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Women fighters and the ‘beautiful soul’ narrative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2010

Laura Sjoberg
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Abstract

This article explores women's presence in military forces around the world, looking both at women's service as soldiers and at the gendered dimensions of their soldiering particularly, and soldiering generally. It uses the ‘beautiful soul’ narrative to describe women's relationship with war throughout its history, and explores how this image of women's innocence of and abstention from war has often contrasted with women's actual experiences as soldiers and fighters.

Type
Women
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 92 , Issue 877: Women , March 2010 , pp. 53 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 2010

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41 Perhaps, as Melisa Brittain hypothesized, as a show of cultural superiority (above note 28).

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44 E.g. N. Gibbs, above note 38.

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69 L. Sjoberg and C.E. Gentry, above note 25, p. 125.

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71 L. Sjoberg and C.E. Gentry, above note 27.

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74 L. Sjoberg and C.E. Gentry, above note 25, p. 2.

75 L. Sjoberg, above note 30.

76 J.B. Elshtain, above note 4, p. 43.

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78 L. Sjoberg and C.E. Gentry, above note 25, p. 3.

79 This is not to say that women are not still disproportionately affected by war; quite the contrary, most of war's humanitarian effects, in the short and long term, still affect women differently (and often more severely) than men. It is only to argue two things: first, there is no trade-off between victimhood and agency; second, women do not now and have not ever fitted into the neat mould that the ‘beautiful soul’ narrative frames for them.

80 N. Huston, above note 1.

81 J.B. Elshtain, above note 4.

82 Judith Stiehm, Its Our Military Too! Women and the US Military, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1996; Francine D'Amico and Laurie Weinstein, Gender Camouflage: Women and the US Military, New York University Press, New York, 1999; Rachel Woodward and Trish Winter, Sexing the Soldier: The Politics of Gender and the Contemporary British Army, Routledge, New York and London, 2007.

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86 L. Sjoberg, above note 30.

87 Ibid.

88 L. Sjoberg and C.E. Gentry, above note 25.

89 E.g. J.B. Elshtain, above note 4.

90 See e.g. Janis Karpinski and Steven Strasser, One Woman's Army: The Commanding General of Abu Ghraib Tells Her Story, Miramax Books, New York, 2005.

91 L. Sjoberg, above note 30.

92 Terri Spahr Nelson, For Love of Country: Confronting Rape and Sexual Harassment in the US Military, Routledge, New York and London, 2002.

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