Cross-Dressers with Benefits: Female Combat Soldiers in the U.S. and Israel

Abstract:     
From an international perspective, Israel presents an iconic view of women soldiers. Images abound of the young female soldier dressed in her navy green uniform and wielding an Uzi that is half her size. Yet, the image of Israel at the forefront of empowering women through military service personified in its girl soldiers is very misleading. Although permitted, Israeli women very rarely engage in even combat support roles, are completely absent as infantry and have advanced very insignificantly in military leadership. In fact, as I will demonstrate in this paper, the more parochial U.S., with its regulations that are clearly classificatory by sex - with a male only draft and women excluded from direct combat units - is actually more advanced in the quest for gender equality in the military.

The comparison I present between the role of women in the Israeli military and the U.S. military will demonstrate how feminism has taken hold differently across cultures with contrasting results. In Israel, where gender differences and inequalities are still deeply ingrained, facial attempts at gender neutrality provide little relief in the face of a legal and cultural background in which the role of mothering and gender difference has not been sufficiently unpacked and analyzed. Indeed, it is the significant sex-linked benefits provided to mothers and women in Israel in their military service (exemption from reserve duty, shortened draft) that prove to make women’s inequality resistant to facially neutral laws. By contrast, in the U.S., the military has carved out a special island of differentiation, but underlying advances in the treatment of women and alleviation of workplace inequalities, as well as changes in the very nature of warfare, have made women more equal in the military than draft or combat laws make apparent.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 33

Keywords: Women, Military, Benefits, Gender Theory, Equality

Accepted Paper Series