This article explores the discourse and gendered constructions that surrounded the debates on expanding seagoing roles for women in the U.S. Navy between 1978 and 2000. By comparing arguments against the expansion of women's seagoing roles across multiple years, it is possible to assess whether the arguments about women's exclusion have essentially changed. The arguments against expanding women's roles were framed in the context of diminishing military effectiveness based on stereotypical notions of women's capabilities. The arguments in favor of expanding women's roles were also framed within the construct of military effectiveness, with an emphasis on equal citizenship responsibility and democratic values. These results show a consistency of discourse throughout the periods studied.
Nurses on hospital ships were the exception; Jeanne Holm, Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution, rev. ed. (original 1982; Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1992).
2.
Women's Armed Services Integration Act of 1948, House of Representatives, 80th Congress, 2nd session, Conference Report No. 2051, May 26, 1948.
3.
Holm, Women in the Military.
4.
Ibid.; and Jean Ebbert and Marie-Beth Hall, Crossed Currents: Navy Women in a Century of Change, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: Batsford Brassey, 1999).
5.
Use of content analysis of “documents of experience” as a research method looks at “themes, issues and recurring motifs [which] can be isolated, counted and interpreted”; Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds., Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,1998). This is what I am attempting to do with this study, and I readily accept that the findings may not be generalizable. But I think I make a case for these attitudes being prevalent since they are consistent throughout the periods. Denzin and Lincoln also readily acknowledge that even in quantitative research, bias of interpretation cannot be avoided.
6.
Public Law 106-398, the 2001 Defense Authorization Bill.
7.
Denzin and Lincoln, Qualitative Materials.
8.
Mady Wechsler Segal and Amada Faith Hansen, “Value Rationales in Policy Debates on Women in the Military: A Content Analysis of Congressional Testimony, 1941-1985,”Social Science Quarterly73, no. 2 (June 1992): 295-309.
9.
Darlene M. Iskra, “Women in Submarines: Have the Arguments about Expanding Women's Seagoing Roles in the U.S. Navy Changed Over Time?” (Master's thesis, University of Maryland, College Park, 2003).
10.
E-mail between managing editor for Proceedings and author (November 4, 2005).
11.
E-mail between news editor for Navy Times and author (November 3, 2005).
12.
Segal and Hansen, “Value Rationales.”
13.
Norman K. Denzin, “The Art and Politics of Interpretation,” in Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998), 329-331. This method is best regarded as a general scientific method concerned with the detection and explanation of social phenomena. Grounded theory is a problem-oriented endeavor in which theories are inductively generated from robust data patterns. It is the most widely used qualitative interpretive framework in social sciences. It also answers the need to place qualitative research within the “good-science model.” The analysis here used previous research and my collected data to expand and refine categories of arguments.
14.
The social-construction perspective views the various attitudes about the appropriate roles for women and men as being developed by society and social groups rather than biologically determined; Judith Lorber, “The Social Construction of Gender,” in Race, Class, and Gender in a Diverse Society: A Text Reader, ed. Diana Kendall (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001), 83-89. The status-inequality perspective views gender as a nominal (or ascriptive) characteristic that has become status valued through social construction. Religion, region of origin, ethnicity, race, and gender are all nominal characteristics in our society. This is in contrast to graduated or achieved characteristics such as wealth or education, in which individual levels may vary. Both race and gender have clearly established status value; assumptions are made that it is more valuable to be male than female, white than black; Cecilia L. Ridgeway, “The Social Construction of Status Value: Gender and Other Nominal Characteristics,”Social Forces 70, no. 2 (December 1991): 367-86.
15.
David R. Segal,Recruiting for Uncle Sam: Citizenship and Military Manpower Policy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989).
16.
Exploring Constitutional Conflicts, http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/era.htm (accessed November 17, 2005).
17.
Linda K. Kerber,No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998).
18.
Ebbert and Hall,Crossed Currents; and Holm,Women in the Military.
19.
Lory Manning,Women in the Military: Where They Stand, 5th ed. (Washington, DC: Women's Research and Education Institute, 2005).
20.
Ebbert and Hall,Crossed Currents; and Holm,Women in the Military.
21.
Lieutenant J. McMonagle, U.S. Navy,Proceedings, April 1979, 90-90.
22.
Andy Plattner, “Women in Combat, Views Vary Widely on Difficult Issues,”Navy Times Proceedings, December 1979, 24-24.
23.
Quartermaster Second Class James W. Rockefeller, U.S. Coast Guard, Proceedings, December 1979, 24.
24.
The sea-shore rotation for an individual rating is based on the number of billets at sea compared with the number of billets ashore and the number of people in that rating. When women were allowed to go to sea, they were so few in number and limited to the types of ships and ratings they could enter that the sea-shore rotation for most men was not affected.
25.
Rear Admiral Richard Lane, U.S. Navy (ret.),Proceedings, January 1979, 86-86.
26.
Ebbert and Hall,Crossed Currents.
27.
Holm,Women in the Military; and Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces,Report to the President, November 15, 1992.
28.
Statement of Vice Admiral Ronald J. Zlatoper, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Manpower, Personnel and Training, Chief of Naval Personnel, Department of the Navy to the House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services (HASC), Military Forces and Personnel Subcommittee,Women in Combat Hearing, Wednesday, May 12, 1993.
29.
Statement of Elaine Donnelly, member of the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces to the HASC,Women in Combat Hearing.
30.
See dissenting opinions in the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces,Report to the President, and representative oppositional opinions at Center for Military Readiness Web site: http://www.cmrlink.org/.
31.
HASC,Women in Combat Hearing.
32.
Lieutenant John L. Olliges, U.S. Navy, “Nobody Asked Me, but... No Double Standards.”Proceedings, January 1993, 94-95.
33.
Carlos C. Campbell, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, Proceedings, May 1993, 32-32.
34.
Roger L. Sams,Proceedings, March 1993, 22-22.
35.
Bob Holland, Captain, “Submarine Personnel Assignment” (Presentation by the Submarine Community Manager to address questions brought up by the fall 1999 DACOWITS Conference); HASC, Women in Combat Hearing; and “CNO Sinks Sub Changes... For Now,”Navy Times, September 13, 1999, 3-3.
36.
Holland, “Submarine Personnel Assignment.”
37.
Richard Boyle, “Women Should Not Serve in Submarines,”Proceedings, December 1999, 96-96.
38.
John L. Byron,Proceedings, February 2000, 28-28.
39.
Navy Times, April 11, 1994.
40.
Elizabeth Barge, “Tailhook: Cause and Effect?”Navy Times, March 21, 1994, 38-38.
41.
April Anderson, GSE3,Navy Times, October 11, 1999.
42.
Secretary of the Navy Instruction 1000.10A, “DON Policy on Parenthood and Pregnancy” (dated September 9, 2005).
43.
Melissa Tyson,Proceedings, July 2000, 25-25.
44.
See Holm,Women in the Military; Brenda Moore,To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996); Mady Wechsler Segal and David R. Segal, “Social Change and the Participation of Women in the American Military,”Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 5 (1983): 235-58; and David R. Segal and Meyer Kestnbaum, “Professional Closure in the Military Labor Market: A Critique of Pure Cohesion,” in The Future of the Army Profession, ed. Don M. Snider and Gale L. Watkins (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 441-458.
45.
James Nugent, “Not in Our Submarines,”Proceedings, December 2000.
46.
Navy Times, February 21, 1994; and Navy Times, May 23, 1994.
47.
Barge, “Tailhook.”
48.
Steven J. Forsberg, “The Sky Won't Fall if Women Are Assigned to Submarines,”Navy Times, October 16, 2000.
49.
Mady Wechsler Segal and Jesse J. Harris,What We Know about Army Families (Alexandria, VA: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1993).
50.
Lorry M. Fenner and Marie E. deYoung,Women in Combat, Civic Duty or Military Liability? (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001).
51.
This is true except for hospital ships and transports, none of which were in service in the 1970s.
52.
Navy women may be assigned temporarily for training.
53.
Federico E. Garcia,Women at Sea: Unplanned Losses and Accession Planning (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analysis, 1999); and Manning,Women in the Military.
54.
Professional closure refers to the concept of limiting entry into an occupational specialty based on ascriptive attributes, such as race, gender, or sexuality, rather than ability or experience; Segal and Kestnbaum, “Professional Closure.”
55.
Mady Wechsler Segal, “Women's Military Roles Cross-Nationally: Past, Present, and Future,”Gender & Society9, no. 6 (1995): 757-775.
56.
In the February 13, 2006, issue of Navy Times (p. 12), Master Chief Terry Scott, the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, the highest ranking enlisted person in the Navy and a former submariner, stated for the record that women should be allowed to serve in submarines. He said that he believed Navy culture (I would argue submarine culture)—not a lack of funding or logistical constraints—is the only fundamental hurdle to the idea.
