Item – Theses Canada

OCLC number
941429419
Author
Davis, Karen D.(Karen Dianne),1956-
Title
Negotiating gender in the Canadian Forces, 1970-1999.
Degree
Ph. D. -- Royal Military College of Canada, 2013
Publisher
Ottawa : Library and Archives Canada = Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, [2014]
©2013
Description
4 microfiches
Notes
Includes bibliographical references.
Abstract
<?Pub Inc> The status of women in the Canadian Forces, 1970-1999, was driven by social change culminating with a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 1989 that directed the CF to fully integrate women into the military, including combat roles, within ten years. This research examines strategies used by CF leadership to negotiate gender integration, 1989-1999, and argues that those strategies cannot be understood without considering leadership resistance to the participation of women in combat before 1989. Although the analytical focus is the integration of women, it also suggests a relationship between the resistance of women and homosexuals in the military. The analysis draws from a range of CF documents and senior leadership directions that were generated within the CF and the Department of National Defence, and interviews with leaders and staff officers who had held responsibilities related to gender integration. The study emphasizes strategies that CF leadership used to reinforce what they believed was an unequivocal relationship between the values of the masculine heterosexual warrior identity, a vocational orientation to military service, and operational effectiveness. CF leadership recognized that the military needed the contribution of women in support roles, but turned to scientific evidence and then to philosophical rationale related to combat cohesion in attempts to demonstrate that there were 'bona fide' reasons to exclude women from combat. After 1989, CF leaders adopted a gender neutral posture that sought to satisfy the minimum requirements of the Tribunal ruling. They claimed that based upon equitable opportunity and equal liability, gender integration was complete. Gender differences were minimized, though gender-related challenges prevailed. In the final year of the ten year deadline, limited progress was evident and CF leadership was forced to acknowledge the challenges to gain public confidence. By 1999, change was visible in terms of gender neutral policy development, but limited in regard to the extent to which CF leadership had the capacity and motivation to acknowledge and accommodate gender diversity. Keywords: gender and military, combat masculine warrior, warrior ethos, gender neutral, women in the military, integration of women, military and social change, Canadian Forces.
ISBN
9780494950579
0494950579