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Part of a review symposium on Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 2001) contends that Matthew Evangelista & Elisabeth Prugl (both, 2003) missed a key critique of the text's central claims & a key contribution that Goldstein's findings make to advancing equal opportunity in the military. Issue is taken with Goldstein's argument about the relationship between combat motivation & a militarized masculinity on the basis of three related claims: (1) This gendered identity does not contribute to military effectiveness. (2) There is no evidence that this militarized masculinity underpins combat motivation, &, in fact, Goldstein offers substantiation that it is not necessary for military effectiveness. (3) Goldstein also offers evidence that the values & attitudes that support militarized masculinity are as unnecessary & probably dysfunctional as those that propped up racial segregation. In this light, & in claiming that "biology is not destiny," three explanations are posited for the prevalence of male-dominated warfare: (A) Instead of assuming that a culture of militarized masculinity is functional to the military, the role that it plays in excluding women from combat should be examined. (B) Noting that not everything about militarized masculinity is dysfunctional, one should consider for whom it is functional. (C) Women's role in their near-exclusion from combat should not be underestimated. It is concluded that the larger legitimate concerns of Goldstein, Evangelista, & Prugl should not obfuscate War and Gender's capacity to further women's equality in the military. 9 References. J. Zendejas

This study examines reader responses to opinion editorials about women in combat and contributes to the literature on women in the military by explaining how contests over sex–gender essentialism and diversity underlie public debates about individual rights and military effectiveness. Comments in favor of women's ground combat exclusion use a logic of averages to promote essentialist thinking about men and women. They categorize women as inferior soldiers and argue that desegregation puts individual soldiers and the nation at risk. Conversely, comments in favor of integration advance a view of sex–gender diversity that places men and women along a continuum with overlapping qualities, suggesting further that giving exceptional women the freedom to serve in ground combat will advance both equality and military readiness. We argue that public commentary about women in combat concerns more than the military, underlying this discourse are distinct conceptions and expectations of men and women.

This study examines reader responses to opinion editorials about women in combat and contributes to the literature on women in the military by explaining how contests over sex–gender essentialism and diversity underlie public debates about individual rights and military effectiveness. Comments in favor of women's ground combat exclusion use a logic of averages to promote essentialist thinking about men and women. They categorize women as inferior soldiers and argue that desegregation puts individual soldiers and the nation at risk. Conversely, comments in favor of integration advance a view of sex–gender diversity that places men and women along a continuum with overlapping qualities, suggesting further that giving exceptional women the freedom to serve in ground combat will advance both equality and military readiness. We argue that public commentary about women in combat concerns more than the military, underlying this discourse are distinct conceptions and expectations of men and women.

What should we know about the roles of women in armed conflicts? I review the existing literature on women's roles in regular and irregular conflicts to identify gaps in our understanding of the significance of female combatants. I draw on contemporary and historical cases of women's combat participation across world regions and, in so doing, I challenge existing assumptions about the limits of women's participation in armed conflict. Examining women as a group and expecting conflict to affect this group in predictable and easily identifiable ways only reinforces existing assumptions about women and war. To understand the range of motivations underlying women's decisions to fight or to not fight, we should give greater attention to opportunity structures and other social conditions rather than simply assuming that women have different incentives than men.