WOMEN WARRIORS
The Changing Press Portrait of GI Jane
The law of unintended consequences was at work when the Defense Department decided in the mid-1970s to help fill its post-draft manpower needs by actively recruiting women. Pentagon planners had hoped to confine women to non-combat jobs. But the policy set off a gender war as military women, reflecting a trend in society at large, pushed for equal opportunity across the board, combating sexual abuse and harassment along the way. As this military gender conflict unfolded, news media found themselves repeatedly changing the way in which they characterized, or stereotyped, the new breed of military woman:
Trialblazers. Until the U.S. military operations in Panama and the Persian Gulf in 1990-1991, women in the services were frequently cast as pathfinders breaking gender barriers. A typical piece, "Women in Uniform: Can They Save the Military?" (U.S. News & World Report, June 5, 1978) described how women were filling the post-draft manpower shortfall as sailors, parachute riggers, pilots, Minuteman missile crewmembers. In my 1999 Ph.D. dissertation, I examined some 250 articles published between 1978 and 1998 on women in the military. About half of the 31 articles that appeared between 1978 and 1990 dealt with strides made by women in uniform.
Threat to Military Readiness. In 1990 and 1991, the United States, which had essentially been at peace since the mid-1970s, went to war in Panama and the gulf. Female soldiers were definitely in harm's way so woman at war was no longer an abstraction. All of society's doubts about women in combat rose to the surface —including the old idea that women in war are sexual distractions, misfits, or "weak sisters."
According to the study, around half of the 51 articles that ran in 1990-1991 dealt with women in combat, often focusing on controversies like sex in the ranks. One Newsweek article declared, for instance, that 1,200 military women had been evacuated from the gulf war zone due to pregnancy. But as Linda Bird Francke pointed out in her book Ground Zero, the Pentagon could not confirm the figures and later said pregnancy had not undermined gulf war readiness.
Much coverage focused on military women who left young children behind, with far less attention to fathers who had to do the same. (See, for instance, "Battle Over Moms at War," USA Today, February 12, 1991.) This news emphasis bolstered the stereotypic breakdown of gender roles in war: men fight, women keep domestic life going.
Perhaps most striking was the press preoccupation with two American women captured by the Iraqis — Army Specialist Melissa Rathbun-Nealy and Army Major Rhonda Cornum. They received far more media attention than did male captives. Indeed, some 480 news accounts dealt with the capture or release of one or both women, according to a Nexis search. This was roughly the same number of references as appeared about two of the U.S. Army's most influential, accessible, and quotable gulf commanders — Lieutenant Generals Gus Pagonis, who handled the crucial logistics front, and Calvin Waller, deputy commander of the entire force. That two relatively low-ranking women prisoners matched them in publicity reflects real unease in the media and American society about women at the front.
Gender War Victims. Shortly after the gulf war came Lt. Paula Coughlin's decision to blow the whistle on the stalled Navy investigation of sexual assault by male aviators at the Tailhook convention. The story broke at a time when news media were displaying a robust appetite for sex scandal. Coughlin's story drew huge news play and inspired a string of other aggrieved military women to tell their tales of mistreatment of male colleagues. Thus was born Military Woman as Gender War Victim, a media stereotype whose drawbacks are discussed in the accompanying article.
Mainstream Warrior? News coverage of the initial military conflicts of the twenty-first century suggests that a more balanced portrayal of women as mainstream members of the U.S. armed services might finally be emerging. When a Navy plane made a forced landing in China after colliding with a Chinese jet fighter in 2001, for instance, the Chinese held captive a crew including three women. In contrast to the gulf war, reporters did not single out these prisoners for coverage because they were women.
A number of news stories about the Afghanistan campaign have reported that women in warfare is no longer a contentious issue within the military. "Here on the front lines of the war on terrorism, that argument is over," according to a February Newhouse News Service story. "They're Not an Experiment Anymore," declares the headline of a January 11, 2002, USA Today piece.
Still, the issue of motherhood continues to smolder. In a November 2, 2001, Dateline NBC segment, reporter Ann Curry asks a mother of three if she has sleepless nights missing her kids during a combat tour on an aircraft carrier. "Oh, yeah," the Navy electrical technician says wistfully, "[when I] make the mistake of thinking about singing bedtime songs." Curry is not shown asking similar questions of any of fathers on board. The Newhouse piece quotes a female soldier who left a two-year old daughter behind saying, "Yesterday I took a shower and caught myself thinking about her and I just cried and cried." No forlorn fathers are quoted.
In the future, perhaps we'll see coverage of military fathers answering such questions, or the absence of such queries altogether. Either would be preferable to putting the spotlight on weeping Moms in foxholes.
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