Suchergebnisse

This article addresses the relevance of gender to understand the transformations of civil-military relations in advanced democracies. After clarifying the analytical perspective in an opening section, it examines in a second section the debate over women's roles in the military - the so-called 'rights vs. readiness' debate - to show how gender issues have been both an arena for the expression of civil-military tensions and a constitutive element of civil-military relations. Resorting to available empirical information on Western advanced democracies, it focuses in a third section on the topic of women's military integration, highlighting how it has exerted pressures to bring about greater convergence between armed forces and societies. Since these pressures have not been uniform, the article highlights patterns of similarity and difference among countries, showing how varying constellations of circumstances in both armed forces and societies at large have produced different outcomes. The article makes two claims: that gender issues have become an increasingly important indicator of trends in civil-military relations and that both military effectiveness, and congruence between the armed forces and democratic social values can better be achieved if gender issues are addressed and gender integration is promoted in the military. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

La perspectiva de género llegó también a las Fuerzas Armadas. Aunque varía según los países, desde la Organización de las Naciones Unidas se ha impulsado en la agenda Mujeres, Paz y Seguridad. Pese a muchos obstáculos, la dimensión de género dejó de ser encarada como algo exterior y ajeno a los procesos de producción de seguridad y su inclusión pasó a constituir un elemento esencial de cara al éxito de las misiones militares y los procesos de paz. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The idea of reflexivity as a surveillance tool in research has been flourishing in the social sciences over the past four decades. But this has not been the case in the social scientific study of the military, where a relative absence of reflexivity in research practices and processes has been identified (Higate and Cameron, 2006). However, recent work in the field reveals a different trend, which can trigger a reflexive turn in the sociological study of the military. The paper aims to uncover the meaning and importance of reflexivity for the social scientific study of the military, both in terms of past practices— through a selective report on the state of the field—and in terms of the futures we want for this research area. It argues that far from being a constraint, reflexivity is the very condition for the production of social scientific knowledge and for asserting the validity and reliability of research results. As such, it is a path to be followed and strengthened by those who study the military and its relationship with the broader society. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion

This paper addresses the way how gender relations in the military are affected by personnel accession policies, namely the existence or absence of the draft. After reviewing the weight of military variables within theoretical models of factors that affect women's military roles, the paper proceeds with an inquiry into results of empirical studies that have aimed at evaluating this relationship. It ends with concluding remarks on the effects of changing representation patterns and of organisational policies on gender integration. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The aim of this article is to revisit the question of the social origins of the armed forces officer corps, using data drawn from a survey to all cadets following military training at the three Portuguese service academies in 2016. It puts forward the question of whether the sociological characteristics of the future military elite reveal a pattern of convergence with society or depart from it, in terms of geographical origins, gender and social origins. The article offers a sociological portrait of the cadets and compares it with previous studies, identifying trends of change and continuity. The results show that there is a diversified and convergent recruitment pattern: cadets are coming from a greater variety of regions in the country than in the past; there is a still an asymmetric but improving gender balance; self-recruitment patterns are rather stable, and there is a segmented social origin pointing to the dominance of the more qualified and affluent social classes. In the conclusion questions are raised regarding future civil-military convergence patterns as well as possible growing differences between ranks.