“I’m Not Your ‘Typical’ Military Wife”: The Construction of Gender and Agency Through Stereotypes

• Author: Felicia Garland-Jackson,Elizabeth Ziff
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X19875488
• Date: 01 July 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

“I’m Not Your ‘Typical’

Military Wife”: The

Construction of Gender

and Agency Through

Stereotypes

Elizabeth Ziff

1

and Felicia Garland-Jackson

2

Abstract

Within the institution and military community, civilian wives of service members

occupy complicated roles. On the one hand, wives are undisputedly crucial to the

functioning of their service member husbands. However, wives are simultaneously

considered subordinate to their husbands within the military and extended com-

munity. Indicative of this attitude are the divisive stereotypes of military wives that

range from lazy and irresponsible, to overly rank-conscious and entitled. Based on

combined in-depth interviews from two samples of military wives, this article

investigates how the women navigate the military spouse role within the institu-

tional, community-oriented context of the military. Specifically, we ask, how do

these women construct gender and exercise agency when drawing on the stereo-

types of wives within the community? By utilizing such mechanisms as symbolic

boundary work, gender policing, and stereotyping, women both reify stereotypes of

the military spouse and exert agency in creating the military spouse identity for

themselves.

Keywords

gender issues, military culture, sociology, family issues

1

Department of Sociology, University of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN, USA

2

Department of Sociology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Elizabeth Ziff, Department of Sociology, University of Indianapolis, IN, USA.

Email: ziffe@uindy.edu

Armed Forces & Society

2020, Vol. 46(3) 376-396

ªThe Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X19875488

journals.sagepub.com/home/afs

Military wives face unique demands on their lives, marriages, and families when

compared to their civilian counterparts. Generally, the needs and wants of service-

men’s civilian wives and their families place lower in priority order when competing

against those of the service members and the military organization, an arrangement

that ultimately results in a double loss of agency on the part of wives (Taber, 2009).

Civilian spouses have little say or control over many aspects of the military lifestyle,

especially when it comes to permanent change of station (PCS) moves. Being

married to a service member often means frequent relocation away from families

and friends, resulting in wives having to learn and relearn how to establish new kin

networks and support systems within the military community. Building these new

relationships may be challenging, as wives have to create friendships and foster

communities with women who are distinctly different from th em. This point is

illustrated in the demographics of military spouses that reflect a population that is

quite diverse, with ages ranging from late teens to 40s or even 50s and representing a

widespread variety of regions, religions, nationalities, education levels, occupations,

and so on (Hosek, Asch, Fair, Martin, & Mattock, 2002; Military Officers Associ-

ation of America, 2014). Thus, the process of building and rebuilding support net-

works with other military wives, many of whom they may share only a weak

situational link, can add further stress and strain to the already challenging day-

to-day lives of military spouses.

While military wives continue the external work of building their networks with

other spouses in the community, they also continue the ongoing internal process of

establishing their identities and exerting their own agency in these social circles.

While wives’ relationships to their servic e member husbands are important and

certainly influential in building networks and navigating the military lifestyle, we

chose instead to focus on how wives create and navigate relationships with each

other and how divisive wife stereotypes affect the group’s social relations. Within

these groups exists a complex set of stereotypes wives employ not only to self-

identify and locate their own social position and standing but also to distance

themselves from less desirable wife imagery. Navigating stereotypes is an ongoing

exercise in the lives of these women as they continuously battle to establish their

own agency and identity. On one end of the wife “continuum,” there is the woman

who is a “good” wife, supportive, resilient, independent, perhaps working outside of

the home in productive or volunteer labor as she performs admirably as a comple-

ment to and worthy extension of her service member husband. On the other end of

the continuum, is the wife who is a “Dependapotamus.” This term is defined by the

Urban Dictionary as:

Traditionally a service-members [sic] dependent who is a “stay-at-home mom” that

doesn’t do a damn thing all day besides sitting on the couch looking remarkably similar

to Jabba the Hut leaching off of military benefits and eating anything that gets too

close.

Ziff and Garland-Jackson 377