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Catastrophic wartime casualties and postwar discomfort with the successes of women who had served in combat roles combined to shatter prewar ideals about what service meant for Soviet masculine identity. The soldier had to be re-imagined and resold to a public that had just emerged from the Second World War, and a younger generation suspicious of state control. In doing so, Soviet military culture wrote women out and attempted to re-establish soldiering as the premier form of masculinity in society. Military Masculinity and Postwar Recovery in the Soviet Union combines textual and visual analysis, as well as archival research to highlight the multiple narratives that contributed to rebuilding military identities. Each chapter visits a particular site of this reconstruction, including debates about conscription and evasion, appropriate role models for cadets, misogynist military imagery in cartoons, the fraught militarized workplaces of nuclear physicists, and the first cohort of cosmonauts, who represented the completion of the project to rebuild militarized masculinity

This inspiring anthology it the first to convey the noteworthy experiences and contributions of women in the American military in their own words-from the Revolutionary War to the present wars in the Middle East. Serving with the Union Army during the Civil War as a nurse, scout, spy, and soldier, Harriet Tubman tells what it was like to be the first American woman to lead a raid against an enemy, freeing some 750 slaves. Busting gender stereotypes, Inga Fredriksen Ferris's describes how it felt to be a woman marine during World War II. Heidi Squier Kraft recounts her experiences as a lieutenant commander in the navy, deployed to Iraq as a psychologist to provide mental health care in a combat zone. In excerpts from their diaries, letters, oral histories, military depositions and testimonies, as well as from published and unpublished memoirs-generations of women reveal why and how they chose to serve their country, often breaking with social norms and at great personal peril.

We present findings from a critical discourse analysis of commentary from World Wrestling Entertainment's pay-per-view Evolution, an all-female wrestling competition. Approximately 10 minutes of match commentary were analysed, attending to the discourses operating within the text; the subject positions offered by them; and the implications these may have for subjectivity, action, and practice. Two discourses are presented: female wrestlers as "real athletes in a real combat sport" and "female wrestlers as conventionally feminine." The operation of these discourses through the text was interpreted as offering opportunities for women wrestlers to construct identities as serious sportspeople while at the same time limiting those opportunities through the requirement that they also demonstrate heteronormative femininity. We discuss these findings within the framework of neoliberal feminism and a postfeminist sensibility. We conclude that, contrary to its superficially feminist agenda, Evolution offers a narrow and contradictory space for women to construct legitimate identities as professional wrestlers, where discursive positions may be simultaneously offered and undermined by commentators.

The Indian government has presented itself as a champion of gender mainstreaming in UN peacekeeping. At the same time, the domestic security sector in India continues to create a gender-segregated environment and experiences of uniformed women in the field show remaining barriers for gender equity. Given this contradiction, the article examines the ambivalence inherent to Indian gender mainstreaming of peacekeeping units. We argue that transnational norms, such as gender mainstreaming, are embedded in larger norm bundles, and we combine the literature of norm localization and norm contestation in our conceptual framework to illustrate how India localizes parts of the gender mainstreaming norm bundle whilst contesting others. We find that India's localization of the gender mainstreaming norm has meant to pursue an asymmetric gender-parity approach between different branches of the Indian security forces and that it has fomented a division of labour within the police corps. Moreover, we illustrate how India contests the idea of placing women in security-sensitive areas, in combat roles, and gender-integrated police units.

Waves of American women's movements for reaching changes in their economic, social, and political lives started two centuries ago and were full of turbulences. The role of women in the military has a long history as well. Although the great majority of the U.S. military personnel have always been male, the military has needed and continues to need women's support and participation in many capacities. Starting from the Revolutionary War, the American women actively got involved in all the wars, but historically women's saliency in all XVIII-XX wars, would be substituted by their quiescence in the post-war periods, as a result of men's stereotypical attitude towards women's role which relegated them to the household chores. Alternatively, women's participation and contribution to the wars changed their self-images, and led them to expect equal treatment after the war as well. Men's patriarchal bias towards women's role was so strong, that it took several centuries, several wars to reach progress in the military and peace.Keywords: equal, post-war, military, combat

AbstractThe ever‐increasing prevalence of negative shocks experienced by poor, vulnerable households often induces extreme measures as ways to recover from the negative effects on income. Child marriage is one of the coping mechanisms households may use. This study examines whether young people in households that experience a negative shock are more likely to marry than those not experiencing a shock, and whether this effect differs by lineage system. I show that marrying off daughters is, in fact, a coping mechanism used by patrilineal households after experiencing a shock and that these effects are potentially strongest for young women who are already out of school. Conversely, I find no significant effect for young men. Additionally, I find suggestive evidence of an increased likelihood of young women engaging in transactional sexual relationships after a shock as an individual‐level coping mechanism. Understanding the mechanisms leading to the increased incidence of these phenomena provides valuable information that can help combat such practices.

Adopting a transnational feminist lens and using a political economy approach, this article addresses both the direct and indirect consequences of the 2003 war in Iraq, specifically the impact on civilian women. Pre-war security and gender relations in Iraq will be compared with the situation post-invasion/occupation. The article examines the globalised processes of capitalism, neoliberalism and neo-colonialism and their impact on the political, social and economic infrastructure in Iraq. Particular attention will be paid to illicit and informal economies: coping, combat and criminal. The 2003 Iraq war was fought using masculinities of empire, post-colonialism and neoliberalism. Using the example of forced prostitution, the article will argue that these globalisation masculinities – specifically the privatisation agenda of the West and its illegal economic occupation – have resulted in women either being forced into the illicit (coping) economy as a means of survival, or trafficked for sexual slavery by profit-seeking criminal networks who exploit the informal economy in a post-invasion/occupation Iraq.

AbstractIn this essay, I make the case that the intersectionality framework is useful to explain the high level of obesity among Black women. I describe how the intersectionality framework reformulates the examination of racial and gender disparities in health by deconstructing traditional frames of Whiteness and maleness. Next, I discuss key barriers that operate as mechanisms to reduce Black women's level of physical activity. Then, I provide ways to potentially combat these barriers. In doing so, I argue that being physically active is a privilege rooted in how race, place, gender, and body image converge differently on Black women's propensity to be physically active than other raced and gendered groups. Middle class Black women are excluded from class‐based privileges and experience a form of space invasion where their temporal space, geographic space, and bodily space are invaded. In this regard, this research agenda is not solely about physical activity but rather how the structural arrangements of communities contribute to healthy lifestyles.

Over the past four decades, violence against women (VAW) has come to be seen as a violation of human rights and an important concern for social policy. Yet government action remains uneven. Some countries have adopted comprehensive policies to combat VAW, whereas others have been slow to address the problem. Using an original dataset of social movements and VAW policies in 70 countries over four decades, we show that feminist mobilization in civil society—not intra-legislative political phenomena such as leftist parties or women in government or economic factors like national wealth—accounts for variation in policy development. In addition, we demonstrate that autonomous movements produce an enduring impact on VAW policy through the institutionalization of feminist ideas in international norms. This study brings national and global civil society into large-n explanations of social policy, arguing that analysis of civil society in general—and of social movements in particular—is critical to understanding progressive social policy change.

As wars exert increasing force on global affairs, there is greater demand for understanding the international diversity of family experiences with conflicts. This study examines the relationship between military participation during the Vietnam War (1965-1975) and first-marriage timing among northern Vietnamese men and women. Based on the Vietnam Longitudinal Survey and its recent followup, this paper describes cohort variations in the likelihood and timing of first marriage during pre-war, wartime, and post-war years and addresses the effects of veteran status, combat exposure, duration and timing of service. We find war did not decrease marriage likelihood among men but caused significant delays in first-marriage among veterans. Except for urban women, female first-marriage timing was largely immune from war impacts. Parental role in mate selection, residential propinquity, and postnuptial living arrangement helped facilitating wartime union formation. We extend the present discussion of marriage resilience to shed light on Vietnam's current marriage trends and the "flight from marriage" patterns in Pacific Asia.

Between 1900 and World War I an international political campaign was conducted against 'white slave traffic'. This campaign ultimately resulted in two international agreements to combat the procuring of women for 'immoral purposes' across borders. This article analyzes the politics of the Dutch campaign and argues that it gave rise to a powerful image of the white slave as a meaningful political concept. Although forced prostitution is identified as one of the realities of female migration, the 'white slave' is a historical construction. The first part of the article distinguishes the social meaning of the 'white slave' from older notions about prostitution as slavery. Using the lenses of race, gender and colonialism, the question is what the 'whiteness' of the white slave signified about women, sexual danger and the social order. The second part discusses the political and legal aspects of the Dutch campaign, for example, the rise of a gendered movement, the fight against the brothel and the nature of certain legal changes.

An examination of sex trafficking in the Balkans reveals how three interrelated social groups -- traffickers, trafficked women, & opponents of trafficking -- are all involved in the regional economy of the sex trade. The importance of the Balkans as a center of illegal trading networks is discussed. Data drawn from reports of the International Organization for Migration & the Southeastern European Cooperative Initiative are used to determine the volume, scope, & patterns of Balkan sex trafficking. The most common routes begin in Ukraine, Moldova, & Romania & move through Serbia to West European markets. Since 2000, Albania has been providing the greatest number of trafficked women. Migration, law enforcement, human rights, & structural approaches to conceptualizing the trafficking problem are explored, along with trafficking networks in nearby European Union (EU) states; EU efforts to combat sex trafficking; & the link between anti-trafficking efforts & security interests. It is contended that trafficking must be understood as a function of economic dependency & human rights rather than an illegal migration/law enforcement issue. 2 Tables. J. Lindroth