Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies

A Gendered Analysis of Women in Combat

Ayelet Harel-Shalev and Shir Daphna-Tekoah

Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations

The first book-length treatment to provide interviews with 100 Israeli combat women and veterans
Includes narratives of combat trauma among women soldiers, which presents an understudied aspect of trauma studies
Highlights the nuances and multiple layers of narratives and voices of women in war

Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies

A Gendered Analysis of Women in Combat

Ayelet Harel-Shalev and Shir Daphna-Tekoah

Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations

Description

Several months after a 2014 operation in the Gaza Strip, fifty-three Israeli Defense Forces combatants and combat-support soldiers were awarded military decorations for exhibiting extraordinary bravery. From a gendered perspective, the most noteworthy aspect of these awards was not the fact that only 4 of the 53 recipients were women, but rather the fact that the men were uniformly praised for being "brave," being "heroes," "actively performing acts of bravery," "protecting," and "preventing terror attacks," while the women were repeatedly commended for "not panicking." This pattern is not unique to the Israeli case, but rather reflects the patriarchal norms that still prevail in military institutions worldwide. One might expect that, now that women serve on the battlefield as combatants, some of the gendered norms informing militaries would have long disappeared. As it stands, women in the military still face a double battle—against the patriarchal institution, as well as against the military's purported enemies.

Drawing on interviews with 100 women military veterans about their experiences in combat, this book asks what insights are gained when we take women's experiences in war as our starting point instead of treating them as "add-ons" to more fundamental or mainstream levels of analysis, and what importance these experiences hold for an analysis of violence and for security studies. Importantly, the authors introduce a theoretical framework in critical security studies for understanding (vis-à-vis binary deconstructions of the terms used in these fields) the integration of women soldiers into combat and combat-support roles, as well as the challenges they face. While the book focuses on women in the Israeli Defence Forces, the book provides different perspectives about why it is important to explore women in combat, what their experiences teach us, and how to consider soldiers and veterans both as citizens and as violent state actors—an issue with which scholars are often reluctant to engage. Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies raises methodological considerations about ways of evaluating power relations in conflict situations and patriarchal structures.

Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies

A Gendered Analysis of Women in Combat

Ayelet Harel-Shalev and Shir Daphna-Tekoah

Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations

Chapter 1 - Women in Combat: A Gendered Perspective
Chapter 2 - Violent State Actors in Feminist Research and Critical Studies
Chapter 3 - Listening to Narratives of Security and In-Security
Chapter 4 - The Politics of Trauma, Gender and War
Chapter 5 - Body, Sex/Gender and Integration of Women into Combat Roles
Chapter 6 - Narratives of Security and In-Security
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies

A Gendered Analysis of Women in Combat

Ayelet Harel-Shalev and Shir Daphna-Tekoah

Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations

Author Information

Ayelet Harel-Shalev, Senior Lecturer, Conflict Management & Resolution Program & Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Nagev, and Shir Daphna-Tekoah, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Work, Ashkelon Academic College

Ayelet Harel-Shalev is a political scientist. She is Associate Professor at the Conflict Management and Resolution Program and The Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Harel-Shalev is the author of The Challenge of Sustaining Democracy in Deeply Divided Societies and co-editor (with Arthur A. Stein) of Affect, Interest, and Political Entrepreneurs in Ethnic and Religious Conflicts. Shir Daphna-Tekoah is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Work of the Ashkelon Academic College, Ashkelon, Israel, and the Head of the Social Work Department, Kaplan Medical Center, Rehovot, Israel. Her academic interests include Gender, Health and Violence, Women Combatants, Child Abuse and Neglect, and Dissociation and Trauma.

Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies

A Gendered Analysis of Women in Combat

Ayelet Harel-Shalev and Shir Daphna-Tekoah

Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations

Reviews and Awards

"This brilliantly illuminating book challenges a series of familiar binaries in a highly original way. The authors distinguish multiple voices, and by doing so, arrive at a new and far more nuanced understanding not only of gender but also of security and insecurity, conflict, and trauma. Written by two of Israel's most courageous thinkers and foremost feminist scholars, this is a vibrant and vital addition in a wide range of fields" - Carol Gilligan, Professor of Humanities and Applied Psychology, New York University

"The authors enter unexplored areas in this book. Rather than the oftenstudied topic of women and peace, this work looks at women combat soldiers. Moreover, by employing a psycholinguistic analysis, placed within the framework of feminist international relations studies, the authors probe the subtleties and depth of gender responses in a situation of ongoing warfare. This is a very worthwhile, and enlightening, treatment covering new ground."" - Galia Golan,, Darwin Professor emerita, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"This fascinatingly graphic book is sure to enliven our current conversations about security what is security, how do we promote it, what undermines it. These wonderfully diverse narratives from women in military combat roles provoke fresh thoughts about the tangled relationships between security, violence, silence, masculinities, femininities, peace, and militarism."" - Cynthia Enloe, author of Globalization and Militarism

"Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies upends multiple conventions that deserve to be questioned. The book interrogates simple gender dichotomies as well as those that contrast war versus peace, combatant versus victim, and state versus society. Ayelet HarelShalev and Shir DaphnaTekoah present gripping material drawn from interviews with 100 women who served as Israel Defense Force combatants or combat support personnel. An invaluable contribution to feminist research, this study is among the first to illuminate how combat soldiers cope with trauma in a strong military and, later on, as civilians in a highly militarized society" - Sylvia Bashevkin, author of Women as Foreign Policy Leaders

Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies

A Gendered Analysis of Women in Combat

Ayelet Harel-Shalev and Shir Daphna-Tekoah

Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations

From Our Blog

Women on the front lines: Military service, combat and gender

The 1990s saw women beginning to fill a wider range of roles in the military, with many countries relaxing their bans on women serving in combat roles. As a result, women are able to fly combat aircraft, serve in artillery units, staff missile emplacements, serve as combat medics, and fill various other roles that involve potential combat exposure. Additionally, many more women are assigned to combat-support roles located on the front line. Yet most research on women involved in military life still concerns itself with the wives of enlisted men, women in civilian posts within the military, women that were sexually assaulted in the military, or women in non-combat-related military service. It is thus patently obvious that women combatants and veterans who fulfill assignments in conflict zones deserve closer attention.

Posted on January 10, 2020

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