Abstract
This article addresses an underreported aspect of contemporary warring in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): the experiences of women soldiers and officers in the Congolese national armed forces (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo [FARDC]). It thus addresses an empirical gap in scholarly and policy knowledge about female soldiers in national armies on the African continent, and the DRC in particular. Based on original interviews, the article explores the way female soldiers in the FARDC understand their identities as “women soldiers” and offers new insight into women soldiers’ role and responsibilities in the widespread violence committed against civilians in the DRC. Moreover, it explores how their understanding of themselves as “women soldiers” both challenges and confirms familiar notions of the army as a masculine sphere. Such insight is important for better understanding the gendered makeup of the military and for contributing to a knowledge base for Security Sector Reform in this violent (post)conflict setting.
Introduction
The main story told about the warscape in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been about the abuse and rape of the civil population at the hands of soldiers and combatants. The perpetrator in this gendered war story, for the most part, is a man in uniform, and the victim is a civilian woman or girl. This story line certainly reflects an accurate and dire picture of a reality in the DRC. However, it is only one of many stories of warring in the DRC that warrant reflection.
In this article, we focus on another account of the Congolese armed forces (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo [FARDC]), which troubles the dominant framing of warring in the DRC, as well as familiar understandings about gender and war more generally (understandings that many women active in armed forces in diverse contexts have contested and problematized). 1 Based on original empirical material, the article explores the way female soldiers in the FARDC understand their identities as “women soldiers,” thus addressing an empirical gap in scholarly and policy knowledge about female soldiers in national armies on the African continent, and the DRC in particular. While there is a large body of research on women in the military, most of this research focuses on armed forces in the West. 2 Moreover, the considerable research on female combatants in Africa, 3 focuses on armed groups; there is, however, a significant dearth of research on women in African state armed forces. 4
While women and girls have participated in violent acts (including sexual violence) in the DRC as members of the state armed forces (FARDC) as well as the various armed groups, 5 both reporting of their acts and their voices have been largely absent in academic and policy debates, as well as in the media. In line with global norms, a “collective amnesia” 6 seems to surround women’s contributions (and complicity in violence) as combatants and soldiers in the DRC. However, while surely not unique globally, the silence surrounding female combatants in the national forces has been particularly evident in the DRC context. In contrast to many other postconflict contexts in Africa, the question of women combatants and women’s representation in security forces in the DRC has been glaringly absent from the policy agenda. 7
This silence, we aver, must be understood in relation to the singular focus on sexual violence in the DRC context. The well-needed focus on the vast devastation caused by widespread conflict-related sexual violence is manifested in (among other things) “gender and SSR” becoming synonymous with combating sexual and gender based violence, in particular, rape against civilians. Other gendered aspects (such as the situation of female soldiers), as well as the role of women soldiers in violence, unfortunately are neglected in security sector reform efforts. 8 Consequently, gendered interventions have mainly entailed efforts to educate and enlighten male soldiers in order to reconfigure their violent masculinities into responsibilized militarized masculinities, based on an ideal of male soldiers as the disciplined protectors of the civil population with a duty to protect women and children. 9
In light of this narrow focus, in this article we attend to some of the silenced voices in the stories of violence and war in the DRC warzone. More specifically, the article aims to explore the ways in which women soldiers in the FARDC make sense of themselves as “women soldiers.” Better understanding how they represent themselves as “women soldiers” is important for several reasons. On a general level, comprehending the gendered makeup of particular armed forces aids an understanding of how military institutions reflect and reproduce gendered relations in the societies in which they operate, and how such relations may hinder/facilitate desired goals. This implies gaining insight into what gender means in specific contexts of soldiering, as well as how soldiering is informed by gender. Furthermore, the women soldiers’ stories offer important and neglected insight into how the relations between gender and militarized violence are played out in the DRC military context. Given the extensive record of violence against civilians committed by the FARDC, women combatants’ role in, and reflection on, their own enactment of violence (while significantly smaller than that played by male soldiers) warrants attention if any substantial Security sector reform is to be successful in terms of mitigating such violence.
Throughout the article, we therefore attend to the following interrelated overarching questions: (1) How do the narrators perceive their roles and tasks within the armed forces? What (if it features at all) does the “woman” in “woman soldier” mean to them? (2) How do they make sense of their role and responsibilities in the widespread violence committed against civilians in the DRC by the FARDC?
The article proceeds as follows. First, we shortly outline our methodology. Next, we provide a brief background and history of women’s participation in the Congolese army. In the following section, Last Resorts, “Failed” Femininity and the Dignity of Parading, we explore the soldiers’ motivations for enrolling in the armed forces in relation to the different ways in which they articulate their subject positions as “women soldiers.” In the subsequent sections, we further explore how gender shifts and slides, as it is rearticulated in relation to different contexts in the soldier’s texts, often in contradictory ways. First, in the Fearless Fighters: Violence and Soldiering section, we address how they make sense of their role and responsibilities in relation to the violence committed by the FARDC. As we will see, a vast majority of those interviewed described themselves as having an equal propensity for—and agency in—the violence committed, in comparison with their male colleagues. However, while they embraced their role as agents of violence, and in general portrayed themselves as being similar to men (hence rejecting the label “woman” as a qualifier for “soldier” as meaningless in the context of the army), this story was also punctuated by other narratives in which “woman” signified difference. These stories will be addressed in the subsequent section, But Still a Sexual Temptress . . . and a Submissive Wife. We conclude with reflections on what women soldier’s voices may tell us about gender in the current FARDC.
Some Notes on Methodology
The article emerges from a research project 10 on gender and sexuality within the Congolese armed forces and is based on interviews with more than 230 soldiers and officers between 2006 and 2011. Approximately one-fifth of those interviewed were female soldiers and officers. It is these voices to which we attend in this article. Two-thirds of those interviewed were former government soldiers (ex-FAZ and FAC). The rest were integrated into the armed forces after the peace accord in 2002 and the first round of military integration including Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD), Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo (MLC), and the Mai-Mai. A majority experienced combat, either within the national army or within the armed groups to which they previously belonged.
While we did conduct some individual interviews, most interviews were organized as semistructured group interviews (groups of three to four persons) with soldiers/officers from the same unit with the same rank and gender. This setup (homogenous groups and group interviews rather than individual interviews) turned out to be the most fruitful, since it rendered the interview session less intimidating for the participants. 11 Moreover, the group interviews—following the structure of the army itself with people from the same rank who also knew each other—were advantageous in that the interview sessions often turned into open discussions and debates within the group itself around the theme of “being a woman soldier.” Maria Eriksson Baaz conducted the majority of the interviews in the national language Lingala (without an interpreter). In order to understand the ways the narrators invested the subject position “woman soldier” with meaning, the semistructured interviews addressed how the soldiers themselves saw their reasons for joining and their role in the armed forces, as well as in relation to civil–military relations.
Importantly, we view the texts that emerged out of the interview context as narratives coconstructed in a particular setting, not as accurate reflections of how those interviewed “really are” or of their “true” reasons for joining the military or participating in violent acts. 12 Instead of purporting to tell the generalized and “true” story of female soldiers in the FARDC, our analysis of these texts aims to show how the narrators made sense of themselves and their acts as “women soldiers” in their conversations with us. Our analysis is therefore based on what they chose to tell us (and each other) in the particular interview setting; these representations of their experiences, feeling, and reflections, while surely not the only account of “women soldiering,” provide valuable insight into a previously unchartered terrain in the DRC. 13
The soldiers appeared to view the interview occasion as a long-awaited opportunity to talk about their problems to somebody who was neither (fully) Congolese nor a member of the military, and who was perceived as having contacts with influential people (i.e., the international community international community and international donors). They expressed their frustrations in relation to the military hierarchy and their sentiments of betrayal and neglect in a surprisingly, but symptomatically unrestrained manner. This lack of restraint can be attributed to poor military cohesion, in particular vertical cohesion in the FARDC. 14
However, in this respect, there was a quite marked contrast between the interviews we conducted with men compared with those with women; women were much more careful and reserved in their critique of both their immediate superiors/commanders and the military institution as a whole. This reserve was also evident in relation to the issue of discrimination against women in the armed forces. The immediate response from a majority 15 of those we spoke with in most interview settings—echoing the official discourse—was that that gender has no place in the FARDC and that women and men are treated similarly. Hence, like many other military women in other military contexts, FARDC women soldiers “tend to resent the image of themselves as mistreated victims of predatory males.” 16 It was often only after we confronted them with contrary views expressed by male colleagues (for instance, “women have no place in the army, lack courage and strength, etc.,” see below) that they acknowledged that the FARDC is far from a gender equal site.
In her analysis of the armed forces of the Netherlands and Portugal, Carreiras explains that women soldiers tended to describe discriminatory practices as exceptional, understand discrimination as the result of particular characteristics of certain individuals, and state that such discrimination was primarily a problem for new recruits. 17 Learning from such studies, it is clear that the tendency to downplay discriminatory practices among those we interviewed (as elsewhere) reflects the particular importance put on codes of loyalty in armed forces worldwide. 18 Nonetheless, it must also be understood in the particular context in question; the quite extensive stigmatization of women soldiers (in the private and civilian spheres) in the DRC renders the idea of the army as a place of solidarity and comradeship particularly important for women in the FARDC. However, we would like to highlight again that the aim of this article is not to present facts of patterns of discrimination nor to contest or confirm common understandings of women FARDC soldiers as embattled victims of male aggression or discrimination, 19 but to attend to how they themselves speak of their role as soldiers/officers and agents of violence in the armed forces.
How do we attend to their roles as women soldiers? In the following paragraphs, we briefly lay bare our analytical framework for making sense of their narratives. As noted above, the Congolese women soldiers and officers we spoke with both reject and embrace (yet through subverting its negative connotations) the negatively charged qualification, “woman,” of their identity as “soldiers.” 20 They also grapple with how their being “soldiers” informs their womanhood, both in their eyes, and in the eyes of others (e.g., men in the military hierarchy, as well as society at large, including their families and communities). Our endeavor to understand their identity as “women soldiers (as represented to us in their narratives) entails paying attention to how the women soldiers we spoke with invest their subject position as “women soldier,” with meaning, as well as how they are situated through an array of interacting power relations (e.g., dominant gender discourses, and the political–economic context of the conflict).
We understand Identity as constructed through difference, and as a process of naming and investing in a subject position into which one is hailed through power relations. 21 Relatedly, identity construction can be seen as a process of perpetual becoming, which promises ultimate completion, yet never “arrives” at a finished, sovereign, stable self. 22 Following from this basic theoretical framework, we first explore the soldier’s motivations for entry in the army and therewith their stories of becoming in our analysis of the narrator’s interview texts, especially since such stories of becoming figured so centrally in their explanations of their role as women soldiers. Such reflections about how they came to be women soldiers, as we shall see, offer a fruitful entry point into understanding how the subject position “woman soldier” has been imbued with meaning by both themselves and by others.
In order to flesh out our fledgling exploration about women soldiering in the Congolese national forces, in the subsequent sections, we explore the meanings the narrators give to being a “women soldier” in relation to the different contexts of their lives, as well as to how they conceive of (and represent) their own agency in their narratives. The soldiers’ narratives refuse an erection of seemingly distinct boundaries between these subject positions, as well as a fixed meaning irrespective of context. 23 Clearly, our forced separation of the subject positions, “woman,” “soldier,” and “woman soldier” is highly problematic, as these categories mutually inform each other. Each subject position, such as that of “woman,” is produced out of a confluence, or “intersection” of interrelating power relations in a complex and dynamic play of power also imbuing other subject positions (e.g., as “soldier,” “poor,” “wife”) with meaning. We employ the analytical tool of parsing their subject positions into distinct categories as a way nonetheless to suggest how the soldiers we spoke with struggle over their attempts to make such a separation as a means of making sense of themselves as “woman soldiers.” In doing so, we also reveal the impossibility (through the inevitable failure of our attempted disaggregated discussions) of this very endeavor.
Women and the Congolese Army 24
A Brief Background
The present Congolese national army (the FARDC) was initially formed after the installation of the transitional government in 2003, and was until recently (2011) still being formed with the signing of new peace accords and the integration of new groups. The successful integration of former adversaries into one unified armed force remains an ideal that poorly reflects the present reality. Instead, the army remains quite fractured, with parallel chains of command and internal conflicts. 25 This state of affairs must largely be understood as a reflection of the politics and management of military integration itself, particularly the politics of negotiation that grants privileged access to certain areas in exchange for “integration” and a generous politics of ranks regardless of merit or training.
Women have been present in the Congolese (Zairian, FAZ) armed forces for a long time. Already in the late 1960s, soon after President Mobutu had consolidated his power, young women were recruited by force as a part of a plan (inspired by Muammar Gaddafi) to create an all-female brigade. While the all-female brigade never materialized, the women recruited during this time received good training often abroad and were initially trained as parachutists. Most of the current senior female officers come from this first generation, who were recruited during the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Motivated by these women, who were often prominently displayed in military parades, other women joined voluntarily during the Mobutu period. A new wave of women joined the armed forces (at that time FAC) at the outset of the second war in 1998 during the massive recruitment campaigns under Laurent Kabila. A further group of women was included after the peace accord in 2002 and the subsequent military integration (involving RCD, MLC, and the Mai-Mai). However, the proportion of women in the ranks of FARDC is low and has decreased steadily in recent years. The estimated numbers have dropped from approximately 5 percent women within the national army (FAC) before the integration of armed groups started in 2003, to currently approximately 2 percent. 26 The decrease can be attributed to several factors. While some women chose to demobilize rather than being integrated to the army, the requirement that one had to carry a gun in order to qualify for the combined disarmament and military integration process led to a (common place) nonrecognition of women as combatants. 27 Hence, many women did not reach the disarmament and military integration centers, or left without completing the process since their needs were not met. Moreover, few (male) commanders have encouraged/included the women in the integration process, assuming that many women in the ranks would diminish their status and power within the new military structure. 28 Hence, the ways in which the processes of military integration and DDR have been designed have resulted in a steady decrease of women’s participation in the armed forces.
As evident from the above, women in the FARDC are far from a homogeneous group. While the first generation received good training and occupies some important posts, the women who joined later (including later in the Mobutu period) received neither the same training nor enjoyed the same status as the first generation of women military staff. Like their male counterparts, many of the women who have been included through the post 2003 military integration processes have little or no formal schooling. In the interviews, the older generation (ex-FAZ) often distanced themselves from newer recruits, sometimes arguing that these women destroy the image of women in the army (through their low levels of training and education). 29
Like in other military institutions globally, many men in the FARDC military hierarchy question women’s presence in the armed forces. 30 While the ways in which military identities are produced through masculinity/femininity (as well as vice versa) are also locally specific, the arguments against increasing representation of women often echo those of military traditionalists elsewhere. 31 Male FARDC members make well-worn arguments (in a global perspective) against the feminization of the military, claiming that women’s (supposed) physical and psychological weakness makes them unsuitable for combat and that women’s presence erodes unit cohesion through fraternization and sexual distraction. 32 When speaking of the role/place of female soldiers, many male soldiers described them simply as “whores looking for clients” and (discursively) allotted them particular roles in the military sphere that were linked to their ‘womanhood’ and sexuality (such as acting as spies who would seduce their informants). 33 Male soldiers and officers often divided the army into different gendered spheres: the masculine sphere of combat, understood as the real army, and the rest—the sphere of feminine support.
Such notions of women soldiers’ capacities, “nature,” and roles are manifested in the allocation of ranks and functions within the military structure. Women are largely absent in the higher hierarchy and rarely occupy powerful positions. To date, there are only approximately twenty senior officers (Lt. Colonel and full Colonels) and no woman has yet been promoted to the rank of General. 34 While some women participate in combat troops, a few also as commanders, a majority of the female staff work with administration, medical care, intelligence, and logistics, mostly in urban areas. Many women who held combat positions during the war have been transferred to noncombat positions after their integration into the FARDC. Importantly, however, as noted above, a majority of the women we interviewed experienced combat, which figures centrally in their testimonies.
As discussed above, women soldiers were often reluctant to speak of experiences of marginalization and discrimination. Instead, they (re)constituted themselves as soldiers through other self/other lines of distinction,
35
such as that between the paucity of civilian life outside the military sphere, and the allure and opportunity of embodying a military self. However, when the issue was further probed (often after we confronted them with the views articulated by male soldiers), they referred to various dimensions of discrimination. As one captain explained: They [male superiors and colleagues] often see us as objects of pleasure [“objet de plaisir”], like flowers who should serve them tea . . . If they have the possibility they will always choose a man [for training and positions]. They say “it is enough for you, you are a woman”. Men always want women to be after/behind [“sima na ye”].
Let us now turn to the soldiers’ stories of motivations for enrolling in the armed forces, to their stories of “becoming.”
Last Resorts, the Dignity of Parading, and Desire: Motivations for Enlisting
The soldiers we interviewed provided an array of reasons for their being in the army. In line with the dominant imagery of women soldiers as (unwilling) combatants particularly in African warscapes,
38
some soldiers did indeed tell stories of being forced or abducted most often into the armed group to which they previously belonged, but also to the FARDC (or FAZ or FAC). Moreover, and importantly, some but not most stated that they joined because of poverty and circumstance. In these cases, their motivations to join the armed forces were described as a last choice, a fall-back option arising out of the dearth of other opportunities.
39
One sergeant explained as follows: All have their reasons why they joined. For me, it wasn’t my own choice. My father and mother divorced, so there was no longer a possibility to continue to study. Now, in our neighborhood where we were living, when they were recruiting for the army, the chiefs of the neighborhood [chef de cartier] considered being a soldier a bad job: “let’s put the name of the girl there (me) to go and be a soldier”[he said]. . . . So, a convocation [drafting committee] came to the house with the message for me to go and present myself. So I did and they told me I was going to be a soldier. “A soldier?!” “Yes,” “But how?” When I came back to the house I told my mother. Because when my parents divorced, we children remained with our mother. Our father had found another woman and was gone. I asked my mother what to do. She said go. “Go, also here there’s no work for you to do and you can’t continue your studies.” So I followed my mother’s advice.
40
Moreover, the portrayal of soldiering as a “last resort” had another dimension in the above soldier’s narrative—one which is common in many other testimonies globally. In the following quotations, for instance, the notion of “last resort” did not directly refer to the effects of poverty, but to experiences associated with intimate relationships. For some of the soldiers we interviewed, joining the military was described as the last resort after having been deceived by male partners and after having failed to succeed in expected markers of femininity, particularly the bearing of children. Two soldiers explained their rationales in the following ways: Me, I joined because I could not bear children. I was married first and we lived for five years and we didn’t conceive. My husband’s family told him to get another wife so he did. Then I met another man. We didn’t marry but stayed together, but also we didn’t get a child and he left me too. I met a third man but still didn’t have any babies so when he left me, I thought I might just as well join the Army.
41
I joined because of my husband’s deception. We had been married for a long time and had four children. We had saved some money to do business, but one day he just left, with all the money. I was left with nothing. That is when I decided to join the Army.
42
Such rationales resonate with similar accounts globally: many attribute women’s “voluntary” participation in violent organizations to “private” or “personal” reasons. Often, (even autobiographical) stories about young women’s lives and plights are peppered with “explanatory factors,” which ultimately deny her political agency and obfuscate the armed organization and its goals, as well as the political and ideological reasons behind her acts. 45 While this explanatory trope is most frequently used in relation to terrorist organizations, similar lines of argument are common globally in relation to the motivations for (particular) women to join the military and engage in violent combat—especially when this “choice” is proven to be destructive or deadly. 46
However, the “last resort narrative,” while certainly widely circulating in the group discussions, was not the most dominant one in the female soldiers’ stories. In fact, a majority stated more often than men that they joined out of free will or desire, as a “first choice.”
47
These women emphasized that they were attracted by “the dignity,” “order,” and the “discipline” of the Army. Military parades often occupied a central place in these accounts. One officer explained: I joined in 1992. I started as a result of the pleasure [plaisir] I felt when I saw the soldiers parading on the boulevard [the boulevard 30 Juin in Kinshasa city center] during Mobutu. They were parading, men and women, and I felt delighted. I thought: I have to become one of them. The way they marched and were dressed, I really wanted to join. I’ll never leave my job. Even now when I see my fellow colleagues parading it gives me a lot of pleasure. I joined because I, myself, wanted to (ngai moko kaka). Nobody told me or forced me . . . You have to tell the truth why you joined. For me it was not poverty [pasi]. It was my own choice, my own pleasure that brought me into the Army.
48
In some testimonies, the desire to join took the form of a more explicit wish to take part in combat and the wielding of “heavy” weapons:
50
I have always wanted to be a soldier. I wanted to be in combat—to fight and to defend my country. I liked it when I saw the parades and when I watched films of war. I also wanted to do that. People thought I was strange: “that is not a job for women” (ezali mosala po na basi te). And for some time I forgot my dream, but then when they started to recruit again [at the outset of the war] I went to present myself as a volunteer. I wanted to defend my country. And I wanted to be in combat. I wanted to fight with heavy weapons.
51
Additionally, most women who had enlisted after the entrance of AFDL (Laurent Kabila) and at the outset of the conflict, spoke of nationalist propaganda and a wish to defend the nation (thus disrupting the notion that “protection” is the sole domain of men and masculinity and “being protected” that of women and femininity—a dominant discourse underpinning the appeal of militarization globally).
52
For example, one captain who joined in 1998 during recruitment and mobilization campaigns (of which some took place in the big Stadium in Kinshasa) accounts for the reason why she enlisted in the following way: I joined as a volunteer, a volunteer in the stadium, to serve my country [servir ekolo], to defend our country. I joined when the AFDL entered [Kabila’s forces]. They told us that we were needed, that our country was threatened, that we had to defend it. That is why I joined. I wanted to defend the country and the people and the things [biens] within it. So that our country would prosper [po mboka ebonga].
53
We pause here, however, to reflect upon the relative lack of victimhood in the women’s stories (compared to male soldiers and officers whom, to a greater extent, presented their entry into the armed forces as a result of forced recruitment and “last resorts”
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), given that joining the army is attached with much stigma for women. How might we make sense of this lack? Because of the history of the army in terms of abuses against civil populations and notoriously low salaries, a military career carries rather low status in Congolese society, unless one is a senior officer with a good position. Most are reluctant to join the armed forces or to send their children to do so, with the exception of families with a military tradition.
55
While also male soldiers experience stigma and resistance from family members, women soldiers are much more exposed. Most women soldiers we spoke with had experienced strong resistance from their family as a consequence of having joined the armed forces. A majority recounted stories of their joining without telling their family or of long negotiation processes before finally getting their family’s consent. At the same time, these difficulties probably also contributed to the relative lack of narratives of victimhood in their stories. It can be assumed that the stigma and shame (and sometimes rejection) from family and society at large renders the solidarity and sense of belonging provided by the army particularly important to them (compared to male colleagues). In support of this suggestion, we noted how most women soldiers displayed overwhelming solidarity with their fellow soldiers and loyalty to the army—much more so than their male colleagues. Women soldiers often described the army as a family—a family in which they were valued and to which they belonged. This is juxtaposed with the frequent accounts of their alienation and rejection from their own families in direct relation to their being “failed” women, and then (later) “strange” woman soldiers (see above quotations). One soldier (no rank) explained as follows: The love within the army is stronger than that of the family, stronger that between your brothers and sisters. I would rather live with my fellow soldiers, than with my own family. Our bond is stronger than blood. If I just have a little to eat in my house I will say no to a family member and instead give it to a fellow soldier. Whatever we have, even if it is little, we share it in equal parts. We have a strong love. And it does not matter if it’s a man or a woman. We are one. We are soldiers.
56
As we proposed above, the identity “woman soldier” is not fixed; it shifts and slides as it is rearticulated in relation to different contexts in the soldier’s texts. We now pick up on some of the threads regarding the allure of the military laid down above and turn to the ways in which the narrators speak about the meaning of being a “woman soldier” specifically in relation to violence and soldiering in the military zone.
Fearless Fighters: Violence and Soldiering
Echoing familiar “equality” arguments worldwide, the majority of the women soldiers we interviewed explained to us that womanhood did not occupy a central part of their identity as soldiers.
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Indeed, most argued that gender had no significance in the army and strongly advocated for a full and equal inclusion of women in all domains of the armed forces, including combat, and as commanders of operational combat units.
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They stated that men and women were “the same” with similar capacities: We (men and women) are no different. It’s only a difference of sex, we can bear children and they cannot. But on other levels, physically, psychologically, there’s no difference. We are the same.
61
In the Army there’s not “men’s” or “women’s” work. Giving punishments is the same. And taking punishments is the same. Carrying a gun is the same. Shooting is the same. If one talks to your male colleagues, many explain that women are not suited for fighting in the front lines. They are lying.
62
Where did I come from? I just came from the front (in the East). Look at this wound (points at a bullet wound in the leg). I got it in an ambush. A bullet doesn’t care. It didn’t say, “you are a woman, so I will not hit you.” It doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman. A bullet doesn’t choose.
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They thus waylaid the easy and exclusive connection between masculinity and violence familiar in common accounts of the gendered military.
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Some contended that they had more courage than men and therefore could be seen as more suitable for combat.
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One captain explained as follows: You know, often we women are stronger than the men. Some men are really afraid (kobanga eleki). Many men have no courage and panic. My experience is that women are less afraid and thereby better, more daring and more accountable in combat (okoki kozala na confidence na bango). They don’t panic and they don’t desert you.
66
No, I don’t think that more women in the army would reduce violence against civilians. Violence isn’t about men and women. Some men are violent and some are not. Some women are violent, others not. Some women are disciplined, others not. And it’s the same with men. Some men are compassionate, more compassionate than women. So you cannot generalize like that. It depends on your personality and the education you had from home.
67
We went into a big forest. The civilians there came to us and told the commanders “you see the house there, it’s full of government soldiers.” We went there, opened the house and took them out. There were both soldiers and civilians. There were so many of them there. So many. Our commanders started to separate them into different groups and lined them up: the young men in one group and the older men in another group. Our commander told us women soldiers to come forward, at that time we were many. “Do you see the old men over there? Shoot them to get rid of your fear (bobeta bango masasi po bobimisa kobanga)”. At first I froze. What should I do? I had never killed anyone before, what should I do? But if you don’t obey orders they’ll kill you. I looked up and I looked down, said a prayer. I said “God, this is the work I have, the work as a soldier.” We started to shoot them, shot and shot. And from then on (my) spirit changed (Mbala moko esprit echanger). The fear of killing went away. (Kobanga ya koboma esili.)
Killing in combat or according to orders is not the only violence that women soldiers commit. Women combatants have also participated in acts of sexual violence. 69 Moreover, the explanations given for sexual violence were similar in both male and female narratives. Female soldiers, like male soldiers, often explained that a certain type of rape (a lust rape) was “understandable” and expected, given the dire conditions male soldiers contended with in the FARDC. They thus showed an affinity with the plight of the male soldiers who were more or less “forced” to rape, they reasoned, because of lack of money and leave. 70 In these discussions, it was clear that the narrators were discursively establishing themselves as soldiers in the army family; their also being women, they implied, was of little relevance and did not inform their relation to—even intimacy with—violence, nor the victims thereof, in any particular way.
Without in any way attempting to minimize their insistence on their capacities in combat, we propose that the strength in which the narrative of the “fearless fighter” emerged in many stories could be understood also in relation to the privileged role of combat in defining soldiering. As De Groot concludes, it is “the potential to kill which determines real soldierly identity and is the qualification for the status and social capital which accrue from that identity” 71 —at least for women. While men who serve in “support services,” such as medics or logistics, seldom have difficulties in legitimating their rights to be called a soldier, women occupying these positions are continually subject to questioning. 72 In contrast to male soldiers in similar functions, they are often described, not as soldiers, but as providing support functions for “the real soldiers.” Hence, the strength in which the narrative of the seemingly gender-less “fearless fighter” emerged in many women soldiers’ stories could be understood also in relation to this discursive strategy where male soldiers resist “feminization” 73 by the separation of the army into different sectors. Combat is described as the function of the real (masculine) army. By so unequivocally inscribing themselves in the “masculine” zone of violent combat, we suggest, women soldiers aim to clearly establish (in front of us, each other, and perhaps even for themselves) their soldier identity.
It should be noted that the insistence on equal capacity for combat and violence often was accompanied with an insistence that deployment in combat units should be voluntary, and take their role as mothers into account. 74 One of the main problems brought up by the soldiers in the interviews was the lack of child care facilities and the absence of leave in the FARDC, which forces many women to take their children with them to the “front areas,” or leave them with family members. Because of the lack of leave and the vast distances (and limited infrastructure in terms of roads and railroads) many women cannot see their children, sometimes for years. 75 Hence, rather than reflecting a general struggle to be more included in combat duties, the above emphasis on equal capacity for combat and violence should be understood as reflecting a claim to their rights to be part of combat, and thereby to secure their soldier identity. As noted above, their struggles for inclusion focused, above all, on equal access to training and important functions (generally defined) and not necessarily on positions in combat units.
But Still a Sexual Temptress . . . and a Submissive Wife
“Fearless fighter,” however, is not the only (self) representation that emerged in the interviews: two other familiar (and somewhat dissonant) discourses also underpinned the ways the narrators filled the subject position “women soldier” with meaning: the “sexual temptress” and “the submissive wife.” In this section, we first explore the ways they make sense of themselves as a sexual temptress, and then as a “submissive wife.” We then turn to a discussion of how these discourses interact, clash, and coexist in relation to each other, but also to the notion of the “fearless fighter” discussed above.
As we suggested previously, while women tended to be critical of the idea that there are separate jobs for men and women in the army, many female soldiers nonetheless identified intelligence work—being “spies at the front”—as especially suited for women. (Many male military staff shared this notion as well.
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) Two soldiers explained: The work in the army, which is best suited for us women, is within intelligence, as spies (ecleraire). Often other men don’t know about this. But they send you on secret missions to get information about the enemy. You dress well and go there, to a bar, make them drink. They will like you. You flatter them, the way women do with men. Do you sometime have to go further to get information, to sleep with them? No, I don’t sleep with them. That is not the assignment. You just flatter them, tell them how good they are, how nice they are, make them talk. Then you say that you have to go to the toilet and then you call and give the information. Or you write it down on a piece of paper, everything, their position, what they have, their weapons, everything. That is a job that a man cannot do.
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As evident in this quotation, this type of “intelligence work” makes sense through its association with the familiar sexualized image of the woman temptress, which forms part of a classic narrative of women soldiers in history: a “whore narrative.” The “whore narrative” has occupied a particularly prominent role in portrayals of women in the armed forces globally. 78 Hence, in repeating and reproducing this sexualized image of army women, which arguably affords them clout and a certain agency and power, it could be argued that the narrators also reproduce an image that minimizes their roles and works to exclude them from combat. The sexualized image of women soldiers is central for arguing against women’s participation in combat units (through the rationale that women’s presence erodes unit cohesion through fraternization and sexual distraction). 79 Moreover, this narrative could also be interpreted as a way to maintain the masculine identity of the armed forces: women soldier’s contribution becomes devalued and demilitarized through sexualization. 80 While surely an important function requiring bravery, intelligence, as it emerges here (and in numerous other contexts globally), “merely confirms that the ‘soldier’ is in fact a woman.” 81 In this sense, we see how when speaking of their role in intelligence, they invest in the subject position “woman” in relation to being a soldier (in sharp contrast to the previous discussion about combat). This position, however, is highly ambivalent: it is positively charged in recognition of women’s special and important skills, while simultaneously evoking a notion of inferior “woman” as qualifier for the masculine-coded “soldier.”
Women soldiers, the narrators told us, however, are not only “sexual temptresses,” they are also “submissive wives.” While this identity, in contrast to those of the fearless fighter or sexual temptress, is not self-evidently connected to their position as soldiers, we nevertheless deem it important to mention it here. We chose to do so since it occupied a central place in many interviews, but also, and particularly, because this story is clearly informed by and importantly, serves to produce their identity as soldiers.
While relations between men and women at work were described (ideally) as relations between equals with the same capacities, rights and duties, relations between men and women at home were portrayed in quite a different manner. In the home, ideal gender relations were conveyed as relations between a superior (man) and his subaltern (woman). One women soldier argued as follows: That women soldiers are not submissive? No. Men are men. Work is work, and love is love. In the house I am submissive to my husband. You have to be submissive. In the house you have to follow the orders of your man.
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The same submission that we have at work, we have at home. So we know submission better than other (civilian) women. The way we have different ranks in the army and have to follow the orders of a superior, it is the same in the house. Even if I would have a superior rank to my husband at work, I have to obey him at home. You have to place yourself in the role of a wife and obey your husband.
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Many civilian men fear us. But some also like to try us, to be (sexually) with a women soldier to see how it is. But we are no different, we are like all women. Maybe they think that we will bring the commanding all the way into the bedroom and give them orders. (everybody laughs) But I am a woman, like all other women. The blood you have is the same that I have. We are the same.
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While the “submissive wife” narrative could be understood partly as an effort to contest stigmatization, the narrators' investment in the subject positions allotted them through the “female temptress” discourse, is more difficult to understand. Why do they invest in the position of the female temptress when at the same time they so strongly oppose traditionally negatively loaded sexualized images of women soldiers? The investment in the position of the female temptress could, we suggest, be understood in relation to both discourse and practice within the FARDC, which celebrates and rewards women’s roles within intelligence. Many women work (or have been working) within intelligence. Moreover, men (most often) celebrate women’s contributions in intelligence. For these women, the story line of the “female temptress” provides meaning and value to their work. By scripting themselves as providing a unique contribution, women soldiers seemingly secure their soldier identity. This sense of themselves as soldiers, in contrast to the “fearless fighters” subject position, embodies difference but is nevertheless connected to a vital role in military operations (intelligence).
Concluding Discussion
In this article, we have provided a glimpse of an alternative story about the DRC warscape—a story that has been glaringly absent in its reporting and which has therefore been left out of policy discussions in a vast array of forums. The very act of bringing women FARDC soldiers’ voices to the fore invites others to further pursue avenues of inquiry that have not been touched on or imagined here.
As we have seen above, a vast majority of those interviewed recognize their role and agency in relation to the rampant violence committed by the army against civilians in the DRC. They described themselves as having an equal propensity for violence as their male colleagues, and firmly established themselves as willing combatants. Their accounts therefore problematize a common notion in contemporary efforts at “gendering” Security Sector Reform. The few voices that advocate for including more women in the state security forces in the DRC, do so mainly as a way to mitigate the high levels of abuses against civilians and only rarely base their arguments on a “rights” or “representational” premises. 86 These propositions are part of a general global trend in favor of women’s increased participation—from an operational effectiveness standpoint 87 —in the core security sector institutions, particularly so in peace-keeping operations. The basic rationale behind such efforts is that the inclusion of women in security forces is a “key to success” that will improve civil–military relations, diminish violence against civilians, especially sexual abuse. 88 Women are assumed to be “civilizing” presences, who extend their “feminine traits” to the men in their proximity, resonating with familiar notions of women as beautiful and peaceful souls, notions that have underpinned common narratives of peace and war. 89 As we have shown in this article, however, this supposition holds little, if any, purchase in the eyes of many female soldiers in the DRC. In sharp contrast to such lines of argument, they disavow any “civilizing” or “peace making” that their presence might promise.
Moreover, the women soldiers’ narratives often exhibited a strong sense of agency—in contrast to male soldiers in the FARDC who, to a large extent, positioned themselves as victims (of forced recruitment, of mistreatment and neglect). Instead, women soldiers spoke about the appeal of military belonging, their desire to fight, and conveyed a sense of empowerment through their soldiering and engagement in combat. Hence, their narratives trouble familiar and underexamined assumptions about the ways in which women soldiers are and invite us to rethink our comfortable gendered war stories, 90 especially in the formulation of policy.
That their narratives interrupt dominant discourses, however, does not mean that women FARDC soldiers consistently challenge entrenched gendered narratives in military institutions. Our respondents navigated amid familiar (and globalized) dominant gender and military discourses, recomposing a story line about themselves that arguably both enables and hinders them in their struggle for recognition, acceptance, and equality. As we have seen, their narratives are highly ambivalent, both challenging and confirming familiar stories of women soldiers and combatants, and blurring the very lines of distinction (such as that between the private/civilian sphere of the home and the military sphere) that they struggle to maintain.
While firmly contesting the term woman soldier and notions of the army as a masculine sphere, they also reproduce the very discourses they resist. For instance, in some stories, the motivation for joining the armed forces reflected and repeated the well-worn story line of the armed forces as a masculine sphere and as a last resort for women who have failed to live up to their female role as wives and mothers, thereby feeding into the familiar notion of the military as a male sphere, not suited for “real women.” Moreover, while they opposed the idea that there are special tasks for men and women in the army, many (drawing upon the sexualized image of women soldiers) still emphasized that intelligence is particularly suited for women. Through such story lines they reproduce the very discourses that render women’s contribution in war invisible, and limit them from being included in the army, particularly in combat units.
In paying close attention to how women soldiers in the DRC make sense of themselves, we have gained insight into how the subject position “woman soldier” is filled with meaning (e.g., through the “fearless fighter,” the “sexual temptress,” and the “submissive wife” narratives) and how meanings shift and slide in the different discursive contexts in their interviews. We also see how the subject, “women soldier” is a site of negotiation, contestation, contradiction, and multiplicity as it is represented to us in the narrators’ testimonies. Simply put, the people we spoke with struggle with and make sense of being a woman soldier in different ways —ways which both reinforce and trouble established understandings about gender and the military both globally and in African contexts, specifically.
In sum, their narratives indicate how women soldiers, as “women,” are forced into uncomfortable positions where they feel they must, but cannot, escape or step outside of their sex/gender. The possibility of being merely a soldier is circumscribed and their contribution is ignored. However, by paying attention to the ways in which “gender” and “the military” are being reconfigured by people who live and work in particular settings, we learn how gender and the military are open questions, works in progress, instead of known entities that can be fixed, mainstreamed, or reformed in formulaic and already-known ways.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
We extend our gratitude to the members of the FARDC, who generously gave their time and their experiences, and to all those who facilitated our research in the DRC. We would also like to thank Hanna Leonardsson, Judith Verweijen, participants at the European Conference on African Studies (ECAS 4) in Uppsala, June, 2011, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on drafts of this article. Additionally, we thank Hanna Leonardsson for her excellent editorial assistance.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: The article draws on a research project on gender and sexuality within the Congolese Armed Forces, which was funded in full by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).