature and potential future research.

One of the key insights of feminist scholarship is the need to distinguish sex from

gender. Feminist scholars use the term ‘‘gender’’ to highlight the socially con-

structed expectations of what it mean s to be a man or a woman, in contrast to

biological sex (however, there is disagreement and ongoing debate about how to

theorize the relationship between sex and gender; Sjoberg, 2014; also see Canadian

Institutes for Health Research, 2012). In contrast, most of the gender research on

veterans uses the term gender as a synonym for women or treats it as just another

variable (sex) to be added to the study of veterans. Gender is less often understood to

centrally shape veterans’ experiences and involve both masculinities and

Eichler 675